Updating to Asterisk 11 in situ

Hi

Is it possible to update Freepbx 2.11 running asterisk 1.8 to asterisk 11 without reinstalling?

If so are there any docs?

Olly

May I ask you a question? Is our documentation hard to find?

Your question is also hard to answer, FreePBX 2.11 doesn’t include Asterisk and by telling us this we have no idea how you installed it or by what distribution.

If you are using the FreePBX distro why did you not post in the distro forums? If using the Distro we really need the version to help.

We want to improve the site and make the user experience better, the wiki was a huge step forward yet folks are still having trouble finding things:

http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FD/Changing+Major+Asterisk+Versions+on+the+Fly

I actually knew of neither the distro forum or the new wiki. Certainly the documentation on the freepbx site has historically been very mixed in quality. The site itself isn’t as usable, presentable or documents of good quality as sites like Elastix, which oddly include Freepbx. Elastix, as an example, does more to drive users to the more profitable parts of their service range such as training and support, books and options.

On the note of the distro forum, it would only be of use if I knew that the issue was as a result of the freepbx distribution as compared to the freepbx software which runs on it. That’s a fine line to call for someone who isn’t overly familiar with Freepbx. Though for me it comes down to most of my issues being Freepbx (non-distro) based, and that my browser caches the forum link.

The wiki is certainly a great improvement on older documentation and I look forward to digging about it in (and then posting on the forums).

Anyway, the wiki link you pasted solves my question perfectly, thanks.

Olly

If you didn’t install via the distro I don’t understand how the link can assist you.

The update utility is part of the distro and has nothing to do with FreePBX.

Clearly, from my perspective it is becoming an issue that the Distro is named FreePBX. The goal was to identify it with the FreePBX project.

FreePBX by itself must be installed on a *nix platform with Asterisk and all the other requirements and is distributed as a tarball.

The FreePBX distro is an ISO that installs FreePBX on CentOS along with Asterisk and all the other requirements.

If you didn’t install via the Distro the link I sent you is meaningless.

How did you install your system (what distro) or what OS etc?

Oh no, I did install via the distribution. I simply do what millions of other forum users do, which is to instinctively go to the forum with the most users. It doesn’t help that I have to scroll down the page to get to the forum you want me to use, passing forums which appear to be a better suit, have more responses and more activity, and go to a forum with very little activity at all. It’s that inherent loss on the part of the user that makes forum design so important, and so under used.

I would ask why you need a distribution forum at all? The non-disti forum has more activity, clearly has people in it who use the disti and can answer questions, and having all your users in one set of forums would make your engagement with them, and thus theirs with you, increase.

Instead how about allowing the user to tag the forum post on the post creation page, so that they can mark it in a way that is fit for them? How about having a selection of choosable categories, with Distribution being one of them. You have a section on your forum post page where the user can post revisions comments, and yet you complain the user doesn’t categorise the post correctly without helping them do so. I think you are seeing the forum from the point of view of the manager rather than the visitor.

You could also look at several of the great community platforms and integrate those with the site, enable posting-points with titles for the top posters and responders (King, Emporer of Freepbx, things like that). Give end users, who earn xxx number of forum posts by responding with great answers, a special logo and title to use on their own company website (FreePBX Community Specialist).

Really, the point I’m trying to make is, you shouldn’t really criticise users for posting in the wrong forums when we are making use of, and contributing to, a community which benefits you. I for one would love to see FreePBX have a better level of community and engagement.

Anyway, once again, thanks for the link.

I appreciate the thoughtful responses. I also think that I am getting to the root of the issue.

Simply put, FreePBX, and the FreePBX are separate projects, with different (somewhat overlapping) teams. The FreePBX distro happens to include FreePBX but that is it.

Unless a question is directly related to the “software known as FreePBX” and not to the “FreePBX distro” the answer is generic (most of the time) and not related to how it was installed. The problem is most questions are sysadmin or development related and the answers are dependent upon the platform that we have no knowledge of.

Now with the distro we have end to end control and can answer both FreePBX and sysadmin questions.

I am not sure it is possible to get users to be intuitevely aware of what they are running. I want to change the name of the distro but I am getting no traction.

Fundamentaly here is the bottom line:

1 - If you have a question regarding configuring a feature (via the GUI/normal operations) that goes in the forums and does not matter how you installed.

2 - If you have a sysadmin question and did not install via the distro your first line should be the support structure of that distro, be it Elastix or AsteriskNow.

3 - If you are rolling your own, those questions should go in installation.

4 - If you are using our distro then post in the distro forum

The goal is to help as many people possible with accurate, timely answers.

Again, your feedback is appreciated.

You can call them separate projects if you want. They are both pretty much exactly the same as far as I’m concerned. Both use CentOS (if using defacto standard OS) and both use FreePBX. That is 99% of it. Biggest differencd is distro uses their own RPM repo. If Distro adds things like fail2ban and whatnot those are just added bells and whistles. Doesn’t make it completely different.

Huh? Mustardman I have no idea what you are talking about.

FreePBX is a tarball that can be installed on most any *nix system. FreePBX is moving toward total OS agnosticism.

The FreePBX distro is another PBX in a box (or ISO).

When are you going to fix the forums so we can edit our own posts again?

If we were shown an inkblot of a butterfly I would see a butterfly. I suspect you would see something completely different…possibly involving juniper routers and putty tunnels.

Wow, more of that resentment. Thought I would give you an update, Schmooze support uses tunnels and reverse tunnels exclusively for remote support.

As far as our customer facing we are a bit more evolved now for our customer facing FreePBX and ARI. We are using a Juniper sa2500 SSL VPN appliance. It’s awesome as it will reverse proxy web sites and present them via httpd with ssl encryption. We use single sign on so all you have to do is point your browser at secure.skyking.com/deploymentid (or friendly name) and the Juniper does the rest.

Has that super secret project made you rich yet?

If you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen.

WRT the original topic if seriously can’t see the difference between the FreePBX software and the distro I think you need to spend some time yourself looking at those inkblots.

My whole point of this discussion was to add some clarity to end users (and maybe some support in a new name for the distro as I stand alone on that issue).

I could have a field day here but I don’t think it’s right to make fun of the handicapped.

Oh please do, it’s so much fun.

I don’t know what you want to defend, my security practices, which are practically the de facto standard for enterprise class cloud computing or the fact that the FreePBX tarball is essentially the same as the distro.