GO HERE Installing PIAF on VMWare ESXI

[tallship]

Okay I'm not sure how botched my piaf install is but I really want to salvage the installation on this particular server so here goes:

Platform is CentOS 5.6 on VMware ESXI, on my own /24

A few things upfront that I didn't expect were an apparent MySQL failure to login and also, I really didn't expect Asterisk to fail the install on this machine.

I really didn't expect piafdl to change my sshd ports back to the default either, but that's a simple matter I can configure later.

The first sign of trouble manifested itself much the same way as the OpenVZ installs that so far all head south for me:



The second problem presented itself later during the install here:

URL=http://www.imagebanana.com/]

[/url]


The installation continues, and in the very end I'm faced with this screen on login:



The complete install-purple.log is here:

http://NorthTech.US/beta/piaf/install-purple.log-vision-20110505a.txt

I get some kind of MySQL error too when I log in but it goes by so fast I can't see what it says. I'm unable to login to mysql either, apparently the password was changed and it isn't what I entered for the passwords during the update-scripts part of the install towards the end.

I realize this might take several steps here in the forums, but since this is the first install on my own dedicated virtual servers on my own IP Block, I really want to follow this one through to a successful conclusion

So... Where should/can I start? And in the meantime, what should I do about the MySQL password? Is there a particular user I should create with certain priviliges? Is it okay to reset my MySQL root password at this point? etc.

Thanks for all the help so far, and eventually, after all these problems, I'm looking forward to when I can offer some contributions here in the forums.

For now though, I've got to get this puppy off the ground.

Kindest regards,

Bradley

- "IBM wanted CP/M prompts. It made me throw up." - Tim Paterson.

.

 

[darmock]

In other posts I had hoped we made it clear. WE DO NOT SUPPORT ESXI! In fact the only "OFFICIAL" way to install PIAF is on a dedicated hardware platform.

We use both vmware workstation and proxmox as development tools while building and testing all versions of PIAF. That being said on proxmox we only use the NON TEMPLATE method for installations. Installing PBX in a Flash on anything else is inherently EXPERIMENTAL.

Also other methods such as installing onto existing Centos ARE NOT SUPPORTED. These have been developed outside of the PBX in a Flash development team and are UNSUPPORTED. Unfortunately for an unfunded project we don't have time to develop these extras.


There has been a cascade failure due to a number of things in your install attempt. If asterisk fails to compile a number of other things also fail leaving you with an unstable system.


It appears as if libtiff-devel package was not installed on your system. Not sure why from the cli try doing a yum install libtiff-devel. The spanDSP did not install due to this. So you would have to make spandsp. This caused asterisk to fail to compile as spandsp is required to build asterisk IN PIAF PURPLE.

The rest of the failure were caused by one component not being installed. Just tried installing purple X2 on real and a vmware workstation VM with no problems.

So you can try reinstalling and see if it was a network error or you can drop to the CLI before you try to run piafdl and do a

yum -y update
yum -y install libtiff-devel

then you MUST reboot your VM

then try to install purple.


BTW PIAF installs use certain default settings in the OS. if you "attempt" to "improve" things prior to running piafdl you will cause problems so dont modify anything in the OS prior to installing PIAF.


Good luck

Tom


<Thanks for the excellent post content btw! it is why I looked through your post and gave you some feedback. Others in the forum could learn from this concise way of presenting the problem>

 

[tallship]

In other posts I had hoped we made it clear. WE DO NOT SUPPORT ESXI! In fact the only "OFFICIAL" way to install PIAF is on a dedicated hardware platform.

Thanks for that note Tom, I didn't know that. The site mentions nothing in that regard on the downloads page at all, or even for the existing CentOS script there.

Basically, that's where all of my installs are. I hope to improve upon my ability to install PiaF on these platforms, since that is all I really have access to, other than a couple of old beater boxes that I installed from the isos (and are running fine), and the VirtualBox Installations I did for testing are working well too.

