Asterisk 1.6.1 on openSUSE 11.1 (Part 1)
Here are the hardware I use:
- 2 HP tower based server with 8 GB memory (it is overkill actually, but the owner insist it) running in high availability. See the pictures here and here.
- 10 PSTN lines
- 3 Digium TDM 410P cards (with 4 FXO ports per card and hardware echo canceler) per server
- several RJ12 coupler
- RJ 12 cables
- 2 Zed-3 GS8 GSM gateway, each with 2 GSM modules
- Several Polycom IP-330 with PoE
- Polycom KIRK Wireless Server 600V3
In this project, Asterisk will be use to setup the voip communication between this site in Denpasar/Bali with the headquarter (HQ) in Jakarta as well as with other regional center in Java and Sumatera. Also Asterisk will act as traditional PBX to connect this site to PSTN lines as well as to GSM/CDMA lines. Every conversation through the PABX will be recorded by monitor application in Asterisk.
Before we go any further lets discuss a logical design about our setup. There is one HQ and several remote site including this one in Bali. This site is special because it's also act as second node beside HQ that can receive and transmit voip traffic to other center. The setup of every site is similar like the diagram below.
All the digium card provide 12 lines of PSTN, in this case we only use 10 lines. We then use RJ 12 coupler so that every line goes to 2 PBX server, PABXSV1 and PABXSV2. The PABXSV2 will become the backup asterisk in case the PABXSV1 is downed. We can use vrrpd or heartbeat (with DRBD) to control the service so that PABXSV2 can take over all the service from PABXSV1. More on this later.
I use stock asterisk and dahdi from OBS. While the asterisk is ok, dahdi in the OBS is not sufficient for Indonesia telephone lines (at least at the time I made the appliance). The root cause of the problem is that Indonesia PSTN line provided by Telkom is already equipped with the CID (caller identifier) but the service is not open to the end customer until the customer pay the service charge. But actually the CID is there and asterisk knows it but cannot open it. So it can answer the ring but if another call comes, suddenly it get confuse how to handle it and hangup the line. Off course we should make a good configuration not just downloading the trunk version.
I should thanks some good people who currently help me maintain the server, I should mentioned here:
Pak Wayan Sudana, Ketua KPLI Bali
Mas Adhi Wus, linuxer dari Denpasar
Mas Yan Arief (dkk), openSUSE user dari Yogyakarta
In the next post I will explain some configuration that I used, till then keep safe and have a lot of fun.
Clarification & Credits for openSUSE on ARM Chromebooks
python-killswitch ported to URfkill 0.4
python-killswitch ported to URfkill 0.4
URfkill 0.4 has been released for quite some time now. However, I've been quite busy the last couple of months so I didn't make it to port the python-killswitch module to the new DBus API. Until now, until I've finally releasing python-killswitch 0.4 which is basically fixing SUSE bug 734894.
The package can either be found in my home project or can be installed via 1-Click-Install. Maintenance updates for openSUSE 12.1 and 12.2 are already running. The source code can be found at Gitorious.
Geeko goes Chrome
Fiesta de lanzamiento del openSUSE 12.2 [Madrid] – openSUSE 12.2 Release Party [Madrid]
Vamos a beber unas cervecas y hablar del proyecto que nos une , que nos encanta.
Habra gente y profesores de URJC (Master en Software Libre).
Esperamos toda la gente que esta emocionada con openSUSE para celebrar el lanzamiento de la edición 12.2. Gente de otros proyectos o otras distribuciones esta bienvenida tambien.
Habran DVD’s de la edición 12.2
Si no eres un ‘camaleon’ , aprovechad la oportunidad!
Mas información esta disponible aqui
openSUSE Conference 2012
I spent the last weekend in Prague at the openSUSE conference 2012. It was a great opportunity to visit the wonderful city of Prague and meet old friends from the openSUSE community and get a bit more involved into openSUSE again.
I gave a talk about ownCloud on Saturday where I tried to show some technical details. That could have gone even deeper was the feedback some people gave me so I promise to show more of for example app development next time. Apart from that (and apart from the fact that laptops, projectors and Linux still do not play well) the talk went ok and was well received.
