PIONEERS Incredible PBX for Dockstar & PogoPlug E02

tycho

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Thanks; I'll check that out and see if I can update my Dockstar with it.
 

Jay Deal

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So I finally did take the plunge and load this onto a Pogoplug E02. And while I have gotten it to load, let me say that getting it to work reliably is a major PITA. Amazingly enough, like Grayson, the image booted the first time without issue. But as I discovered further, biggest problem is that reboot's result in the PP firmware completely ignoring a USB device when rebooting which causes it to load the PP OS. But even that behavior is inconsistent, sometimes it will reboot and come back up with the PogoPBX image. So in order to hope to guarantee a "reboot" you have to shutdown and pull the power then repower. And hope that it finds the USB drive and boots from it. This is a problem for the E02 with other Linux flavors as there are several threads at various sites that give suggestions on how to deal with the problem but all of them I have tried have resulted in inconsistent results.

It's really a shame because the performance of the system when it's working is actually pretty quick. You can fully utilize the WEB GUI which means you don't have to make your changes on another Linux box or cloud instance. I think the processor speed of 1.2GHz really makes the difference over the PP 4. While the E02 is slightly behind the performance of my BBB running RASPBX, given the cost factor it's absolutely amazing.

I don't know if anyone at IPBX has some more time to spend massaging this image for the E02 but if you could get it to work reliably it would make a perfect SOHO appliance for a very low cost that literally is all-in-one (just plug in power, ethernet and a flash drive). And it's dual purpose, you wanna use it as a Pogoplug again well then just shut it down, pull the Flash drive and walla, it's back to normal. All for $15 shipped.

Update 10-13-14: Today I "dd"ed the image from the flash drive onto a real hard drive connected to the PP E02 via USB. Booting from the hard drive now, the observed behavior of inconsistent rebooting and shutting down has completely disappeared. What this tells me (and from what I have read has been alluded to) is that the PP firmware, once the uBoot has been altered to boot from USB, must be finicky about what it will boot from i.e. it must prefer real hard drives over ones that could appear transiently to be removable. So if PP thinks it's removable, it probably will reboot to the stock OS, if it looks like a permanent drive it will attempt to boot off of it.

Doing some research and looking at some of the flash drives on Amazon, evidently some of them can appear as permanent drives to the firmware or OS's of Linux devices. If you wanna boot the E02 reliably using a flash drive, look for one of these types which are often sold as Windows Readyboost compatible.

PPSC.jpg

P.S. As you can see from the status screen shot, I added hylafax to the load but it's a work in progress - it tries to do faxes but something goes wrong and they are not received or transmitted even though the call is made. I may try to adapt the "install-fax" script from the RASPBX image and see if that makes it go but my gut feeling is that the PP doesn't have enough available RAM to properly render a fax image hence why it fails both incoming and outgoing.
 

plat2on1

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I wonder why you guys are able to boot the stock image and I can't? Did you guys set the E02 arcNumber and machid in the envars?

My hacked up image also doesn't reboot, however the stock rootfs from the doozan forums does reboot cleanly.
 

Jay Deal

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I think the key to getting it to work is running the Debian install routine from Vinny Mac. The VM script updates uBoot to the latest and also makes other changes to the firmware. Even though you won't need the Debian load for the PP IPBX image, the Vinny script must do something to the booting sequence on the PP that makes it be able to boot from something other than the firmware OS. That's my best guess at what happens although I have to confess at this point having tried so much to get the thing to work reliably that I have forgotten some of the steps in getting there. Like someone said earlier, it's fitting a round peg in a square hole so even though it fits inside, well, it's not exactly snug :1eye:
 

Jay Deal

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Just to see if I could confirm that loading the PP image on a hard drive was the solution to my problem, I tried it with a fresh PP PBX image, without modification or file additions, that I used Win32 Disk imager to put onto the hard drive. Booting from this second hard drive, I have the same solid behavior as I have with the other hard drive, that is to say it works reliably and boots, reboots and shuts down consistently. If you have access to a hard drive (I'm using an old laptop IDE drive in a USB enclosure) then I would try to use it to boot and I hope you will enjoy the same success that I have had.
 

plat2on1

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those are jeff doozan's scripts. i used them on my E02 initially. so i guess you did not correct your arcnumber and machid?

like i said my E02 reboots just fine with bodhi's stock debian rootfs so i don't think it has anything to do with the plug or usb key.

btw those scripts leave you with a pretty old version of u-boot, but i updated to the latest u-boot and it didn't change anything.
 

