The initial problem was that FreePBX 16 didn’t come with the drivers needed for the Ethernet controllers (there are 2 ports) on the Beelink.
Using a USB Ethernet adaptor got past that.
Question one is: Could you reliably run a production server (12 phones in the system) through that for the long term??
Assuming its better to use the actual ethernet ports the machine comes with…
Question 2:
I have loaded the drivers as per the intel instructions. Used modprobe to load.
Then I assigned ip address to eth0 using ifconfig eth <IP_address>
eth0 now shows up in ifconfig, I can ping that address, but it has assigned it to the same USB adaptor, and not to one of the actual ethernet adaptors.
Any suggestions on checking that the driver I’ve installed is working, and how to get the FreePBX to look for that ethernet port?
[root@freepbx ~]# dmesg | grep “eth0”
[ 2.567109] ax88179_178a 2-1:1.0 eth0: register ‘ax88179_178a’ at usb-0000:00:14.0-1, ASIX AX88179 USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet, 7c:c2:c6:4f:22:9c
[ 4.707896] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
[ 7.393465] ax88179_178a 2-1:1.0 eth0: ax88179 - Link status is: 1
[ 7.398697] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
[ 3351.777533] ax88179_178a 2-1:1.0 eth0: ax88179 - Link status is: 0
[ 3501.537532] ax88179_178a 2-1:1.0 eth0: ax88179 - Link status is: 1
[ 3503.329480] ax88179_178a 2-1:1.0 eth0: ax88179 - Link status is: 1
[root@freepbx ~]#
You can’t assume the eth0 is attached to any physical device depending on the OS it might be the first one discovered or not even exist,
ip add
cat /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
nwcli #possibly
might be diagnostic, ip add would indicate what hardware is ‘working’ and the udev rules are a (in)convenience that can confuse reality
FreePBX does not supply drivers they come with the underlying OS and I believe that yours has been essentially abandoned. Debian 12 has the Intel 2.5G drivers native and FreePBX 17 is based on Debian, consider updating perhaps.
Yeah. Can you set it up so it just automatically starts as FreePBX (eg if there is a power outage or other need for shutdown). So no-one else would know any difference? I can’t rely on anyone else to fire this up. That’s whats been so good about 16. It just goes.
I’ve upgraded most of my client base to 17/Debian in the last week via new cloud VPSes or onsite VMs. I don’t do a lot of out of the box “stuff.”
The backup and restore module has gone from iffy years ago to basically perfect now. I haven’t had an issue yet with restoring up to date 16 configurations to 17. These are all PJSIP set ups with nothing legacy so I don’t have to deal with remediation of CHANSIP.
I had several legacy systems who needed EPM and my client versions were ancient, so I had several agree to a new license. Glad to give something back to Sangoma besides phones I purchase.
I hate to tell you this, but installing Debian is NOT a straightforward task. So many obstacles: sorting out how to get in as root, missing files, locked out from SSH. It is just not intuitive. Huge barrier to entry to non-professional IT people. I thought I’d got my head around some of the basics messing around with Ubuntu, FreePBX etc, but this is just about going to be the end of it for me.
Rant over. I foresee 12 hours of (being polite) messing around just to upgrade to a system I don’t really want. So rant not quite over.
I will say I’ve only used CentOS and that’s what I learned. Last week I decided to do a test install of FreePBX 17 and it was my first time installing and using Debian. It was pretty easy to learn and I didn’t run into any of the issues around Debian you mentioned. It’s been running great for a week now with no issues. And to answer the question above about can you set it to start automatically in Debian, yes and the install script does that by default. The only real thing I did to Debian after the install was to allow my added used Sudo access so I don’t have to use the root account. Root is not even available via ssh on my system.
su -
then the root password from installation, gets you root access.
I know this is not a FreePBX thing, but anyone whose come this far will probably appreciate the tip.then it starts to look a bit more familiar.
Followed the steps for installation.
Seems to have failed.
Last part of the log
/tmp/sng_freepbx_debian_install.sh: line 168: echo: write error: Input/output error
OK. So this is how basic my skills are: I can’t even figure how to copy from the nano editor. had to type it here.
Anyway, I ran the installation commands again and get
FreePBX installation process is already going on (PID=38420), hence not starting new process
Can I uninstall and start the whole thing again. Not that I particularly want to.
Or is there some way to find that the installation has run and finished?
I’d start over. If your Linux skills are not at the top of the pack, you might want to check out other implementations of FreePBX, Asterisk and Linux. A good one that does all the heavy lifting for install is IncrediblePBX. There is currently a version that works with Ubuntu 22.04 or Ubuntu 24.04 or Debian-12. It installs Asterisk 21-latest, FreePBX-17-latest, firewall and a few other extras. It is open source only so it does not work with commercial modules. See IncrediblePBX2024. See this thread starting at Post 43 for instructions. You can also read the first post of the thread to install IncrediblePBX2024 once you create a VM or install your choice of operating system.
The first post also explains the limitations you might encounter. Read through the entire post for the evolution of this version from start to finish.
Appreciate the thought.
Eventually it loaded and it did restore first go from my FreePBX 16 set up.
I’m not sure why, but the server had shut down half way through the installation.
But going back to the start, the process of installing Debian and then FreePBX was not smooth.
It only really went ahead once I had figured out how to log in as root
As a total non-IT professional I’ve been using FreePBX successfully in a busy office for 7 or 8 years and I have really appreciated the online support (Dicko and co have replied to many of my inane queries in that time).
I’m very keen to continue to use FreePBX-it really suits my purposes well.
What I would say is that this switch to Debian instead of the ISO nearly undid me, and I think would keep out any newbies like I was at the start. I would strongly suggest that in the documentation for How To Install FreePBX17 that you include the step for switching to root in Debian before running the script. It could include caveats about security if it has to.
That would saved a lot of hours (and swearing)
cheers
Apologies for going off topic.
Are there new tricks with activation on FreePBX 17? I did activate it during the set up (saw all the adds etc), but now after a re-boot it states I’m not activated, and when I hit the activate button, it times out.
NVM It went ahead after another re-boot. Acting weird though-keeps returning to the Activate screen.
For others dragging their weekend through this installation, its not necessarily obvious that to change the static ip address of your freepbx, you need to change the address of the Debian OS (not in FreePBX’s System Admin like with the standalone system). That means in Debian-Settings-Network you Remove Connection Profile and create a new one in the IPv4 tab.
But Wait! At reboot, the network connection does not come back up. More Debian pranks.
ifconfig only shows the loopback.
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
add
# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0 (use the figure from your ifconfig)
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.x.x
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.x.x