[asterisk-users] Summary of "Trixbox vs. custom install"

[Time Bandit]

> I also include a consideration from mine: I would happily use
> Trixbox, because I did FreePBX setup once and it was a real pain, but
> I'm very frightened by a few issues:
>
> 1) Trixbox "Macho" installation that installs everything without
> asking. I, for example, would like to use software RAID (maybe it's
> wrong with Asterisk, but I want to do it!). I wouldn't like doing it
> manually after Trixbox installation. I would like to have an
> installer doing it for me. Centos (ex redhat) installer does it, so
> why Trixbox choose to install everything without prompting?
You can just install CentOS with RAID and whatever you want, then use
the Trixbox tar package instead of the ISO. Still, why on earth did
the Trixbox team didn't leave the option of doing a custom install
with the ISO ?

> 2) How easy it is to find Trixbox SRPMS?  Is it possible to compile
> new software (i.e. Asterisk or FreePBX, etc..) on Trixbox without
> having to rewrite all the configuration files, changing all paths,
> all permissions, and so on...
You can update Asterisk/zaptel/whatever by just downloading the source
and compiling it. My home system was installed with A at home on version
0.8 (if memory serves me right) and I upgraded Asterisk and Zaptel to
version 1.0.10 by downloading and compiling. I know, this is a really
old version and I should upgrade, but hey, it is doing everything I
need and it is stable (uptime of 315 days).

IMHO, Trixbox can me customized alot, but you need to know where and
what to modify. I believe that if you know enough about how Asterisk
work, you can get around Trixbox limitations. One thing to remember is
that the files you can modify are the _custom.conf files. Never touch
the _additional.conf files, they will get overwritten next time you
click "Apply changes" in the GUI. The normal base files (sip.conf.
iax.conf, etc) can be modified since the GUI doesn't touch them.

But I also think that there is nothing that can beat a plain install
as far as customization go. YMMV