Jay Deal

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Just figured out why the smsdictator script did not work, I needed to follow this from the PP 4 tutorial:


Adding Speech Recognition for Incredible PBX Applications

We used to include Google’s Speech-to-Text service in earlier Incredible PBX builds. Unfortunately, Google has changed the rules a bit. Assuming your server still meets the “personal and development” standard, you can obtain an API key from Google and reactivate speech-to-text functionality for many of the Incredible PBX applications including Weather Reports by City (949), AsteriDex Voice Dialing by Name (411), SMS Dictator (767), and Wolfram Alpha for Asterisk (4747). To activate the STT service, just complete the steps in our tutorial. Then sign up for a Wolfram Alpha App ID (tutorial here), and run the following install scripts:
/root/wolfram/wolframalpha-oneclick.sh
cp /root/pygooglevoice/bin/gvoice /usr/bin
ln -s /usr/bin/gvoice /usr/local/sbin/gvoice
cd /root/pygooglevoice
python setup.py install
/root/smsdictator/sms-dictator.sh
 

Jay Deal

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Got a hold of a Sandisk 16g Extreme Flash Drive http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-Flash-Drive-s-SDCZ80-016G-GAM46/dp/B00KT7DOR0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413724441&sr=8-1&keywords=sandisk 16gb flash extreme and loaded the PogoPBX image on it. Works great!! Very responsive and boots consistently. I even got Squeezebox server to run simultaneously while running IPBX.

Also, I found this guide perfect for setting up the Exim4 email server on PPPBX to use Gmail for outgoing: https://wiki.debian.org/GmailAndExim4
 

tycho

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Thanks for the info!

My Pogo is running strong:

Pogo.jpg
 

plat2on1

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after setting my arcNumber to 2079(sheevaplug) and removing machid the stock pogoplug image boots now. i guess the kernel does not have support for the E02 in it. i would guess you have the same problem with your dockstar tycho.
 

Jay Deal

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Just installed Webmin using these instructions:

apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade -y
apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions python
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.710_all.deb
dpkg --install webmin_1.710_all.deb

Takes about 5 minutes on the E02. Access the Webmin portal at https://PBX-IP:10000 <<< You need to connect to it via https and ignore the warnings from your browser.
 

tycho

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after setting my arcNumber to 2079(sheevaplug) and removing machid the stock pogoplug image boots now. i guess the kernel does not have support for the E02 in it. i would guess you have the same problem with your dockstar tycho.


Thanks! I'll try some tweaks to the Dockstar set-up when I get a moment.

I'd have preferred runnin g the image on the Dockstar in the first instance because it has a clock speed 50% faster than the PogoMobile (1.2GHz vs 800MHz), but the PogoMobile is running so smoothly that I might not bother.
 

lewy2

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I tried this on my E02 both with a SanDisk Cruzer and an IDE drive via an IDE to USB adapter. Both times the web GUI was extremely slow (half a minute or more) just to load a page and not all pages loaded. The GUI also showed asterisk wasn't running. Any ideas where the problem is?
Thanks
 

Jay Deal

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I tried this on my E02 both with a SanDisk Cruzer and an IDE drive via an IDE to USB adapter. Both times the web GUI was extremely slow (half a minute or more) just to load a page and not all pages loaded. The GUI also showed asterisk wasn't running. Any ideas where the problem is?
Thanks

First thing and pardon me asking, but are you sure it's an E02? If it is it will say E02 somewhere on the bottom of the base.

Even with my ultra slow flash drive (the first one I used), I didn't experience page loads like that. Maybe some corruption when you imaged the drives? I have found that Win32 Disk Imager can get a little wonky sometimes so I would try to re-flash the image you have. If that doesn't work I would reflash the drive(s) with a freshly downloaded PPPBX image and see if it exhibits the same behavior.
 

Jay Deal

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Just as an FYI for anyone who tries it, I've been trying to get Hylafax and IAXModem to work on my E02 for 3 days off and on now and I am becoming convinced that the little guy just does not have enough 'horsepower' to do the extra duty. If some brave soul out there proves me wrong, I'm all for it.
 

lewy2

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First thing and pardon me asking, but are you sure it's an E02? If it is it will say E02 somewhere on the bottom of the base.

Even with my ultra slow flash drive (the first one I used), I didn't experience page loads like that. Maybe some corruption when you imaged the drives? I have found that Win32 Disk Imager can get a little wonky sometimes so I would try to re-flash the image you have. If that doesn't work I would reflash the drive(s) with a freshly downloaded PPPBX image and see if it exhibits the same behavior.

It definitely is an E02. I will try reflashing with a new image and will post an update. Thanks.
 

lewy2

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Tried a new image, same problem.I have no idea what could possibly be the explanation.
 

Jay Deal

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Just discovered that streaming MOH works on my E02 per the tutorial: http://nerdvittles.com/?p=7248. Suprisingly, it doesn't kill the CPU or memory too badly. Plus I have my E02 connected wirelessly (only) with an Edimax EW-7811 UN micro wifi adapter to my router and it doesn't seem to have issues with keeping up with calls and the streaming. Outstanding!

Now if I could only get fax to work......................
 

Jay Deal

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You know, I just had this thought about Pogoplugs. They are like the tribbles from Star Trek - once one appears they seem to multiply as you find more uses for them. And at least they come in multiple colors so you maybe can tell them apart.
 

tycho

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"The Problem with PogoPlugs..."

(That doesn't have quite the same ring to it as the ST episode...)
 

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