The conference is a joint conference of actually four conferences: The openSUSE Conference, the Czech Linux Days, the Gentoo Summit and the SUSE Labs Conference. Over the weekend it was hosted at the Czech technical university of prague and that was a great venue. Very inspiring that over the whole foyer of the building intersting art sculptures were shown. Unusual for a technical faculty but a great thing. The building is modern and large enough for all the talks and workshops but as a result of that it was sometimes a bit difficult to keep the overview where happens what. Especially because the start- and end times of the talks were not kept in sync over the tracks.
I found it is a different atmosphere on the event compared to the openSUSE conferences of the last years which might have been more focussed around the openSUSE project. This one felt more like an general FOSS event. That is not bad, just different, and since change is obvious and good I look forward to seeing how this influences the openSUSE project in the near future.
I like to thank all involved on the organizing teams for their successful hard work, have a lot of fun for the next two days, I had a lot during the last two days :)
OBS submit request top
Android Application for openSUSE Conference
Thanks to Matt Barringer, we now have an Android application for showing the openSUSE Conference schedule, details about talks and presentations and also some information about the presenters.The application can be found at Google Play Store under name SUSE Conferences and it's, of course, for free. It uses internet connection for downloading the data - there will be wireless network at the site, SSID Conference (get the details during registration/getting your badge).
When you start the application, you can select the conference schedule you are interested in. There are these two conferences now:
- Bootstrapping Awesome - 2012
- openSUSE Summit - 2012
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Selecting the conference: |
Conference schedule, click on a talk to get more details:
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Details for a selected talk, click on the gray star to add it to your personal schedule (turns to yellow): |
Talk added to your personal schedule, you still have some time left for more talks :) |
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Currently downloaded news: |
OT: Shimano Alfine 11 Di2 SEIS and backwards compatibility with existing hubs
This post is completely OT for openSUSE, but I don’t have a better place to put it to share this useful snippet of information.

Shimano has just released its electronic shifting system for Alfine internally geared hubs. In mechanical Alfine, the gear cable pull is translated into rotation and gear selection by a detachable unit that sits on the end of the hub. Alfine Di2 SEIS replaces this with a MU-S705 motor unit controlled by an electronic brake lever. But it also introduces a new hub (SG-S705). I wondered whether the motor unit can be retrofitted to existing hubs, as I have the original Alfine 11 (SG-S700) on my Genesis Day One, and I’m not completely happy with the Versa drop bar brake lever integrated shifter*.
So I mailed Paul Lange, Shimano’s German distributor, to ask. The answer I got is that the SG-S700 hub can not be used with the Di2 components, because it has a return spring for upshifts, whereas SG-S705 does not since the gear selection in both directions is actively performed by the motor. If you put a MU-S705 motor unit on an SG-S700 it would be working against the return spring.
As far as I understood it, there is a spring in the SM-S700 cable end unit – I didn’t know there is also one in the hub itself, but I’ll check next time I have the wheel out. Until then, my dreams of perfect drop bar shifting are just that, because at 400 quid SRP the hub is a big investment. Maybe Shimano will take pity on me and make a mechanical STI…
* Mostly because there is no little cam decoupling the upshift lever from the cable spool inside the Versa shifter, so sometimes it shifts up several gears at once.
Snapper for Everyone
With the release of snapper 0.1.0 also non-root users are able to manage snapshots. On the technical side this is achieved by splitting snapper into a client and server that communicate via D-Bus. As a user you should not notice any difference.
So how can you make use of it? Suppose the subvolume /home/tux is already configured for snapper and you want to allow the user tux to manage the snapshots for her home directory. This is done in two easy steps:
- Edit /etc/snapper/configs/home-tux and add ALLOW_USERS=”tux”. Currently the server snapperd does not reload the configuration so if it’s running either kill it or wait for it to terminate by itself.
- Give the user permissions to read and access the .snapshots directory, ‘chmod a+rx /home/tux/.snapshots’.
For details consult the snapper man-page.
Now tux can play with snapper:
tux> alias snapper="snapper -c home-tux" tux> snapper create --description test tux> snapper list Type | # | Pre # | Date | User | Cleanup | Description | Userdata -------+---+-------+----------------------------------+------+----------+-------------+--------- single | 0 | | | root | | current | single | 1 | | Tue 16 Oct 2012 12:15:01 PM CEST | root | timeline | timeline | single | 2 | | Tue 16 Oct 2012 12:21:38 PM CEST | tux | | test |
Snapper packages are available for various distributions in the filesystems:snapper project.
So long and see you at the openSUSE Conference 2012 in Prague.