Maybe I'll be able to become intimate enough with these installations to help bridge that gap in the future

So you can try reinstalling and see if it was a network error or you can drop to the CLI before you try to run piafdl and do a

yum -y update
yum -y install libtiff-devel

then you MUST reboot your VM

I installed the libtiff, and the installation went on w/astrisk compiling and seemingly everything else too.

Once finished, I had an issue when trying to login the FreePBX administration area (PHP-WSOD). I tried http://x.x.x.x/recordings and got an error saying I needed to install pear.

I installed the following two packages:

php-pear-1.4.9-6.el5.noarch.rpm
php-pear-db-1.7.13-2.el5.rf.noarch.rpm

Now when I try to login to FreePBX I get the error I've pasted here: http://pastebin.ca/2063400

BTW PIAF installs use certain default settings in the OS. if you "attempt" to "improve" things prior to running piafdl you will cause problems so dont modify anything in the OS prior to installing PIAF.

I haven't done that, although I can't really be certain about the CentOS images I was given under vmware.

when I ssh into the box now I am greeted with the following screen:



With the exception of the mailserver issue, I thought I was ready to roll, since I couldn't think of a reason why bluetooth would be important.

<Thanks for the excellent post content btw! it is why I looked through your post and gave you some feedback. Others in the forum could learn from this concise way of presenting the problem>

And thank you Tom! I realize that the team can't dedicate an inordinate amount of time providing community support in the forums, yet hope that my issues will somehow find their way into the secondary queue.

With regards to proper posting of issue threads, I regularly provide help in the LQ forums, and often just move right along if I can't even deduce what problems the OP is attempting to relate - so I can appreciate when someone takes the tiime to provide enough info for me to help them.

The flip side of that is I try to provide that information when I'm in trouble - not only that, but later, when someone else has a similar or the same issue, they can very easily follow along with the process until they too have reached a solution.

Oh, I should offer up two more shots that are weird:

The first one is from a phpinfo () that shows a working install on the box behind me:



While this next one is from the machine whose installation 'appears' to be almost there:



I hope that can help you (or someone else), enough to help me out


Kindest regards,

Bradley

Registered Linux User #190795

- "Ask Bill why the string in [MS-DOS] function 9 is terminated by a dollar sign. Ask him, because he can't answer. Only I know that." - Dr. Gary Kildall.

 

[tallship]

I've taken the time to do a statustofile, which is here

I really tried to fit a link to Here in my signature line, but even when I shortened the URL and text to my "Registered Linux User #" I came up short.

So I put my Registered Linux User # there instead, because given my druthers, that's what I choose - Like someone in the thread said, I may be only the second person in history to post a redacted status2file, but it's good advice and that's what I'll do whenever there's a different machine I need to address.

Thanks so much for everyone's help thus far with all of the questions I've had

Bradley.

 

[lordcalin]

I must admit, i'm surprised you had problems with esxi.

Since the day I started with pbxinaflash 2 years ago all my installs have been onto an esxi server, and the installs went flawless.. bronze, purple, and purple + incred. It's great for doing testing with while not touching the production one.

 

[randy7376]

Like lordcalin, I've done test installs on ESXi. Also, on VirtualBox and Proxmox. I've never had an issue with the install on any of these virtualization platforms.

Usually, the only VM that gives me performance problems is VirtualBox. Just the nature of the beast!

 

[drmurdoch]

Does PIAF work with ESXI ?

I must admit, i'm surprised you had problems with esxi.

Since the day I started with pbxinaflash 2 years ago all my installs have been onto an esxi server, and the installs went flawless.. bronze, purple, and purple + incred. It's great for doing testing with while not touching the production one.

Like lordcalin, I've done test installs on ESXi. Also, on VirtualBox and Proxmox. I've never had an issue with the install on any of these virtualization platforms.

Usually, the only VM that gives me performance problems is VirtualBox. Just the nature of the beast!

I know Proxmox has been used successfully lately.
My friend couldn't get PIAF working on ESXI.

Any suggestions ?
Does the latest builds work with ESXI ?
Has anyone got PIAF working anyway ?

