R.I.P. SurfacePro + Windows10 + Ubuntu

[wardmundy]

Whooda thunk? A Windows 10 machine the size of an iPad running Ubuntu 16.04 and Incredible PBX. Well, not quite. Right now it's just an SSH session of Incredible PBX 13 running under Ubuntu, but we're working on it.

 

[krzykat]

Funny, I found an article just last week about using Rsync with Windows 10 and came across the Ubuntu on Windows.

 

[wardmundy]

Gotta say my first impression is WOW. LAMP stack is up. Replaced Postfix with NullMailer to make it easy to use Gmail or Comcast as SMTP Relay Host to send outbound messages. One minute mail setup: apt-get remove postfix && apt-get install nullmailer mailutils.

/etc/nullmailer/remotes entry should look like this:

smtp.gmail.com smtp --port=465 --auth-login [email protected] --pass=yourpassword --ssl

Everything seems to be functioning without a hiccup. It really can replace a MacBook Pro now, and I've grown to really hate that machine with its stupid port design. Over $100 just in dongles!! Never thought I'd go back to Windows, but so far, so good...

NOTE FOR CENTOS USERS: Nullmailer isn't available in the repos. Here's a download link to an untested 64-bit version for CentOS that I obtained here.

 

[atsak]

Everything works fine under windows, in windows 10 I've run both Virtual box and Hyper V PIAF fine. Prefer the X1 Carbon myself don't like the keyboard on the Surface, but of course to each their own.

 

[wardmundy]

VirtualBox is next. Just holding off on Wazo image until the new UI is released in a few weeks.

 

[wardmundy]

Just an update for those that may be considering this adventure. Microsoft uses Ubuntu 16.04 for the Linux piece, and 16.04 is a huge can of worms. The old philosophy that .04 releases remain somewhat backward compatible went out the window with this one. The main problem is PHP 7, but there are many, many others. Yes, you can run both PHP 7 and PHP 5.6 on the same platform, but...

Some components just aren't available on the 16.04 platform, or you have to obtain them from obscure repositories which would probably doom you at some point going forward. We've gotten Asterisk 13 and the LAMP components to all work, but FreePBX is a total train wreck. I think it would be fair to say that most organizations doing "Asterisk development" have decided to focus upon and incorporate a single Linux OS platform into their products and stick with that. None still rely upon Ubuntu.

Bottom Line: If you want to roll your own Asterisk platform with Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows, that is doable. If you want a GUI as we know it to go with Asterisk, don't waste your time or switch to VirtualBox and run one of our standard builds.

 

[atsak]

Ah - now - CentOS (ie Redhat variant OS) do seem to work OK FYI. I Had Xivo up and running on it a few months ago but haven't had time to fool around with any of the new variants.

 

[jerrm]

Bottom Line: If you want to roll your own Asterisk platform with Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows, that is doable. If you want a GUI as we know it to go with Asterisk, don't waste your time or switch to VirtualBox and run one of our standard builds.

Installing pretty much any Linux userland inside WSL is possible. Several tutorials around, but this project allows relatively easy install of most distros with an official docker image: https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-Switcher.

 

[wardmundy]

@jerrm: Thanks. That seems to be what I needed. Just couldn't figure a way to get back to Ubuntu 14.04 since Microsoft no longer offers that option.

 

[jerrm]

Will be interested to see the results. I've had pretty good results, but have only done basic kick the tires stuff.

 

[wardmundy]

@jerrm: Works like a champ. Now we can play.

ward@DESKTOP-0PJMFN5:/etc$ cat os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="14.04.5 LTS, Trusty Tahr"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS"
VERSION_ID="14.04"

 

[wardmundy]

Well... not so fast. We've tried Ubuntu 14.04, Debian 8, and CentOS 6. None will run Asterisk + FreePBX or Asterisk + Wazo successfully. Too many quirks with the Microsoft implementation of bash for openers. And then there are the problems associated with being unable to work directly with the Linux kernel: no DAHDI, no IPtables, no Fail2Ban, no eth0, no /etc/hosts, and on and on. Other quirk: Linux side doesn't boot when you run bash. So you manually have to start any services you wish to use the next time you access your Linux server.

So... don't waste your time. As a LAMP server, the Ubuntu and Debian docker images work fine. CentOS 6 image doesn't work at all. #EndOfProject

My notes for posterity:

*** one time from Windows side
1. Install Python 3 as admin: https://www.python.org/downloads/
2. Install Chocolatey using Command Shell non-admin: https://chocolatey.org/install

@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"

3. Install GIT with Chocolatey: http://www.jamessturtevant.com/posts/5-Ways-to-install-git-on-Windows/
4. Install Distro Shifter with Git using non-admin Command Shell (): https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-Switcher

git clone https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-Switcher

*** end one time

*** to change Linux Docker images from Command Prompt, always do this first to reinstate default Ubuntu 16.04 environment:
cd WSL*
lxrun /uninstall /full
lxrun /install
***

*** Loading Debian 8 or Ubuntu 14.04 Docker images

#From shell: python get-source.py centos:6 #no worky at all nor does 6.8
#From shell: python get-source.py debian:8
From shell: python get-source.py ubuntu:14.04
#From shell: python install.py centos:6 OR #no worky at all nor does 6.8
#From shell: python install.py debian:8 OR
From shell: python install.py ubuntu:14.04
#Done.
lxrun /setdefaultuser root
# now we're ready to access your Linux server
bash
whoami
passwd
cat /etc/os-release
apt-get update
apt-get -y install wget nano dialog libncurses5-dev uuid-dev autoconf locales openssh-server
locale-gen "en_US.UTF-8"
dpkg-reconfigure locales