[Asterisk-Users] Polling Asterisk for Life

[Joseph Tanner]

I just really can't live without the Local channel, so I did some
research.  It appears that maybe putting /n on the end fixes my
problem.  So instead of this:

Local/19315551212 at cell-out

I should use this:

Local/19315551212 at cell-out/n

Curiously enough, without the /n on the end, I get this interesting
error message:

Mar  3 00:48:39 WARNING[5548]: channel.c:3054 ast_do_masquerade:
Channel type 'BLT' does not have a fixup routine (for BLT/Motorola)! 
Bad things may happen.

And, just as it says, bad things do indeed happen.  Sometimes I get no
audio on the call, in fact as soon as the zap channel picks up (I
called back into my server), it'd often stop ringing on my end.  Also
the call file sometimes does not get removed.  Found this out the hard
way when my aunt called me back wondering what I needed (when I got
back home, I had to restart asterisk, some time afterwards the call
file was triggered, called my cellphone, got voicemail which it
interpreted as being answered, then promptly called her).  Note to
self, check for call files before restarting asterisk, especially past
11PM.

With the /n on the end, I don't get that error message, and after more
than a dozen calls I haven't had a single issue.  Yes, I did revert
back to no /n, and again had problems right off the bat.  Put it back,
and again things work.

I understand what /n does, I'm just not sure why it'd make my setup
less buggy.  Well, I'll continue to test, but for now this seems to
help if you're using the Local channel.

Joseph Tanner

On 3/2/06, Joseph Tanner <joseph at thetechguide.com> wrote:
> No TDM400 cards on my end (don't know what the original poster has).
> Just a simple X101P card.  It's a clone, but an exact clone (made sure
> the layout was 100% the same, I have other modems with the same
> chipset, but different layout, so tossed those aside).
>
> BTW, came home tonight, and it's messed up again.  Unfortunately, it
> DID respond to "show license", so that won't work.  However, it did
> NOT respond to "help", so perhaps that could be used to see if it's
> responding or not.  I'll try not using the Local command in my .call
> file to see if there's any difference.  May be a few days until I know
> though.
>
> Joseph Tanner
>
> On 3/2/06, Mike Clark <mike at infoanywhere.com> wrote:
> > Joseph Tanner wrote:
> >
> > >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.
> >
> > Mike Clark
> > _______________________________________________
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