FreePBX 15 upgrade Hints

FreePBX
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After misinterpreting a less than candid marketing release from Sangoma in October, I found myself the unwitting production user of alpha code for FreePBX 15. Believe the developers, not the marketers. However…

The upgrade from Asterisk 13 to 16 was without incident and hands off.

The GUI upgrade script to FreePBX 15 from 14 also worked like a charm with no human intervention. When this is finally released for the masses, stock installs of FreePBX/Asterisk should have little issue.

Except…

First Issue: Upon completion of the upgrades I suddenly had codec issues. The codec_g729.so file installed with the upgrade (as well as one other I don’t use) did not have its owner:group properly set to asterisk:asterisk and its permissions set to 755. This was evidenced by incoming callers hearing silence and outgoing calls largely ringing busy. Easy fix. Change permissions and owners.

Second Issue: My trunk SIP settings were suddenly inadequate. Apparently in prior iterations of FreePBX certain settings were picked up from general Advanced and SIP settings and were default for trunks. I say this because my installations worked flawlessly prior to the upgrade. Whether or not this trunk default setting is supposed to be the case now or whether I was simply benefitting from an unfound bug or an undocumented feature is unknown. Doesn’t matter. The fix was to explicitly declare disallow=all, allow=ulaw&alaw&g729 (in my case) and sendrpid=yes as well as trustrpid=yes (in my case, your VoIP provider may need different settings) in the trunk SIP settings.

Other than these two momentarily frightening and puzzling issues, the upgrade was completely uneventful except for my premature jump into alpha code on production machines.

If you have GUI exceptions pop up on 15, try doing explicit upgrades of named modules instead of fwconsole ma updateall. Because my nightly OS and application updates used updateall, and because I was now on alpha code, the code updates were not always in sync. This may require manual inspection and intervention from time to time until GA.

It should also be noted that when code hiccups occur the fix will typically be applied to stable FreePBX first and then 15 a few hours later as was my experience this week. The code is seemingly stable enough that I elected not to rebuild machines and downgrade to GA code.

One final recommendation - when reporting bugs in the 15 code, perhaps add a line at the top of your description which says PERTAINS TO VERSION 15 so that users and support alike can discriminate more easily. Do this even if you have correctly specified the version in the reporting fields above. This might have avoided a Trumpian text exchange earlier in the week. The clean version is:
U: This fish smells.
S: Search for better smelling fish. All our fish smells good.
U: But THIS fish smells.
S: It can’t smell, we got rid of all our smelly fish. Search for non-smelly fish. (another search performed)
U1 & U2: Dammit - we both say THIS fish smells.
S: OHHHHHHH! Yes, THAT fish smells. Why didn’t you say so in the first place!
(Fish replaced. Everybody happy.)

Memo to self: Never, never, never, ever act on a marketing announcement. Duh. That said, this is the most stable alpha code I have ever seen.

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“Uneventful” is a word I would not describe this process based on your rants in your other thread. The one where you claimed to be screwed by this, had all sorts of issues pop up and even at one point made the smarmy remark “Hello, Ontario Securities Commission…” which pretty much implicated a threat (weak sauced but still).

But what still puzzles me is that the self proclaimed “Cloud Install Script Guy” that works to make things happen on the “Four Largest VM Vendors” performed a major version update on a production machine without first doing it on a test machine.

You saw a press release, you ran to get the latest versions of everything. Including taking very specific steps to get to the v15 instructions and during that “Alpha” was present. You were so worried about got to v15 you made some very clear rookie mistakes.

Sorry, other thread got locked so I couldn’t reply but damn man. Stop blaming Sangoma for this. YOU SCREWED THE POOCH no one else.

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When you upgrade from 14 to 15 their is a wizard you use inside FreePBX GUI after you manually installed the FreePBX upgrade module. The only place you can get a link for the update module is from this blog here. FreePBX 15 Alpha Now Available for Testing | FreePBX - Let Freedom Ring which clearly states its Alpha. Once you start the wizard and it check system requirements it clearly at the top tells you its Alpha. So this is far from hands off. It for sure is hands on and you click on things and proceed through.

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I just don’t think it’s clear enough about the whole Alpha thing. It’s all your fault.

