FYI Install PIAF on CentOS Existing Installation

DragonHawk

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Hi MACscr. Due to changes in PiaF and CentOS, the script no longer works. Your best bet is to use a VPS hot who offers a pre-rolled image of PiaF, such as VR.org or RentPBX.
 

MACscr

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Thats unfortunate. Id rather use my own infrastructure or pick a provider based on something other than the fact that they have a particular template. =(
 

Hyksos

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Thats unfortunate. Id rather use my own infrastructure or pick a provider based on something other than the fact that they have a particular template. =(

No need for the provider to have a particular template. The template is the iso.
If you're serious about your stuff, you want a provider that allows you to load you own software anyway.

If you need a script like that because the machine is delivered to you with centos already on it, and it's installed by somebody else, it's simply not a good idea anyway.
They might have custom kernels? It would be a vps and you would have no control on the hypervisor and the vm configurations... etc.

I have hosted piafs and freepbx distro in many places... by installing with their original isos.
Examples of such setup are ESX and proxmox hosted on dedicated boxes, then of course you simply load the ISO. My current lab is a dedi box at OVH Canada running proxmox. It can do everything I want and still have every component isolated. Web hosting VM, piaf VM, freepbx distro vm, datastorage vm, ticket system vm, ubuntu vm, etc.

Also the part where you said "my own infrastructure", what's preventing you from using your own infra just because there is no script for installation on top of an existing centos... makes no sense to me.

so pick a provider not based on the fact that they offer piaf, but based on the fact that you can do anything you want... no problem then.

Another point to consider is that using such script even if somebody fixes it tomorrow... should only be done if you're somebody who could fix it yourself.
It's an unsupported way to install piaf and it means you need to know what you are doing.
People who uses that like dragonHawk are people who know linux enough to understand that everything you need to know to install piaf on centos.... is actually in plain sight IN a piaf installation ISO. So given the time and the need for it, DragonHawk could do it again and again and again. But looking in a current piaf iso for the recipe.

Maybe not everyone would agree here, but to me, you don't want to go down that route unless you know how to do it on your own... because you will be on your own... Proof of that is that this script worked in the past but is not current...
People who used it... better be pros because right now if they aren't... they have no way of reinstalling their systems... They are dependant on dragonhawk, See my point?
(Please note this is not an attack on DragonHawk on and off support of it... people contribute stuff all the time that they can't support, that's open source collaborative work)
I'm actually sure tons of people are in this boat... they installed like that and if their VPS goes boom, they won't be able to do it again since they have no clue how to update such script by looking into a current piaf. Bad....

Of course I can't emphasize enough that going the virtualized way where you would use the iso at any provider... Is more then a good way, it's becoming the mainstream way of doing IT. My server can run many piaf installations, I can backup/snapshot the entire VM, I can replicate it, I can install a new version of piaf next to the old one and keep my old vm around just in case...
You simply do not want to load piaf on a centos VPS... just not a good idea. And if you say you were thinking of a centos dedicated server then fine, install piaf as a VM onto it... not a script directly on the host machine.

Feel free to disagree of course, it's an opinionated matter.
 

MACscr

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Your rant was a bit useless as wanting to run Piaf on an existing CentOS install and/or not having the ability to install with an ISO is not specific to virtualization. I am not even going to bother with how far you are off with your assessment of virtualization and how you think it should be used. The point of this thread is to install piaf on an existing centos install, simple as that.
 

jroper

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Hi

The basic principle of getting PiaF to work on an existing installation of CentOS is to make the installation identical to how it would have been if it had been installed from the ISO directly.

Ideally, it would be best if your hosting provider could allow you mount your PiaF ISO, and install in the usual manner and I'd urge you to go down this route, as this will give you the most reliable and stable (and supported) installation.

However, if you want to go down the route of modifying an existing installation to run PiaF, then the place to start is inspecting a file on the ISO called ks.cfg which controls what packages are installed and how the base CentOS installation is supposed to look.

Joe
 

MACscr

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Joe,

Thanks for the response. Yeah, that is one way to do it and probably the best way. Unfortunately thats not really a route I would like to pursue based on time commitments. Ive been running Asterisk on Xen Paravirtualized guests for about 6 years now. You can't install from ISO's unless you want to do a fully virtualized guest, which is typically a complete waste of resources. Obviously Asterisk and Freepbx can be install find through install scripts, but Piaf does have some nice extras that I was hoping to use. I am currently running Freeswitch on KVM guest and its running well, but I do really miss the freepbx interface (the classic one, not the crazy ugly new blue one) for managing things. Plus isnt there a multi tenant feature now of Piaf that freepbx alone doesnt seem to have?
 

Hyksos

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Your rant was a bit useless as wanting to run Piaf on an existing CentOS install and/or not having the ability to install with an ISO is not specific to virtualization. I am not even going to bother with how far you are off with your assessment of virtualization and how you think it should be used. The point of this thread is to install piaf on an existing centos install, simple as that.

-Edited-

As you just explained yourself and this is what I was looking for.

Piaf does not have a multitenant feature. It's just like asterisk+freepbx.
 

jroper

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Hi

I'm sure that if time constraints are an issue, then you may be able to pay someone to do the work on this (not me ;-)).

