TIPS Incredible PBX 13 not good anymore?

What do you run as Production PBX?


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jolebole

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Hello,

I had numerous installs on CentOS 6 with Incredible PBX 13 and most of them were trouble free up untill recently. For some reason even with clean installs I have lots of problems with it right after it finishes installing. I'll list some here:

PBX breaks after few months with recording calls enabled, Database gets funky, I get errors, Applying changes takes much longer, transferring calls stops working, voicemail stops working..Drive space is not 100% used when all above is hapening. I clean he rec folders when they reach 70-80% full.

Errors with networking and resolve.conf.. I can't apply network changes when manually editing network interfaces or from Webmin.

Incredible PBX 13 install on CentOS 7 is totally messed up after a clean install. Asterisk and MySQL are completely down..Totally unusable.

Why is this happening? What is a good and stable option to run Asterisk on Linux right now? I really need a stable PBX for production system that will not break after 3-6 months. I don't want to use 3CX.

Last time I had a trouble free Incredible PBX was with CentOS 6.7 .Once the updates pushed the OS to version 6.9 I started having problems. The CentOS 7 installs were good a year ago for me. Not anymore.

The most rock solild PBX have used ever was FreePBX 2.210.62... and then they went Sangoma and killed it. It never broke..ever. The only issue I had with 2.210.62 (and earlier versions) is that the recordings were not separated by days and months in different folders.

Because of all these issues I am forced to use an older (not suported) version of FreePBX because Incredble PBX 11 and 13 are not stable for me anymore. I know that the underlying OS might afect the stability, but come on..Its Linux, its should be much more stable then this.

Thanks,
 

billsimon

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Why is this happening?

You are the only one who can determine this. The place to look is in your log files. There could be a single root cause to all your problems or, more likely, there are several causes, and normal systems administration and maintenance will solve these.

What is a good and stable option to run Asterisk on Linux right now? I really need a stable PBX for production system that will not break after 3-6 months. I don't want to use 3CX.

I would not recommend using anything based on FreePBX 12 or older. The current production-level, stable version of FreePBX is version 13. FreePBX 13 (or 14 which is coming out now) is mostly not discussed here, but I can vouch for its stability. I run it on Debian 8 and the extent of my maintenance is to occasionally log in and do apt-get update/upgrade and update the FreePBX modules.

I guess since you basically eliminated FreePBX and 3CX then you are left with Wazo.
 

wardmundy

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You might want to consider Issabel 4 which is derived from FreePBX 2.10. It uses the latest version of CentOS 7.
 

jolebole

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You are the only one who can determine this. The place to look is in your log files. There could be a single root cause to all your problems or, more likely, there are several causes, and normal systems administration and maintenance will solve these.



I would not recommend using anything based on FreePBX 12 or older. The current production-level, stable version of FreePBX is version 13. FreePBX 13 (or 14 which is coming out now) is mostly not discussed here, but I can vouch for its stability. I run it on Debian 8 and the extent of my maintenance is to occasionally log in and do apt-get update/upgrade and update the FreePBX modules.

I guess since you basically eliminated FreePBX and 3CX then you are left with Wazo.

Did you mean you run Incredible PBX 13 of FreePBX 13 on Debian 8? I only found one guide here for Debian 7 and it uses Asterisk 11.
What I don't like about the new FreePBX version since Sangoma tookover is that they load so much bloatware and so many modules that I will never use and I hate their "firewall" implementation in the GUI. I like to run Webmin in the back so I can have better control. When I install Webmin on FreePBX 13 half of the Webmin modules don't work or they are missing and the OS is detected as Generic Linux and not CentOS because of their re-branding.

So I am left with IncrediblePBX 13 as latest stable, which is incredible product and I love it, but lately I have too many hickups. I run Debian as my KVM Hypervisor and its been nothing but flawless. Not a single hickup ever. I would like to try Incredible PBX 13 on Debian 8 and see how it runs.
 

jolebole

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You might want to consider Issabel 4 which is derived from FreePBX 2.10. It uses the latest version of CentOS 7.
Isabell looks to be a fork of Elastix. I was never a big Elastix fan, but I'll give Isabell a try. Thanks Ward!
 

billsimon

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Did you mean you run Incredible PBX 13 of FreePBX 13 on Debian 8? I only found one guide here for Debian 7 and it uses Asterisk 11.

I meant FreePBX 13. Incredible and Elastix/Issabel are based on FreePBX 12 or older.

