We are searching for a viable web interface for our Asterisk boxes.
I went through the process of installing FreePBX on top of an Asterisk box, because it was not clear to me:
(1) whether freePBX includes Asterisk (it doesn’t)
(2) why the http server and the mySQL server must be on the same machine (real or virtual) as the Asterisk PBX - I think that the mySQL server can be located separate from the Asterisk PBX, but I haven’t tried yet. Ditto for the http server, but some tweaking of the httpd.conf file is going to be necessary. I haven’t reviewed the source code of the freePBX installation script yet, and I suspect that some adjustment there may be necessary, too. But I haven’t tried anything yet.
Which brings me to:
(3) The freePBX installation adds a number of satellite files such as sip_additional.conf, whose contents and functionality are not documented. In addition, the relationship between the /etc/asterisk/*.conf files and the freePBX mySQL database tables is not properly documented either. For example, I discovered that adding data to the sip module updates both the sip table AND the user tables. I don’t have the foggiest idea at the moment, for any given module, what data populates which table. I don’t even know at this moment how the data in the configuration files fits in with FreePBX’s mySQL tables. This makes the process of updating data from anywhere but the modules very problematic for me.
Question 1: Does free PBX have any comprehensive documentation for the satellite files such as sip_additional.conf that they have created, and the interaction between the FreePBX mySQL tables and the configuration files?
Question 2: Does FreePBX have any comprehensive documentation at all?
The answers are important to me because I don’t know whether all the Asterisk parameter names in the conf files are identical in name to the Asterisk parameter names in the mySQL tables. And given that I expect that the number of Asterisk parameter names increases with each version of Asterisk, I have no idea how the mySQL table schemas get updated.
MySQL can be on a separate machine, but the web server cannot, unless you do a whole bunch of rewriting of the FreePBX code. FreePBX creates the /etc/asterisk/*.conf files from its database. The webserver calls the scripts that do this, so the webserver has to be on the same machine as /etc/asterisk.
Exactly. FreePBX manages the data in the database tables and then writes out the .conf files appropriately. Essentially, you can edit the *_custom.conf files, but none of the rest: FreePBX manages those itself.
No.
[quote]Question 2: Does FreePBX have any comprehensive documentation at all?
All the user documentation is at http://www.aussievoip.com.au. All the developer documentation is at http://www.freepbx.org. Feel free to add more documentation if you feel the current information is not sufficient.
You might have better luck asking on the Trixbox forums.
Alex
On 6/6/06, Nelson Tactuk <[email protected] ([email protected])> wrote: [quote]I would like know if you have a good experience with Trixbox. I want
to be sure before upgrading to Trixbox.