How to restore a dead machine?

General Help
1

Possible scenario:
I have a full backup.
My pbx HDD is gone .
Replace HDD, fresh install of latest FreePbx distro , restore backup.

Is this enough ??

I mean, backup can come from an older version, could I meet version mismatch issues or other problems ?

I haven’t found an official guide to restore a lost machine,
In non-asterisk pbx you replace your hardware, and simply reload your configuration file(s) (ok firmware ver. issues sometimes)

The ideal way would be an cloned image of working HDD but practically impossible to achieve

Any suggestion ?

2

When you do a restore, you need to restore to the same major version. So if your backup is of a 2.11 machine, you need to restore to 2.11.

After you’ve restored, you may need to click around in module admin upgrading everything until it’s working.

3

Thanks,
so I suppose there isn’t a “one shot” restoring operation…

A question : for a TOTAL backup is enough to drag and drop the following templates into items ??

Full Backup
System Audio
Voice Mail

4

Just to amplify Rob’s explanation, there are a couple of things that will make restoring from Backup predictable and reliable:

  1. Stay Current on the OS level and the FreePBX level - Schmooze helpfully supplies scripts to upgrade the OS here: http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/PPS/Updating+FreePBX+Official+Distro - yes, it’s more maintenance and yes they occasionally cause problems by themselves, but if you want to be able to QUICKLY recover from a failure, you have to be current.

  2. Stay current on the FreePBX Level - the scripts above will do a fair amount of this for you, but still you should be regularly updating FreePBX to stay current - this does not mean Edge track - that is ok for a Test-Bed machine, but a production machine should not be that out front - If your machine is publicly exposed (On a Public IP using the Sangoma Firewall) this is even more critical as there have been a fair amount of vulnerabilities fixed in the last 6 months in FreePBX - as more people beat on it, I expect that to continue.

  3. Restoring is a One-Shot if you are current - It’s only a multi-step procedure if you were not up to date.

  4. Strangely this bug never seems to get fixed (I see it almost every time I restore which is several times a month as we upgrade/replace customer machines) so I will include the fix here in case anyone searches for it - when you restore the CDR’s it also restores and replaces the password in the CDR database - so when you go to apply the restored settings you get an abort talking about the CDR MySQL password not being correct - go to Settings -> Advanced Settings, enable Display Readonly Settings and Override Readonly Settings and hit submit (not apply). Once you have done this, the Remote CDR Database Section will show - Find and blank-out the field for Remote CDR DB Password. Once you have done this, you can finally apply your restored system and be back in business.