Recommendations, 32 bit or 64? Ast 1.6 or 1.4?

hraynor

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I've just finally built my new system that is going to serve as my home and office PBX using PIAF. As well as to be used for many testing scenarios and integration with some of the things I do at work.

The system configuration is as follows:

* Dual Core Atom 330 processor (HyperThreading enabled), 1.6 GHz
* Intel D945GCLF2 mainboard
* 2 GB RAM
* 60 GB IDE 2.5" (laptop) drive (recycled from an older laptop)
* No PCI card currently installed
* Currently no other drives, though am installing from a (bootable) USB DVD drive.

For FXO and FXS ports, will be using an AudioCodes MP-118 MIXED, and probably eventually a Cisco 1760. Key point here is that I am not using (nor plan to anytime soon) any PCI based telephony cards. If I use the PCI slot, it would only be for additional Ethernet ports, but at the moment nothing is installed here.

So the questions I am interested in are:

* 32 bit vs 64 bit install...
- With only 2 GB max RAM, is there really any reason to go with a 32 bit CentOS install? I know all the technical details (in great detail, trust me) of the differences, but in actual practice with PIAF is there any difference?

- If I go with the 64 bit install, am I going to run into any issues with not being able to find certain packages or drivers to run properly in the future?

* Asterisk 1.4 or 1.6
- From a recent thread I have seen the main drawback of 1.6 at the moment is lack of Zaptel support. I could really care less as I'm only using external gateways (no PCI cards). Any other drawbacks with 1.6?
- Are there any packages, especially from NerdVittles, that I wouldn't be able to run on Asterisk 1.6?
- Any advantages to 1.6 that might help?


The one thing I do see an advantage with 1.6 is simply the support for chan_mobile (though I understand it can be forced to work in 1.4 in some form or fashion). While chan_mobile is not a mandatory requirement for now, at some point I would like to use my cellphone as a trunk. But this is not super critical now.

Let me know your thoughts and your advice.

I do have PIAF installed (64 bit with Asterisk 1.4) now, but for some reason (after I enabled X on the box), I can't get into the web interface though it worked previously (yes, Apache is running). Probably a security setting in something that somehow got changed (I don't think it was me though) and box is indeed accessible (pingable, telnetable, etc) from the network.

So rather than diagnose this (hadn't configured anything much yet), its probably easier to reinstall anyway, so while I was doing this, thought I would ask for recommendations here.

Thanks!
 

hraynor

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Oh, thought I would also add that I do plan on installing X on this, if that makes any difference.

Longer term since this box is most likely overkill for what I'm using it for, I'll probably load additional things on here besides just PIAF and Asterisk (ie: OpenSIPS, possibly some things for work, etc).
 

tel0p

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I haven't read the positives of having 64 over 32 bit. Assume it helps when your really planning on pushing concurrent active channels to the edge.

As for 1.6 over 1.4 it's been reported in this thread that (some) NV apps have ported without an issue. You would see a bennefit with chan_mobile and the ability to run g722 (wideband codec) natively.

The only thing I would caution against is using a 'used' laptop HDD. From my experience their mean time to failure is pretty low.. aka they die alot. by a new drive or be SURE to have a USB drive and do the Mondo backups (as are standard in the Orgasmatron flavor(s)

also, if you haven't rebooted yet you could do a 'service httpd restart' to try and jumpstart your webserver.
 
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hraynor

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Thanks for the info. For now I'll probably stick with 32 bit - can't really think of a good reason to go 64 I guess.

As for the 1.4 vs. 1.6, I'd really like to go with 1.6, espec for chan_mobile. G.722 isn't a big deal right now for me as I'm not looking to buy new phones and probably wouldn't see a difference on standard calls anyway.

At the moment I'm not too worried about the laptop drive dying, its not that old and has never given a problem (only replaced to get a bigger drive in the laptop) and even if it does go out, I'm keeping good backups and will have default routing from my gateways directly to the phones in the event Asterisk is down for any reasons, so I'll still get dialtones and phones ringing (just no PBX functionality in these cases). One of the advantages of not using internal telephony cards. :) I most likely will also clone the config and have a standby VM on my server ready to take over if needed for PIAF (love VMWare, though this bigger server is mostly for testing).