All help appreciated !

 

[justgosh]

This is the first hit on google for "pbx in a flash ESXi" and I was unable to find any other instructions on here so I thought I might write up some quick and clear instructions on how to convert the VirtualBox VM into a working ESXi VM.

First, the disclaimers

In other posts I had hoped we made it clear. WE DO NOT SUPPORT ESXI! In fact the only "OFFICIAL" way to install PIAF is on a dedicated hardware platform.

If you are using ESXi 3.5 (or unpatched 4.0) it's about time to upgrade or do some research on editing because the following instructions will not work for you (vmx-04). I don't identify every signal potential required change for example: if in the future the PIAF project adds a sound card to the VirtualBox VM these instructions will be incomplete. Additionally there are known issues running PIAF on ESXi. Several people have reported jitter (choppy sound) issues running PIAF on ESXi and there is a link a the resolution in the thread "Read This Thread BEFORE posting here... Please." I personally haven't had jitter or any other issues but I've only been running the VM for 48 hours, with 2 extensions, plenty of bandwidth, and over provisioned. In short, your mileage may very.


The following are instructions for installing pbx in a flash on ESXi 5.1 by convert the VirtualBox VM into a file deploy-able by ESXi

Step 1. Head on over to sourceforge and download the latest VirtualBox VM file (.OVA file)
Step 2. Verify the MD5, seriously you should do this.
Step 3a. Untar the .OVA into a folder using tar xvf in linux or by opening it with winrar in windows. You now have 2 files .OVF and a .VMDK.
Step 4. Edit the .OVF (I prefer Notepad++) in the following manner

Search for

<vssd:VirtualSystemType>virtualbox-2.2</vssd:VirtualSystemType>

Replace with

<vssd:VirtualSystemType>vmx-07</vssd:VirtualSystemType>

Search for <rasd:Caption>sataController0</rasd:Caption>
You will find

<Item>
<rasd:Address>0</rasd:Address>
<rasd:Caption>sataController0</rasd:Caption>
<rasd:Description>SATA Controller</rasd:Description>
<rasd:ElementName>sataController0</rasd:ElementName>
<rasd:InstanceID>5</rasd:InstanceID>
<rasd:ResourceSubType>AHCI</rasd:ResourceSubType>
<rasd:ResourceType>20</rasd:ResourceType>
</Item>

Replace that with

<Item>
<rasd:Address>0</rasd:Address>
<rasd:Caption>SCSIController</rasd:Caption>
<rasd:Description>SCSI Controller</rasd:Description>
<rasd:ElementName>SCSIController</rasd:ElementName>
<rasd:InstanceID>5</rasd:InstanceID>
<rasd:ResourceSubType>lsilogic</rasd:ResourceSubType>
<rasd:ResourceType>6</rasd:ResourceType>
</Item>

This is the bare minimum, you need to do to be successful.
Step 5. Save your work
Step 6. Deploy via the VMware vSphere client: Open vSphere Client and click File and then Deploy OVF Template. You will immediately get an error referring to the OS indentifier being "Red Hat" (id:79); Click "Yes" stating that you want to continue and you are aware you just did some janky editing based on something you read on the internet.
Next, Accept, Next, Name it, Next, Storage, select Thin Provision, Check the box that says "power on after deployment", and Finish.

Step 3b. Use ovftool instead and change the items after deployment (But what's the fun in that?)

 

[Bob Helbush]

As others have pointed out, just use the .iso to build the VM. Works just fine.

 

[tallship]

The following are instructions for installing pbx in a flash on ESXi 5.1 by convert the VirtualBox VM into a file deploy-able by ESXi

Hey thanks for that justgosh

It's always nice to see innovative work on existing virtualization technologies. As Bob Helbush points out, installing piaf boxes under ESXi nowadays is a simple, straight-forward task, and generally without issue. As with any OS under any hypervisor, however, one must ensure that plenty of resources are allocated.

