What do you mean?
I fixed my post
notice the change from a colon to a semi-colon, (gotta get new glasses 
)
Sorry dicko,
the same error. See:
Unable to open output file: /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/de_custom/digits/yesterday.gsm
Command 'file convert /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/de_custom/digits/yesterday.ulaw /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/de_custom/digits/yesterday.gsm' failed.
Maybe that files are better.
Stock VM Files arent 100% complete. The linked here are better
I have released (pre-release) a new version which supports the GSM codec. The GSM files are included now in the pre-built sound files for the German language. So you do not need to convert them yourself. Hope this helps.
You can download them here:
I am curious why GSM is involved at all. It’s an outdated codec with poor voice quality. Many years ago, Asterisk sound files were distributed in .gsm form to save disk space. When played, they didn’t sound very good.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with any .gsm files in English, and when I look at (for example)
https://www.asterisksounds.org/en/download
the files are all available in .sln16 format.
Hello dears, no matter which German language files I install, none of them work. Important to know. Only gsm files are used!
The German language only works if I install the Debian package “asterisk-prompt-de” and copy the preceding files into the appropriate sound directory.
Even if I convert the files to gsm files, the German language doesn’t work.
Just for laughs, on an older FreePBX 15 / Asterisk 16 system, I went to Admin → Sound Languages and downloaded German - Germany (de_DE) by Zapp Media (Berlin). Then, changed Language Code for a test extension to German.
The files installed consist only of .g722 and .ulaw, voice quality seems fine and nothing seems to expect .gsm anywhere.
But with an empty mailbox, I press the mail button and hear “Sie haben nein Nachrichten”. I believe it should be “Sie haben keine Nachrichten” and I thought maybe I had 9 messages and had misheard ‘neun’ as ‘nein’.
And it gets worse. With one message in the box, I hear “Sie haben” and it hangs up. Guess what:
[2023-05-24 13:36:34] VERBOSE[11556][C-00000089] pbx.c: Executing [*97@from-internal:120] VoiceMailMain("PJSIP/1013-00000111", "1013@default,s") in new stack
[2023-05-24 13:36:34] VERBOSE[11556][C-00000089] file.c: <PJSIP/1013-00000111> Playing 'vm-youhave.ulaw' (language 'de_DE')
[2023-05-24 13:36:35] WARNING[11556][C-00000089] file.c: File digits/1F does not exist in any format
[2023-05-24 13:36:35] WARNING[11556][C-00000089] file.c: Unable to open digits/1F (format (ulaw)): No such file or directory
[2023-05-24 13:36:35] VERBOSE[11556][C-00000089] pbx.c: Spawn extension (from-internal, *97, 120) exited non-zero on 'PJSIP/1013-00000111'
So I’m missing the file for ‘eine’. Why does that cause the system to croak? IMO it should skip playing that sound and continue on, so you could at least get your messages.
Next, I see that the files at Herunterladen - Asterisk Sounds, Hilft Astersk aut Deutsch zu sprechen have the digits/1F file. Is that the set to use? Or would the @joni1802 files be better?
In any case, IMO there is no reason to download or transcode any .gsm files – better to find out why the system is expecting them and fix that.
@Stewart1 Welcome to the german speaking hell 
.
But with an empty mailbox, I press the mail button and hear “Sie haben nein Nachrichten”.
Yes the correct term would be “Sie haben keine Nachrichten”. The German language is a little bit more complex than English. “No” means “Nein” in German. But in the context of the sentence “You have no messages” the word “No” needs to be “Keine”. Btw I still have to fix this too in my language files .
And it gets worse. With one message in the box, I hear “Sie haben” and it hangs up
Yes, this is a known bug. In the default German sound files from Zapp Media (Berlin) the file “digits/1F” does not exist. Also in this case FreePBX cannot use the English fallback because in English you only have the sound file “digits/1” for the word “one”. In German there are the masculine “ein” (digits/1F) and the feminine “eine” (digits/1N) form of this word.
Next, I see that the files at Herunterladen - Asterisk Sounds, Hilft Astersk aut Deutsch zu sprechen have the digits/1F file. Is that the set to use?
This project has more german sound files but it seems deprecated. It uses an old text-to-speech engine which sounds not so great and there are also a lot of wrong translations and some files are still missing. I have tried to contact them two times before I published my post here on the forum but I got no answers within two weeks. Originally my plan was to contribute to this project.
In any case, IMO there is no reason to download or transcode any .gsm files – better to find out why the system is expecting them and fix that.
