Beginner with backup/restore questions *HELP PLEASE*

While this is probably covered here 100 times, and I have probably posted it at the wrong location, I ask that someone please help me as I have reached a point that I am stuck.

I am a windows help desk tech at a medium sized construction company who recently took over all firewall and phone servers as well as all the windows servers.

I fuddled through fine adding users, changing things, etc, but I am stuck on a backup issue.

I belive PBX version is 2.9.0.15 (beginner here, please if this is wrong help guide me in right direction)

I am trying to migrate my pbx to a new server, with the latest and greatest FreePBX distro. I am trying to pull a backup off my old version, to deploy it in a new install i have setup in a virtual server on our network. Everytime I try and complete a backup, nothing happens. it looks like it completes, but the files never email, or save to my FTP that i configged. I verified that the FTP info is good. as is the email… however nothing.

So im wondering, one if anyone can help with that, and secondly, maybe easier, is there a location on the PBX server where these are saved, and how would a windows guy like myself go about accessing them!

SORRY for the uneducated approach, Im fairly decent in FreePBX, but I am horrible with Linux, so once out of the distro I am darn near useless.

Any help would really be appreciated.

** I have considered even just setting up the new one manually with extensions and settings, but i was hoping to explore this path first. Thanks for any help provided!

First, relax. We were all new users at some point, and it sounds like you’re approaching this from a perfectly reasonable method.

That server is really, really old. Your only hope is to find the scripts that Lorne Gaetz (@lgaetz ) posted to “upgrade” an old server (PBX In A Flash, for example) to the latest version of the system. Backup and Restore are guaranteed to fail between versions this dissimilar. Frankly, it’s kind of crap shoot from the same version on one machine to exactly the same version on another. :slight_smile:

There are other ways too, but it depends on the complexity of your system. A relatively simple way is to ‘screen shot’ your trunks, and inbound and outbound routes and copy them to the new trunks and inbound/outbound routes. The visuals are different, but the information has remained largely the same.

Next, you can use the whatever the “bulk handler” was called in your version and dump the extension configuration to a CSV file. You can then update the CSV file with whatever information is missing (for stuff that’s been added) and move out from there.

If you are on the newest stable FreePBX (I wouldn’t use the Beta as a new user because you then have no idea if it was you, or the software) you can set everything up on a new IP address and migrate a single phone to your new server.

There are two SIP channel handlers available now: Chan-SIP and PJ-SIP. Because you are coming from an older system, I’d enable Chan-SIP and disable PJ-SIP for now. Make sure the phone connects. If you need to add PJ-SIP functionality later, it’s still available, but with it out of the way, the learning curve is a little “less steep”.

As you work forward, you might run into specific problems or questions. Post them here - we’ll try to do the best we can for you.

As Dave said, you DON’T want to employ backup and restore between non-matching major versions. This script was made SPECIFICALLY for this application:
http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/PPS/Elastix+and+PBXinaFlash+to+FreePBX+Distro+Conversion+Tool

Follow the instructions on that page, and the settings will migrate from the old unsupported system to a brand new Distro 13 system.

This is some great info guys, and greatly appreciated!

I will start the process of “screenshotting” the trunks and routes and start building the new one.

The phones pull their programming info from the server, setup by the vendor the company purchased it from, so I need to do some digging to figure that out as well.

That’s probably what they told you, but chances are they just implemented The Open Source Software Extension Phone Manager or OSS EPM. When your system was installed, it was the newest, coolest thing ever. Unfortunately, like most super popular free software projects, it’s fallen on hard times.

Get your boss to authorize $250 for the “all in one, good time had by all” package that @lgaetz will no doubt give you the real name of. It’s a package of six “must have” packages that include the Sys Admin Pro package and the Commercial EPM (plus a couple more that no one would buy if they weren’t included) [only half kidding]. You’ll find it out on FreePBX.org.

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