[asterisk-users] Minimizing downtime during updates

[Dave Fullerton]

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Dave Fullerton" <dfullertasterisk at shorelinecontainer.com>
> To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" 
> <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 8:39 AM
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Minimizing downtime during updates
> 
> 
>> Karl Fife wrote:
>>> I was about to ask this question when I figured out the answer by combing
>>> through the makefile.
>>> I am posting this anyway because I think it's good to know, and I didn't
>>> find any threads that speak to it when I searched the list history.
>>>
>>> My Question was:
>>> When updating Asterisk, the sound tarballs for the selected codecs are 
>>> not
>>> retreived until running make install.  This adds unnecessarily to the
>>> downtime when updating versions because Asterisk has to be stopped while
>>> running make install.  I wanted a simple way to pre-fetch these files to 
>>> a
>>> local repository to speed up the actual install routine, instead of 
>>> slowing
>>> it by the arbitrary duration of the fetch/download process which robs
>>> valuable NINES from uptime :-)
>>>
>>> I discovered that after running make, you can run 'make sounds' before
>>> shutting down the service.  This cuts all of the download time from the
>>> install process minimizing service downtime to a fraction of what it 
>>> would
>>> othewise be.
>> You can also just grab and un-tar the sound files by hand from:
>> http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/sounds/
>>
>> On a side note, why does the sounds directory not display in the
>> directory listing when looking at
>> http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/ ?
>>
>> -Dave
>>
Karl Fife wrote:
 > "Dave Fullerton" <dfullertasterisk at shorelinecontainer.com> wrote:
 >> You can also just grab and un-tar the sound files by hand from:
 >> http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/sounds/
 >
 > Good point because the MOH files would need to be bulled down 
manually if
 > you want to minimize downtime AND you choose to offer wideband MOH 
tracks to
 > calling parties (and perhaps other native codecs).  It is my observation
 > that "make sounds" target does not fetch those MOH tracks (as I would 
have
 > expected), rather they are only fetched during 'make install', 
(increasing
 > downtime).
 >
 > Does anyone know if there is in fact a distinct target in the 
makefile that
 > pulls these down, and if not, why they're not pulled down as a matter of
 > course with "make sounds" if specified in makefile.makeopts.
 >
 > -Karl

The trigger (I believe) is when you select the sound packages in 
menuselect. By default the GSM core sound files and WAV music on hold 
are included in the asterisk tar file. If you want to pre-download music 
files then wget them into the /usr/src/asterisk-1.x.x/sounds directory 
prior to running make. By skimming through the make file in that 
directory it looks like it tests for their existence prior to 
downloading them. Make sure you download the version appropriate to that 
versions of asterisk (you'll have to look in the sounds/Makefile at 
CORE_SOUNDS_VERSION and EXTRA_SOUNDS_VERSION) and not the -current tar 
balls.

-Dave