Once I get the Atom up and stable with PIAF and determine how much spare capacity I have in it (ie: CPU, memory), I'll probably start loading more functionality on it (OpenSER, file server, backup DNS Server, possibly media server (most likely TwonkyMedia), etc) to take over from some of my other boxes (mostly older NAS devices running Linux). If I do that, then I'll be getting a new SATA (most likely laptop for lower power and noise) 500 GB or so drive anyway. So the current drive probably will just be used until I determine what other functions I'll eventually have this box doing.

Frankly I believe this thing is probably overkill for my purposes with Asterisk. Before loading other things though, I'll try to do some level of stress test with Asterisk and SIP calls if I can find a good simulator. Would like to know how many calls this thing can handle reliably, as I might have other uses for this.

I'll definitely look into Mondo. Haven't used it before, but will need to start.

I believe I do know the case of my HTTP problem... I tried installing Xwindow/KDE using the script, but didn't pay much attention that it was a script for Asterisk 1.6 install of PIAF (not sure what the difference would be). I just reinstalled PIAF with Ast 1.4/32 bit yesterday and this time when I ran the X/KDE script, I made sure to use the 1.4 one (which wasn't documented on the site, I just kept playing with the wget command until I found something that pulled down the payload). X, KDE, and HTTP work fine now. (X is a bit slow, while I know the onboard video on this guy isn't great, it still should be faster than this, but I really don't care).

So I think that may have been the issue. At the moment, my box seems to working great. I started doing update-source to go to CentOS 5.3, but in the middle decided to kill that and just reinstalled again from scratch. No need messing up a good thing with untested patches when they're not needed (I'll wait till PIAF 1.5 for that...).

Anyways, thanks for your help! I'll post my full config (Asterisk/FreePBX, AudioCodes MP-118, and Cisco 1760) once I'm done for others.
 

OTA

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Once I get the Atom up and stable with PIAF and determine how much spare capacity I have in it (ie: CPU, memory), I'll probably start loading more functionality on it (OpenSER, file server, backup DNS Server, possibly media server (most likely TwonkyMedia), etc) to take over from some of my other boxes (mostly older NAS devices running Linux). If I do that, then I'll be getting a new SATA (most likely laptop for lower power and noise) 500 GB or so drive anyway. So the current drive probably will just be used until I determine what other functions I'll eventually have this box doing.

If you value reliable phone connections, I wouldn't do that. The more you ask your PBX to do, the greater the chances that something will go wrong. Not to mention the greater the possible security issues. People traditionally expect there to be a working dialtone whenever they pick up a phone. Will your spouse be as enthusiastic about your VoIP system if it doesn't work when she wants to make a call?
 

hraynor

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Yes, certainly a great recommendation. In this case, this would be for my home and office lines (2 real PSTN lines) and possibly a few IP lines mainly for testing. So not much load from Asterisk, except perhaps when I'm doing some additional testing with integration to work stuff.

In addition, I'll have a dial plan setup on the AudioCodes gateway I'm using that makes sure that "the phones still ring" even when Asterisk is down for any reason. ie: I can receive inbound calls directly to the phones as well as make outbound, whether or not Asterisk is up (not that hard to do with an external gateway). So even in the result of a catestrophe, I'll still have phone service (just no PBX functionality and voice mail). One reason I much prefer an external gateway to PCI or other internal cards that require server processing.

In addition to this, I also have PIAF running in a VM on my big server that I can use as a backup as well (pretty easy to fire up the VM, take the identity of the Atom box (ie: IP) and be back in business within 2-3 minutes). I plan on having an automated backup of the config between the two so I should be in good shape. And for that matter, this could be automated if I wanted.

And as a last resort, the primary phones in the house today are 2 line cordless units that will be plugging into 2 FXS ports on the AudioCodes. In the event the AudioCodes looses power (shouldn't, it will be on a big UPS) or something else happens, the AC will automatically connect the FXS ports directly to the PSTN lines (via an internal relay), so we could dial just like with a regular residential phone, at least from those lines.

So I think we're pretty well covered here.

You're definitely correct about the wife factor, which is why everything's going to be perfect from my office line before I switch the home line over (that being said, she uses her cell phone at the house more than the residential line).

I'm very familiar with High Availability in my line of work and in past lives (having developed a lot of HA software 12 years ago).

But mainly trying to reduce my admin required for my network by consolidating some things. I have two many NAS devices right now (some I'm using for more than NAS) sucking up power, heating up the house, and basically getting flakey (they're older).

But definitely generally excellent advice to keep the systems separate for different functions so that they don't interfere.
 

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