[Asterisk-Users] Re: 911 and lawsuits and redundancy

[Steven Critchfield]

On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 11:30, Jonathan Moore wrote:
> Is there a way to reload a module from the console, so that we could isolate 
> the amount of failure is necessary for these types of changes? For me this 
> would be a pretty big improvement in reliability, although I may just see it 
> that way because I am still figuring out configurations. 

This is not likely to be a good idea. Even the linux kernel was about to
remove module unloading support due to the problems with driver authors
being able to clean up well enough and unload properly. It is unlikely
that you would also be needing this unless you are an author of the
module and doing lots of testing that required loading, verifying,
unloading, modifying, and reloading. Of course since the start time of
asterisk is relatively low compared with a computer reboot, it isn't
that necessary.

If you come at your install with a couple of computers, you can have a
similar effect. My main asterisk machine has the PRI attached to it.
This machine does little work, and receives next to no upgrades. It was
locked down and does just PSTN gateway work. I have another machine in
the same rack as the PSTN gateway that hosts one of our apps. This
machine may get more frequent upgrades if we ever notice problems with
the software or if we need newer features. Our office switch is a
similar beast. Updates when needed, but it affects fewer people. My home
machine connects to the PSTN gateway, but my home machine is usually
bleeding edge and sometimes my working version. At worst case my home
machine only affects 3 people, 2 of which have cell phones.

> I will say that I was able today to do an * reload during the day, by just 
> watching the phone lines and waiting for all of them to go free. This of course 
> will get harder as we add more sites into the central system.

"restart when convenient" will do the watching for you and restart
asterisk when all channels go idle. "restart gracefully" will disable
all new calls and will restart as soon as all channels go idle.

The reload command doesn't need to have everyone off the system as it
just reloads the configs that it can.  

-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>