Savelono.com was down for three days this week(July 27th-30th). The Vitual Machine that host the site crashed likely due to a traffic spike. My apologies for the down time. I was fly fishing in Idaho. For the rest of the week you may read savelono.com free of charge.
A customer of VoiceIP Solutions sent me this useful tutorial for re-sampling Polycom Ringtones. If you have an MP3 you like, it can be re-sampled for use with a Polycom IP SIP phone! The procedure is pretty straight forward, Install Audacity with yum or your favorite package manager, re-sample the track, then edit the proper Polycom Soundpoint boot files.
Goals of this Post:
- Install Audacity Digital Audio Editor
- Convert a MP3 to Polycom compatible track
- Enable custom special Ringtone on Polycom Soundpoint IP SIP phone
I read a great article on the New York Times website today. The article was mainly about Microsoft’s failure to capture the mind share of young developers and entrepreneurs. The evidence provided was the success of FOSS(Free Open Source Software) amongst start-ups like Twitter, Google, Facebook and a multitude of others…
Finally mainstream journalism is starting to get wise to the negative effects that the Microsoft monopoly has on Microsoft. It’s what I’ve been preaching to my loyal fans for years. Microsoft has bet the mother-load on maintaining an unsustainable monopoly.
They have bought their way out of anti-trust suit after anti-trust suit for years. Microsoft has been sued by every State in the Union and many foreign governments. Every time they quietly cough up Billions to local state governments, of which many are desperate for the cash.
I recently upgraded to Fedora 13(and was quite pleased) only to discover my backup SATA drive would not mount. I got the generic, ‘mount: /dev/sdb1 already mounted or /home/matt/backup busy’ error message. Hours of googling and one reinstall later I solved the problem.
Goals of this Post:
- Fix SATA drive mount error: mount: /dev/sdb1 already mounted or /home/matt/backup busy
As the age of the netbook arises; the ability to provision Operating Systems over the network becomes highly useful. More and more these days, it’s less common to see CD/DVD ROM drives in laptops. In my particular situation my laptop DVD-ROM drive failed. This prompted me to embark on journey of sleepless nights, sifting through bad information and countless hours of ‘trial & error’ troubleshooting to make Windows 7 install from PXE boot server.
When I first started this project I had no idea what I was getting into or how difficult and poorly documented the PXE remote installation process is. I imagined that I would use some kind RAM disk to load an ISO image of a Windows CD. However, the process to boot an ISO image varies greatly between Operating Systems and Windows versions. So if you plan to install Windows XP or Linux using this tutorial… you will fail. This Tutorial is step by step for installing Windows 7(only) from a Fedora 10 provisioning server. This tutorial assumes you have basic Linux, Windows, and Networking knowledge.
Goals of this post:
- Configure Linux Provisioning Server
- Prepare installation media and installation files
- Boot from PXE to Windows PE 2.0
- Install Windows 7 over Network
Recently we covered the installation of Asterisk 1.6 + Asterisk GUI 2.0. In this article we will talk about the details necessary to enable Polycom provisioning from the ‘Users’ tab of the Asterisk 2.0 GUI. By default auto-provisioning will not work out of the box. You would think when the GUI is installed that it would be setup as well, considering that you have the option to enter a MAC address in the user extension creation process.
Nor are their docs related to configuring this in the source packages(that I could find). Online forums and tutorials were of no help either. There are many post online claiming that you need to set up DHCP, ‘option 66′ for Polycom provisioning to work. This is true of TFTP provisioning from AA50 appliance, but not from the Asterisk 2.0 GUI that relies solely on HTTP. At least as far as I can tell.
I think Digium is being vague on purpose about this because they do not want to undermine their Asterisk Appliance product. While I understand this line of thinking, it’s not consistent with the Open Source business models that have succeeded.
Open Source depends on reaching vast amounts of people due to the low cost. When my customers have to choose between a Avaya system(running Linux) that cost $45,000 /w phones or a Asterisk system w/ Polycom phones for $19,000; it makes the lesser known Asterisk product attractive. Over time the base builds up and Digium collects on hardware and support fee’s.
So from my perspective, any Asterisk installation helps Digium’s bottom line eventually. Even if Digium doesn’t see money from every Asterisk user, simply the presence of those users makes Asterisk a more credible product. Bringing more and more Enterprise and Government contracts to everyone, thus more money and investment into Digium.
Alright my tirade is over, back to business! This post assumes you have installed a recent version of Linux, Asterisk 1.6 and the Asterisk 2.0 GUI installed. If you do not, read my post:How to setup the Asterisk 2.0 GUI with Asterisk 1.6.
The Goals of this Post:
-configure phoneprov for Asterisk 2.0 GUI
Recent versions of Asterisk 1.6 are compatible with the Asterisk 2.0 GUI. This wasn’t always the case, as the Asterisk GUI was developed for the 1.4 branch. Although I wish Digium had gone for the LAMP model, the GUI is pretty good and getting better all the time. However the instructions to install are difficult to find on the asterisk.org website. That is, if they are there at all. My guess is that Digium doesn’t want to make it to easy to get a free GUI. I think this a very poor strategy, but that’s another article…. Today we will run through a quick install of asterisk and the 2.0 GUI. A far superior option as compared to to Trixbox and FreePBX.
GOALS OF THIS POST:
- Install Asterisk 1.6
- Install Asterisk 2.0 GUI
I’ve been using Windows 7(Home Premium) for about a week now… and I gotta say I’m impressed. It’s interface is almost as nice as Windows XP. Running multiple programs doesn’t slow game frame rates nearly as bad and the desktop effects are pretty good. Congratulations Microsoft! You made a decent OS… Only took 7 years, thus the name, ‘Windows 7′. Although this is a huge leap forward there are still many, many problems.
For instance, my Soundblaster Live! Value sound card doesn’t have a driver from Microsoft or Creative Labs! For God sake, it’s one of the most popular sound cards ever fabricated! Are you *^&!@ing kidding me!?!? So I ditched my card and re-enabled my Intel on-board audio. Windows detected the driver just fine.
I play World of Warcraft on Linux all the time. I boot into Windows XP for Arena and extended play, but all my causual gaming is on my work computer - that runs Linux. So for this reason I’ve had an interest in the upcoming Ventrilo Linux client for a long time. A very long time.
Since 2005 when they first announced that the client version for Linux was on it’s way I’ve been excited! Imagine the Linux Desktop getting support from the industry leader in VoIP group communications! Unbuntu/Fedora Linux will benifit greatly by making it possible for more Linux gamers to communicate with fellow online gamers of any platform. The only problem is that the Linux client was never released. Or at least, not yet.
The Digium Asterisk Appliance has built-in features for handling Polycom SIP handsets. It’s very easy to do and will save you the trouble of individually configuring the settings of each phone. I have a Digium AA50 configured with a standard dial plan and a Polycom Soundpoint IP 501.
Goals of this Post:
- Configure AA50 Polycom Provisioning
- Configure Polycom SoundPoint IP 501 phone