TUTORIAL VirtualBox to Proxmox

[bcmike]

Hi I just thought I'd share my tale as I burned a day figuring it out.

Background; I've been a huge fan of PIAF for about 9 years. I loved that it installed a Red Hat derivative, updated and patched everything, and then compiled Asterisk from source for you. I spent many an hour in RPM hell on Trixbox machines and was very grateful for a from source install. It was truly a work of art. I also liked that it didn't come with all the whiz bang doo dads that Incredible PBX comes with, just a straight up solid install. Of course it was disappointing when it went away, but I get why.

So anyway I have recently moved from Xenserver to Proxmox KVM and had the need to build a PIAF instance. I tried an old school ISO and of course it failed as the repos and links don't exist. I tried the 2017 instructions in the README at Sourceforge and again a lot of stuff was broken and it didn't work. I then began pulling apart the install scripts and set up my own repo and got pretty far, but no cigar (I'm pretty sure I could've finished it but it was burning way too much time).

So I turned to my last resort, I decided to try and convert one of the OVA virtual machines to KVM, and guess what? It was super easy. Here are the steps from my notes:

Download and convert PIAF VM to Proxmox

# Download VM image, use an OVA, ie PIAF-Green-3.6.5-64.ova. Download images can be found here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/pbxinaflash/files/?source=navbar

# Upload the image to the Proxmox server in a working directory

# Untar the OVA file as its just a glorified tar file

tar -xvf PIAF-Green-3.6.5-64.ova

# Glean any possible machine information out of the extracted ovf file. It's an XML config file for the VM

# Check the size of the VMDK disk image file. Look for "Virtual Size"

qemu-img info PIAF-Green-3.6.5-64-disk1.vmdk

image: PIAF-Green-3.6.5-64-disk1.vmdk
file format: vmdk
virtual size: 15G (16222715904 bytes)
disk size: 2.3G
cluster_size: 65536
Format specific information:
cid: 413298754
parent cid: 4294967295
create type: streamOptimized
extents:
[0]:
compressed: true
virtual size: 16222715904
filename: PIAF-Green-3.6.5-64-disk1.vmdk
cluster size: 65536
format:

# Note virtual size of the disk is 15 GB

# Now create a new KVM machine in Proxmox and make the disk the same size (I had to make it 16GB as it complained about being to small in conversion) Also try and replicate any virtual devices you found in the ovf file. You want to try and match it as closely as possible

# I use local LVM storage, so your mileage may vary depending on what you use for storage, but you basically need to find the path of the empty disk created for your new VM.

#Find out what the LV path and and disk name are, along with the VG name

lvdisplay
--- Logical volume ---
LV Path /dev/pve/base-110-disk-1
LV Name base-110-disk-1
VG Name pve
LV UUID 2iPccG-5moo-g7Cn-9NWZ-dfWc-KhL8-ND2u7v
LV Write Access read only
LV Creation host, time pve2, 2017-08-31 16:15:58 -0700
LV Pool name data
LV Status NOT available
LV Size 16.00 GiB
Current LE 4096
Segments 1
Allocation inherit
Read ahead sectors auto

# Now you know the LV Path and the VG Name, you can convert the disk and overwrite the blank one

qemu-img convert -p -O raw PIAF-Green-3.6.5-64-disk1.vmdk /dev/pve/vm-110-disk-1

# It'll convert the vmdk to a raw disk and viola! It should boot without issue. You now have a working KVM PIAF Green machine!

I was really hesitant to convert as in the past I've always had issues converting virtual machines and they never seemed to work quite right, however with this process I was done in about 30 minutes as opposed to the 8 hours of monkeying with install scripts.

I'll probably need to figure out the bare metal install at some point so if anyone out there has a good procedure on how I can set up my own repos and download paths I'd really, really appreciate it

I hope this helps some one in a similar situation

 

[wardmundy]

New Incredible PBX 13 .ova image with CentOS 6.9 and Asterisk 13.17.1 will be available on SourceForge after 10 p.m. EDT tonight.

 

[bcmike]

Hi Ward,

Maybe I missed it somewhere along the way, but is there an Incredible PBX lite? A version that just installs Asterisk and the GUI (whatever that may be)?

Also are there any plans to update the install instructions for the old PIAF? Or is it completely dead and gone?

 

[wardmundy]

Incredible PBX "Lite" builds in the past represented about 1/10th of 1% of users. For that reason, we decided it just wasn't worth the effort. It's simple enough to walk through the installer and remove the pieces you don't need.

As for PIAF3, it is no longer supported as the repositories are no longer in place.