Fortunately, piaf is pretty low maintenance, not requiring exceedingly unreasonable system resources, but rather, relatively modest RAM, CPU, and HDD requirements.

Your post does bring to light the matter of having to go through the laborious installation process of piaf when starting from a fresh iso file, yet nothing at this time could really account for a more confident installation under VMware.

For example, there are indeed issues with cloning piaf boxes under vSphere that should be documented here in this thread, but aside from that, even those minor complications aren't show stoppers.

Perhaps one of the things your post brings attention to is the need for an .ovf for a VMware appliance, something that would probably be much more popular than Proxmox or VirtualBox in this day and age.

In the provider market, rapid deployment of piaf in a vCloud or CloudStack/Xen environment is a common requirement, and .ovf files are probably the best way to do that on ESXi machines.

I've offered virtually unlimited development resources to Ward for such environments and he has graciously accepted, yet to date hasn't deployed. In an environment where we all depend on volunteered time and resources from our collective community, sometimes the time commitments to enact development and testing under each and every available possibility has to wait until free time can be dedicated for those purposes.

For that reason, I appreciate the effort and time you've put into testing and sharing your solution with us, even though I suspect that the deployment of piaf templates using your method will not be all that common.

Thanks again, and I'll be sure to add it to my arsenal of solution cookbooks

Kindest regards,

 

[wardmundy]

Perhaps one of the things your post brings attention to is the need for an .ovf for a VMware appliance, something that would probably be much more popular than Proxmox or VirtualBox in this day and age.

Agreed. I couldn't get the justgosh setup to work unfortunately so... we've put up a new PIAF-Green VM image for ESXi on SourceForge today. You can read all about it here.

 

[justgosh]

For example, there are indeed issues with cloning piaf boxes under vSphere that should be documented here in this thread, but aside from that, even those minor complications aren't show stoppers.

Haven't made it that for, but thanks for the heads-up!

Your post does bring to light the matter of having to go through the laborious installation process of piaf when starting from a fresh iso file, yet nothing at this time could really account for a more confident installation under VMware.
In the provider market, rapid deployment of piaf in a vCloud or CloudStack/Xen environment is a common requirement, and .ovf files are probably the best way to do that on ESXi machines.

I couldn't agree more.

As part of your toolbox, a .vmdk is a fairly portable file type between many hypervisors. The mf is just a file containing SHA1 checksums of the files (don't forget to update this if you change the .ovf) The .ovf is also a well documented file also, but not all vendors use the same items. i.e. VMware doesn't do soundcard or sata items. Of course because it's open and documented doesn't mean it always works... like opening a random .doc, sometimes you get an odd symbol... in a production environment. Ideally there is already something in the market, but if not (or you are just in the mood to VM to VM) these might be helpful in the future:
http://blogs.vmware.com/vapp/2009/11/virtual-hardware-in-ovf-part-1.html
http://dmtf.org/standards/ovf

Agreed. I couldn't get the justgosh setup to work unfortunately so...

I recopy and pasted using the [ CODE ] instead of [ QUOTE ] which was turning the : D into Forced me to reedit the changes 3 or 4 times before I figured out how to post... and VMware doesn't understand emoticons so that wasn't helpful... I'm interested if it works for you after the update. If not please upload the OVF and I'll take a quick peek. I'm betting on an extra space somewhere, but I do like a good puzzle.

We've put up a new PIAF-Green VM image for ESXi on SourceForge today. You can read all about it here.

This makes me happy Thanks!

 

[drmurdoch]

===installing-piaf-on-vmware-esxi === Agreed. I couldn't get the justgosh setup to work unfortunately so... we've put up a new PIAF-Green VM image for ESXi on SourceForge today. You can read all about it here.

Graham - worth a try ?

 

[leemason]

Just to add something from my experience. I have installed PIAF on VMware ESXi in the past with no problem. The first version that I installed was 1.7.5.6 on ESXi 4.1 but have since installed various versions of PIAF 2 on ESXi 4.1 and 5.0 with no problem. So it does work.