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Folks - there is some info in my most recent post which will be of use to either help people get past a more strict environment in F15/A16 - or - will point out a needed patch in the alpha upgrade scripts. Please don’t miss a message while the trolls engage in their usual sport of trying to beat the messengers to death. My “hands off” statement was taken as literally as I took marketing’s “release” statement. N’est-ce pas? The “hands off” statement was intended as a compliment to the developers and the robustness of their current code set. However, you clearly illustrated how mistakes in comprehension can occur as in my alpha snafu.

Good job developers! Sincere thanks!

I guess if I thought it would matter I would go point by point and respond to the snarkiness. But since the Chief Obstinacy Officer at Sangoma is incapable of understanding that the distinction between a multiple paid module installation and a 100% open source installation is that one is a customer and the other is a user I would be wasting my breath. It’s not a power play, Tony, it’s an important distinction which should not require explanation. However, looking back at 5 years of posts it seems that it is indeed true that it is impossible to teach an old dog new tricks.

The tenor of my posts yesterday was in direct proportion to the response from Sangoma which was originally to deny (close bug report - twice), then denigrate (search <stupid - implied> this has been fixed) and then later admit that there was a misunderstanding. Tony waded in babbling nonsensically about the Terms of Service - which I read before I developed my scripts and do not violate.

I tried to provide a helpful suggestion above to avoid similar angst in the future. I actually care about Sangoma as you will see below if you are not already composing your snarky response. Sadly the legacy executive management at Sangoma and the sycophantic troll brigade would rather put people in their place than advance the ecosystem.

Tony, I’m not just a customer, I am also a shareholder. I, therefore, found it interesting when I was told by the COO of Sangoma to “go ask them” referring to Asterisk and thus drawing a bright line between Digium and Sangoma. I could be confused but isn’t them you? 80% out of the company’s available cash to Digium last quarter seems to imply that you is now them. Maybe it is indeed me that is confused.

Shareholders, customers, and users have a right to expect a certain level of precision, practicability, and performance, especially once certain corporate milestones are achieved. The FreePBX users and customers drive the 50%+ profit margin that Sangoma enjoys as they work their way up the value chain. You might (you won’t, but you might) consider that before you next hit send. Remember, you are not the King of Schmooze any more free to run amok and abuse the peasants at will. You are the COO of STC and peasants have historically been known to revolt.

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This makes it even worse. You’re now saying that as a shareholder, someone with stake in the company, you are unaware of the version release statuses of the flagship product of said company you have stake in.

Furthermore, as a responsible shareholder in Sangoma if you are unhappy with business/marketing move Sangoma made and wish to voice your concerns then a public Internet forum was the wrong choice for it. There are shareholder meetings and I’m sure processes for shareholders to communicate with Sangoma. Those would have been a more professional and responsible avenue to take.

This peacocking you have going on is just digging you in to a deeper hole. Yesterday it was you’ve been doing this for years and you buy commercial modules. Today you’re a shareholder. Tomorrow you’ll be what? Not just a customer, not just a shareholder but a majority shareholder?!

You made a rookie mistake. Perhaps some of the replies from members of Sangoma on here were not to your liking and there’s is blame on both sides. Just own the mistake, get over yourself and let it go.

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There was no denial. Your ticket (opened at 9am) was a duplicate of a ticket opened at 6am. That 6am ticket was wrongly deemed a duplicate of 15 other duplicate tickets. It was not denied. It was linked as a duplicate. Then later unlinked as a duplicate. But YOUR ticket was still a duplicate because it was created 3 hours after the original ticket.

Marking a ticket as a duplicate confirms its the same as another ticket, it does not deny the ticket itself.

Chris. You have some valid points but when you say things like this you are just ‘poking’ the bear and quite frankly I’ve had enough. You lose all creditably by just throwing out insults because you are upset.

I’m honestly surprised Tony was able to keep his cool this long when you keep using the “Obstinacy” part of COO.

Please stop with the provoking when you are trying to state your opinions. This thread is now just beating a dead horse, just like the other two threads you were involved in and it’s now closed.

Please take a step back and breath and come back when you are feeling like you won’t just throw insults around at people. You have valid concerns but they are lost when you do this. You can have opinions, you can hate Sangoma and it’s management but the over-usage of “Chief Obstinacy Office” here and in your other threads and calling people who disagree with you (BlazeStudio) a “troll brigade” is considered by many to be “trolling” itself. Maybe people just have an issue with what you are saying. It doesn’t make all two (lzcantrell and BlazeStudios are the only people who have replied to you besides Tony) of them a “troll brigade”

This is your final warning.

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