Good morning. First the simple question. Then the detailed explanation.
After installing FreePBX-5.211.65-21-x86_64-Full-1416750375.iso we have a minimally functional system at Centos 6.5 and I’d like to upgrade it to Centos 6.7. Yum update does install some minor release packages, but the release is still 6.5. How do I upgrade it to Centos 6.7?
We found FreePBX via the PBXinaFlash folks and ended up, due to the luck of the draw, with PIAF3 running Freepbx 2.11 and Asterisk 11.16 Probably the oddest thing is that, with a few minor exceptions, this constitutes a system that meets and exceed all of our needs and expectations, so we simply implemented it across 7 sites and went on with our lives. That means, not keeping up with new releases and/or upgrading just because an update exists. It works, we leave it undisturbed.
That said, our recourse for a failed or destroyed system is to generate a new system and restore the backup… and in our many attempts to script and learn this, one of the things we learned is that the only “safe” bet is to restore a 2.11/11.16 backup to another 2.11/11.16 system. We learned this, documented it and saved it for a rainy day.
We installed a minimum Centos 6, installed the PIAF (FreePBX2.11/Asterisk11.16) and then installed the Centos full development and GUI package, so all our other sever, raid and resource management tools would function.
Until one day, the PIAF3-install script and a number of the repos on pbxinaflash.org and plg.repoforge.org are just … gone. So now there is no way to generate an identical system for a simple restore.
To answer this, we did find an iso FreePBX-5.211.65-21-x86_64-Full-1416750375.iso that we CAN install and restore … so this is our safety we can Clonezilla the system and have a complete IN HOUSE copy ready to go.
BUT for us it’s crippled. It’s Centos 6.5 which has, for example, a completely and irrecoverably broken Firefox, etc.
So my simple question is … why does the iso install seem to be ‘locked’ at Centos 6.5 and what steps do I need in order to update it to 6.7?
Once you get to Distro 6.12, I recommend you delete all unsupported, unsigned modules that might be lingering from a restore from a non-FreePBX Distro system. If absolutely needed, you can try to reinstall after upgrading to 13, but to my knowledge none have been kept up to date for 13.
Upgrade scripts are to be run individually and in sequence, until you get to 10.13 and then System Admin will run them all in sequence for you.
So you have two options, get a solid backup and upgrade in place using the individual upgrade scripts, or transfer existing settings directly from the old system to the new.
Thanks for the information, Lorne. I’ll do some research and see what options are best for us. The problem, which I’m sure I made clear, is that I don’t eat, sleep, breathe and live PBX… I merely found a solution that met our every need and exceed our expectations and then found (very suddenly to me but probably long time known to you) that if one of my systems failed completely I could not regen it, reload a backup and move on like nothing happened.
The same, of course, is true for even Windows. I person could today generate an XP system from a CD but if the Windows Updates were no longer available he couldn’t reach a system “just like” the one he had…
and that’s where I find myself with the distro I linked … I can get an running FreePBX and compatible Asterisk, but I can’t the necessary support to load all out other monitoring and notification software so it is, from my standpoint, a safety net in case of emergency. The other thing I can do is get a gen of the identical system I run now in a Hyper-V file … and then my utilities and other software will reside on the Server 2012 host. In this case I am insulated forever until there is a new need.
Meanwhile it may be time to reassess the multivendor concept.
Thanks for the other options
@dbdataplus : I had the same problem than you are facing, you may want to try the AsteriskNow 3.01 distro. It’s antique and minimalist, but yum will update Centos to 6.8. and to Asterisk 11.17 and FreePBX 2.11. You will have to install X and the GUI manually, and all your other stuff. The 11.16 / 2.11 to 11.17 / 2.11 restore should work. If you’re not using any PIAF-specific features it may work for you.