I recently imaged a FreePBX phone system to new hardware and while re-activating FreePBX wasn’t a problem, apparently FOP2 is. We paid for FOP2 and I can’t get any support from them. I’ve posted on their forum, tried calling both the US and AR numbers and we’re concerned now that the product is dead.
We’ve been forced to go back to the old hardware which running on a degraded raid 1 so we’re on borrowed time. We could replace the disk but the hardware is old and out of support so that wouldn’t be right long time option. We’ll be looking at other call center software for FreePBX but before we make the jump I figured I would post here. FOP2 has been around long enough that I’m hoping someone knows the procedure to get this going again.
Tried that… it was absolutely horrendous. In the forums it was said a human would be available and yet they’re using some A.I. garbage what was as useless as useless can be. I actually don’t even have the word for how bad of an experience their chat help is.
You know. We talked about that too actually. My concern was, what if we pay for a new license and then they don’t send it?
However, is it worth the risking $80 to find out so that we don’t have to completely change systems? It just might be but it feels like an extortion of some sort.
If we do that, I’ll post back here and on their forums. I still think people should know that the product isn’t being supported at this point.
You’re welcome!
I’m also part of this broadcast group, but in this group users can interact with each other and ask the team for help, including Nicolás (main developer), if you send messages in English they can respond, but I believe it’s easier to use Google Translate to Spanish for faster answers.
Regarding the migration process itself, if the two machines are connected and you have the activation code on hand, the process would be this:
On the old server, give the command: /usr/local/fop2/fop2_server --revoke
After that, enter the license code (you need internet access for this procedure)
Then, on the new server, use the command /usr/local/fop2/fop2_server --register
And use your license to register again
If you are unable to perform the procedure for any reason (internet, hardware, etc.), you can ask them to perform a manual revoke on their server, so you can use the license on a new server.
IIRC, every license can be manually revoked up to 3 times
Thank you for including that. In my frustration I completely forgot about these commands because what we needed at the time was a manual revocation and for someone to look up our license code. The email with that was not file so I was hoping to get that from support. If so, we would not need to manually revoke and we could get this done since the system is ready to go.
Side question… can I revoke on the new server and then register with the new license without losing all the current settings? The reason why I ask is so I can keep the current PBX is an operational fashion. I suppose I could just back up the FOP2 path before revoking for save keeping but I wanted to ask.
Either way, you all have given me a game plan here that I think will keep us on FOP2 which is the preferred solution once we more.
Oh, i understand!
In this case, they can provide your license code, they just need some information to identify the server (essentially, the server’s MAC address, approximate date of purchase and email)
To keep the settings, you could make a backup of the main FOP2 folder (/var/www/html/fop2), the folder where the main settings are stored (/usr/local/fop2) - this folder is very important, it It has a sqlite database with some information.
Furthermore, some FOP2 configurations are in the Asterisk database (they are tables that start with the name fop2_), so if you use a backup+restore module that backs up the database, you are already covered in that sense.
Ok so FOP2 on the new server is basically just show a call history but everything in the admin panel is what we set it too. User logins even work (which is why we know they are only seeing the call history element). I do regular database dumps but I wasn’t aware of the path although that would be in the filesystem dump so we should be good.
So just to bottom line the steps again…
make sure we have a complete system backup (i.e. image or fs dump along with a database dump)
deregister FOP2
get the license from support
bring up the new server (again- I don’t even think they’ll want to update it)
Almost everything fine!
However, for step 2 (deregister fop2/revoke license) you need the license code, so we reverse step 2 and 3 (first you get the license from the fop2 team, and then you re-register it on the new server )
make sure we have a complete system backup (i.e. image or fs dump along with a database dump)
get the license code from support
deregister FOP2 from the old server
bring up the new server
re-register FreePBX
re-register FOP2
alternatively, you could skip step 3 by requesting a manual revocation, but the downside of this is that you lose one of the three manual revocations you are entitled to (they are used for cases where you cannot revoke on your own, such as hardware changes, server problems, among others)… if you still have access to it, it’s nice to do it yourself