With the incredible amount of development taking place in FreePBX in terms of extra modules, the old layout, although initially easy to navigate around, was becoming quite unwieldy, the new layout allows for easier expansion without so much clutter (in my opinion), and with practice will become more intuitive.

Multi-tenant on FreePBX can become something of an administrative nightmare, and almost always a bodge, so virtualisation would be my recommendation for a multi-tenant set-up, and indeed an acquaintance of mine running FreePBX in this manner got into a certain amount of trouble when one of his customers parked a call, and it was picked up by another customer on the same PBX, who stole the sale, costing the original customer a substantial amount of money in terms of commission on a house sale.


Joe
 

Hyksos

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Now that you said why you wanted to do that: Xen PV.
I actually disagree with Joe a bit, the best way to do that is not to replicate the installation based on the KS, it's to do an HVM to PV conversion of a full piaf installed from the ISO, again, my opinion, feel free to disagree.

I think it's how rentpbx does it. You havent said what flavor of Xen your using but I think HVM to PV conversion is the best way to achieve what you want, a Xen-PV piaf.
If I wanted to do that, this route is the best one, because once you have your recipe, you create your piaf template to create VM the same way every time a new piaf iso come out.
Maybe that's why rentpbx do it this way (if in fact it's how they do it...) every time a new iso comes out, he just have to install it then convert it to PV again, then it's just a matter of multiplying those around.

It also have the advantages of being non-specific to PIAF. Not a lot of help around for installing piaf on existing CentOS and you don't have the time to fix the script. But all the ressources for Xen HVM to PV, and more specifically centos 6 Xen HVM to PV applies to PIAF.

I prefer HVM with it's little performance lost, is not a big deal for me, but I can see why someone would prefer PV. For rentPBX it probably means he can install more of them on a node, hence it's directly more economical with big numbers.
 

nunya

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i did start to install piaf at a v-server like in this instruction but i did change the installation to the new install instructions of wardmundy
https://blog.ls20.com/install-pbx-in-a-flash-piaf-on-digitalocean/
installation failed. additional is the heardbleed bug in OpenSSL fixed in this version?
The instructions on Lin's blog didn't work for me this time. OpenSSL was the first issue. I started over with minimal 6.5 and used the NV article @ http://nerdvittles.com/?p=9214 . This was on RamNode. The only thing I couldn't do is resize the partitions.
 

howardsl2

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nunya Good news, I looked into the OpenSSL problem and have successfully implemented a simple workaround. Just two extra commands are needed and now it fully works again:

Run this before the "yum groupinstall" step:

Code:
yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=c6-local downgrade krb5-libs mysql-libs \
  python glib2 openssl python-libs

and after installing PIAF packages, run:

Code:
yum install krb5-libs mysql-libs python glib2 openssl python-libs

For details, please see the updated instructions at my PIAF tutorial.

The error you encountered was because DigitalOcean patched the CentOS templates on April 9 in order to fix the Heartbleed OpenSSL bug. A few packages were upgraded including OpenSSL and its dependencies, which would conflict with PIAF packages during the install. The workaround I implemented is simply to downgrade those packages temporarily and then restore them at the end of install process.

arztde I tested the PIAF install on DO using the updated instructions, and did not encounter the build verification errors you mentioned...
 

Hyksos

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nunya Good news, ...

What did I miss :)
Can you explain why these instructions should still be followed if the official PIAF install package is now a script that is to be run on any existing CentOS install?
I'm not sure when those special instructions would still be needed?
But even Ward didn't point that out so maybe it's me that need coffee... this afternoon...

:confused:
 

howardsl2

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What did I miss :)
Can you explain why these instructions should still be followed if the official PIAF install package is now a script that is to be run on any existing CentOS install?
I'm not sure when those special instructions would still be needed?
But even Ward didn't point that out so maybe it's me that need coffee... this afternoon...

:confused:

The "special instructions" are needed ONLY IF you follow the steps in my blog article to install PIAF version 2.0.6.5 on an existing CentOS 6.5 AND encountered an error in the "groupinstall" step. You don't need those If you install 2.0.6.5 "from scratch" by booting from the official ISO.

But be sure to update that OpenSSL in order to fix the Heartbleed bug after install finishes.

Whether the official PIAF3 installer needs any changes, honestly I don't know because I never tested it. If you see any error there please report them to the PIAF team.

Hope this clarifies things :)
 

howardsl2

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Maybee its interesting for the installation developers i did try both methods hwdsl2 method it runs without mistake now ----- but its a old sources file from pbx in a flash.
Afterthis i did try again the new script ... here i have to compile per hand the asterisk

but no luck with...

Before compiling, install your running kernel's sources with command below:

Code:
yum -y install kernel-devel-`uname -r`
 

wardmundy

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The following command now has been added to the base install. Thanks, hwdsl2.
Code:
yum -y install kernel-devel-`uname -r`
 

Sean Branam

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Hi all...
For the past 3 days I was beating my head trying to figure out why my install was failing.
I also used Digital Ocean.

Today instead of sssh'ing to the server, I used the remote accesss web page and it seemed to work there.
Not sure if Digital Ocean made any changes between last night and tonight, but it works now.
 
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