[Asterisk-Users] Polling Asterisk for Life

[Rich Adamson]

> >The problem isn't that asterisk isn't running, it's that asterisk is
> >not responding.  When asterisk is in this funky state, I can still run
> >"asterisk -vvvvr" from the command line and get access to the CLI. 
> >While in the CLI, the only command that asterisk will respond to is
> >"exit" which drops me back to the shell.  If I try to issue a "stop
> >now", asterisk just immediately returns to the CLI> prompt.  It does
> >this for every single command, except for "exit".
> >
> >So, simply respawning asterisk, or checking to see if it's running
> >isn't good enough, because asterisk is indeed running.  We need to
> >access asterisk and issue a command, and see if asterisk responds
> >appropriately.  If not, we can assume it has died, and we can kill it
> >off (killall -9 asterisk) and then start it back up again (or reboot
> >the whole server if necessary).
> >
> >Yes, it's an odd problem, but I've noticed it so I can confirm it is a
> >state asterisk can get into, and can confirm its symptoms.  Hopefully
> >all that is over with now after I upgraded (also fyi, I also moved my
> >x101p around so it'd get its own irq, so it's possible that was the
> >problem, though I doubt it).  If it turns out I still have the
> >problem, I'll probably whip up a script to check asterisk's condition
> >and restart if needed.
> >
> >Joseph Tanner
> >
> >  
> >
> Do you happen to have TDM400 cards in your system? I have learned to set 
> up any machine with TDM400 cards to do a nightly auto-reboot. If we 
> don't, they will eventually exhibit behaviour identical to what  you 
> describe above.

Better RMA your tdm400 card then. Have multiple boxes with these cards
that function for many weeks, and their uptime is only limited due to
changes that are made about once per month or so.