[asterisk-users] Trixbox vs. Custom install

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2007 at 10:23:17AM -0500, Tom Rymes wrote:
> On Feb 12, 2007, at 7:13 PM, Stephen Bosch wrote:
> 
> >Lee Jenkins wrote:
> >>Stefano Corsi wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >>The nice things about GUI's in my opinion is that routine chores  
> >>such as
> >>setting up extensions, dialing extensions, hunt groups, etc. are less
> >>likely to contain scripting bugs or typos.  The downside from what I
> >>gather with many GUI's is that the friendly abstraction that  
> >>insulates
> >>you from the nuts and bolts of scripting and configuration also  
> >>makes it
> >>difficult to customize the dialplan in some cases.
> >
> >It also makes troubleshooting problems a handful-and-a-half. And  
> >woe is
> >you if you need kernel customizations to make your hardware work.
> 
> Not to start a flame-war, but I completely disagree. Troubleshooting  
> a GUI is much easier, given that you don't have to scout for typos,  
> transposed numbers, etc throughout the dialplan. With the GUI, you  
> have to double check the information that you input into the GUI, but  
> that's it. As for hardware, it should be no more difficult to get  
> Trixbox to play nicely with hardware than any other Asterisk install.  
> You may have to patch and/or recompile zaptel, asterisk, etc, but  
> that's no different than what you would have to do with a non-Trixbox  
> install. 

Hmmm... I installed a trixbox system. 'yum update' failed to work, due
to funny games with yum's configuration. A default centos server
installation did not have the same issue.

This is just one example.

> (and you really shouldn't have to in almost all cases)

A GUI does its absraction. By that it hides some information that it
deems irrelevant. In many cases this information is relevant.

One example: just figuring out if FreePBX actually dial, or not at all,
requires either a sufficiently-trained asterisk guy to review the
log/cli just to understand why a call did not go through. 

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen       
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