The concern is that fixes the FreePBX team does in current versions are not getting backported into the older versions and you are left with vulnerabilities that Issabel might not patch. Correct me if I'm wrong (@wardmundy) but I don't believe there is any more development work going on with IncrediblePBX based on FreePBX, and hasn't been for some time.
 

jolebole

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I meant FreePBX 13. Incredible and Elastix/Issabel are based on FreePBX 12 or older.

The concern is that fixes the FreePBX team does in current versions are not getting backported into the older versions and you are left with vulnerabilities that Issabel might not patch. Correct me if I'm wrong (@wardmundy) but I don't believe there is any more development work going on with IncrediblePBX based on FreePBX, and hasn't been for some time.

How can I install FreePBX on Debian 8? Any guides around ?

Thanks
 

wardmundy

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@billsimon: No more development work with FreePBX, period. But the module versions we are using have been incredibly stable for a very long time. As for vulnerabilities, we have a whitelist firewall implementation that keeps the bad guys out even if there were vulnerabilities... and none have been reported.
 

billsimon

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How can I install FreePBX on Debian 8? Any guides around ?

This isn't the place for me to be posting links to FreePBX's own wiki. Hint, hint.

You have to be resourceful one way or another. If you're going to be cheap you have to be resourceful in the Do-It-Yourself department. Or you can use money resources to buy something that just works all the time and comes with support. Looks like Digium Switchvox has really come down in price lately.
 

jolebole

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This isn't the place for me to be posting links to FreePBX's own wiki. Hint, hint.

You have to be resourceful one way or another. If you're going to be cheap you have to be resourceful in the Do-It-Yourself department. Or you can use money resources to buy something that just works all the time and comes with support. Looks like Digium Switchvox has really come down in price lately.

I am totally down paying for a decent solution, but I prefer to buy my own hardware. I use Dell or Supermicro servers and run my PBXs in a VM. I will do some more testing with the newer versions on FreePBX. I might find something that will work long term. Need to close myself in my homelab for a week or so lol
 

wardmundy

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@jolebole If you run Incredible PBX 13 with CentOS 6.9 or Incredible PBX PBX 13 with Ubuntu 14.04, it just works. Same goes for Incredible PBX for Issabel 4. Same goes for Incredible PBX for Wazo. CentOS 7 and Debian 8 changed many, many things under the covers that broke lots of traditional open source apps. As long as you stay away from those (except Wazo with Debian 8 and Issabel with CentOS 7), you will have zero problems.
 

jolebole

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@jolebole If you run Incredible PBX 13 with CentOS 6.9 or Incredible PBX 13 with Ubuntu 14.04, it just works. Same goes for Incredible PBX for Issabel 4. Same goes for Incredible PBX for Wazo. CentOS 7 and Debian 8 changed many, many things under the covers that broke lots of traditional open source apps. As long as you stay away from those (except Wazo with Debian 8 and Issabel with CentOS 7), you will have zero problems.

I agree about stability on CentOS 6.9. Lots of things are broken on CentOS7...way to many to bother to manually fix it. I have not tried it on Ubuntu 14.04. Since 18.04 LTS is coming soon will Incredible PBX work on it?
 

wardmundy

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I agree about stability on CentOS 6.9. Lots of things are broken on CentOS7...way to many to bother to manually fix it. I have not tried it on Ubuntu 14.04. Since 18.04 LTS is coming soon will Incredible PBX work on it?

The old saying was that the .04 releases of Ubuntu didn't break legacy code. That all changed with 16.04. For openers, they completely discarded ODBC support (which we happen to use). So I doubt whether 18.04 will be any more reliable without major plumbing changes. Just to repeat if CentOS 6.9 and Ubuntu 14.04 are rock-solid for VoIP servers, why reinvent the wheel?
 

jolebole

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Just to repeat if CentOS 6.9 and Ubuntu 14.04 are rock-solid for VoIP servers, why reinvent the wheel?
You are so right. I know CentOS 6 will also be supported till 2020, but not sure abut 14.04 . Ubuntu seems to be changing directions lately.. I will give Incredible PBX13 a spin tonight on 14.04.
 

fizadmin

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@jolebole If you run Incredible PBX 13 with CentOS 6.9 or Incredible PBX PBX 13 with Ubuntu 14.04, it just works.
... except for the System Dashboard 'status' widget not actually showing pjsip extensions and endpoints.

That was apparently fixed with System Dashboard 13.0.34, which (as an upgrade) is nowhere to be found, apparently.

Minor quibble.
 
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