Well if the phone only supports the GSM codec FreePBX needs to play back files in this codec. When I tested the GSM codec I had to find a phone which still supports this codec. E.g. Yealink phones do not support it anymore. But I found MicroSIP where you can still enable GSM as a codec. And yes, it sounds awefull.
This is weird. Make sure to copy the files in the correct directory. Check if the files have the correct permissions. When you change the language under Sounds Languages > Settings > Global Language you have to reload the Asterisk config (Apply Config).
Also which device you are using? As I have already mentioned, GSM is outdated. Maybe you can change the codec in the settings of your phone to a modern one like G711 (alaw/ulaw).
Thanks for the details. I downloaded the .zip from asterisksounds.org, extracted just the digits/1F.sln16 file and put it in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/de_DE/digits. Result:
[2023-05-24 17:52:29] VERBOSE[7735][C-0000008e] file.c: <PJSIP/1013-00000114> Playing 'vm-youhave.ulaw' (language 'de_DE')
[2023-05-24 17:52:30] VERBOSE[7735][C-0000008e] file.c: <PJSIP/1013-00000114> Playing 'digits/1F.slin16' (language 'de_DE')
[2023-05-24 17:52:31] VERBOSE[7735][C-0000008e] file.c: <PJSIP/1013-00000114> Playing 'vm-INBOX.ulaw' (language 'de_DE')
[2023-05-24 17:52:31] VERBOSE[7735][C-0000008e] file.c: <PJSIP/1013-00000114> Playing 'vm-message.ulaw' (language 'de_DE')
“Sie haben eine neu Nachricht” (I guess ‘neue’ is too much to ask for), but the call continued successfully.
So, Asterisk transcoded the .sln16 file in real time (it doesn’t exist in any other format) and played it fine. I believe that is the default behavior.
Even if the OP has an extension or trunk that requires GSM (IMO unlikely), he still doesn’t need any .gsm sound files. He should fix the setting or (unlikely) the build problem that is making it look for .gsm .
AFAIK, a mailbox doesn’t have an associated language. FreePBX attempts to play voicemail instructions or the message retrieval UI in the language of the caller. For internal calls, that’s the language of the calling extension, not that of the called extension that went to voicemail. For external calls, it’s the language of the Inbound Route, possibly modified by the call flow, e.g. if the caller selects an IVR option for another language. You should look carefully at these settings.
In the “full” log I see the following message for “voicemail”. Could that be related to the problems?
[2023-05-25 09:00:01] [freepbx.INFO]: Deprecated way to add Console commands for module voicemail, adding console commands this way can have negative performance impacts. Please use module.xml. See: https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FOP/Adding+fwconsole+commands [] []```Where can I look for the settings which files (g722, alaw, ulaw, gsm, etc.) are used? I installed asterisk from the Debian 11 package sources. I downloaded FreePBX 15 and installed it.
Sorry, I don’t know, but with luck that’s not your problem. I suspect that either Asterisk couldn’t open a file in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/de_DE, or it didn’t know to look there.
While it’s playing ‘the person at extension …’, from a root shell prompt, type
lsof +D /var/lib/asterisk/sounds
and post the output. Assuming a fallback to default or English, this will tell us where the base is.
Also, do
su asterisk
and from the shell as user asterisk, confirm that you can read a file in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/de_DE/digits, e.g. by copying it to a temporary file.
If both of the above pass, put a relevant .gsm file in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/de_DE/digits and see whether Asterisk plays it.
Back to the basics: Your Administrator / Klangsprachen should look like:
You may delete you German, and re-install it (incl. ALAW, ULAW, G722) from Zapp-Media.
This includes the error for “one”/“none” translation as described above. Maybe to be resolved by manually adding the …1F-file as also described above.
Anwendungen / Sprachen has no entries for me.
And also I have system-settings advanced as:
…which might no help for existing extensions, but maybe for new extensions only.
Generally speaking it’s not a good idea to use German for voicemail, as long as existing bugs continue.
Therefore I’m still using German for everything except voicemail. The outside world hears the personal greeting messages in the language they are recorded. My local users can handle a few English words.
Asterisk computes the best sound file to use given the target codec, based on a cost metric. I think that may be calibrated on the actual hardware. I’m not sure if it also has an allowance for avoiding using lower sample rate intermediates. The CLI command “core show translation” will show the metrics table.
—and what I forget to point out:
Administrator / Sprachen has a settings sub-menu coming from the right side of the screen.
Here you can choose the codecs to be used:
By the way: I’m not sure whether or not anyone of us did that on a Debian x86 OS and therefore what commands the GUI is using. If I would knew better, I could answer with some wget, tar and apt install commands.
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