Watchout for firefox plugins when editing conf. files

I recently had an issue where I found missing or corrupt information in my extensions_custom.conf file. By accident, I stumbled accross the fact that as soon as I opened it or any other .conf file using firefox through freepbx, that various number and “(” “)” related data were missing. Of course not noticing this the first several times and subsequently saving the file led to A LOT of hair pulling.

Here is what I have determined. When using Config Edit (PHP Config) in freepbx, make sure your firefox browser does not have the JAJAH Web-activated-Telephony add-on ( https//addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2577 ) installed. This automatically tries to find “phone numbers” on web pages and then tries to create a link so you can call them from the web.

It is probably a good idea to ensure you are running a “clean” copy of firefox with no add-ons to play it safe. Or better yet, just ssh into the box and use a straight text editor.

Hopefully this post saves someone else the headaches I went through.

FreePBX does not include any browser editors for conf file editing for a number of reasons. If you need to deal with that level, there are good editors. Minimally, that can aid in checking for matched () and {}, [] but also can help color code your dialplan commands, such as vim, if you have the right syntax files installed.