Trixbox Installation Checklist

Here is a short list of installation tasks for the Trixbox PBX.

• Assign fixed IP address to WAN port
• Place in DMZ (temporarily)
• Get software updates
• Configure a Polycom SIP phone
• Configure Voicepulse SIP provider account
• Make test calls
• Configure router QOS setting
  
• Insert Sangoma A200 card
• Configure Zaptel card drivers
• Configure Octasic echo cancellation (in software)
  
• Configure 2nd Polycom phone
• Configure Grandstream phone
• Configure Remote Office phone
• Place Trixbox behind the firewall.
  

Once the install is configured, then we'll need to monitor the ongoing reliability of the SIP connections. This was one of the issues that I've had earlier; the Trixbox would loose the registration with the SIP phone provider, thus hanging up on long-distance calls. Unfortunately, I never was able to get it to fail-over to the landline, and there were no clear errors at the phone that said that anything was amiss. Not good for end-users.

Trixbox.Org is the community site for the free version of Trixbox, called Trixbox CE (community edition).

Trixbox.Com is the site for the commericial, hybrid-hosted versions. One of these is also available for free. The others are sold per seat on a monthly or a lifetime basis.

Most of my previous Trixbox posts are available under the Trixbox and/or VoIP labels. Doing a quick search I just noticed that one of my first posts was EXACTLY one year ago...November 29th 2006. Guess I should go back and take a look so I don't repeat my mistakes of the previous year.

Notes and sources for batteries and memory chips.

Found an inexpensive battery for my Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop at Simple Micro. Fast service. The battery appears to be working fine, and cost half to two-thirds of everyplace else I looked.

We are playing musical servers in the office. This means that my current server, an older Dell 8200 with 512K will get demoted to a low-end workstation, and the current spare workstation, which has 512K, but a Pentium 4 3Ghz and 120 gig drive will become the new server. In preparation for that operation, I used the memory configuration program at Crucial memory, to find out what my options were, and ordered a couple additional sticks to bring the memory up to 2.5Gig. I think this will be enough for the beta of Windows 2008, plus a beta of the Microsoft unified communications server.

In fact, I'm starting to wonder about having a "traditional" file server at all. Already I've got a networked printer with its own IP address. You can get networked storage devices, basically a large hard drive with a stripped down operating system, which just plugs into the network.

Trixbox Appliance: New Baby

Just unwrapped the new baby here... a Trixbox appliance (the so-called "base" model for about $999) that comes without landline interface cards. In its base configuration it is suitable for those who want to implement a fully IP-based VoIP system. I'll be adding hardware to this; an existing Sangoma A200 card which provides two landline connections. I'll only be using one of the two connections to start. I couldn't resist starting it up, and sorry, but contrary to all the assurances; the thing is noisy. Too noisy to have setting next to my desk. Damn.

The dual power-supply version that was demonstrated back in June sounded like a jet engine. Definitely that one is a unit for the server room, not deskside.

We had our first real snow that stuck today, about three inches. The Trixbox will be a great project on those cold winter days.

Higher Education is Outsourcing eMail

Inside Higher Ed has an article about the outsourcing of eMail servers by higher education institutions, usually to Microsoft or Google, with versions of Hotmail and Gmail offered specifically for higher ed.

Although I would miss my "moose" account... on the "zoo" cluster at our local uni...I've always recommended most small organizations (under 100 FTE) not maintain their own eMail server, (usually Exchange), unless they were using it as a platform for business applications. Usually the same internet service provider which hosts your web site will also host POP or IMAP eMail accounts for little or nothing, and they'll include spam filtering. They will provide access to a "web mail" version of your eMail when traveling. All this with no advertising, or intrusions, and usually for free.


Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: When E-Mail Is Outsourced

Low Cost Laptop: ASUS Eee PC

While the One Laptop Per Child gets most of the ink, there is an alternative out there. The ASUS Eee PC is available for about $400. Here is a mention on Gizmodo, and a listing at Directron, (currently out of stock with delivery projected for November 30th.) A longer review with photos is here. And there is already an Eee blog.

I can imagine some terrific learning projects with, say, a group of five of these for $2000, or even $1500 ($299 apiece) if you can manage without a built-in web cam and slightly less memory.

Here is a google groups thread with additional information regarding the concept of individual machines for each student. An excerpt:

Having run a 1:1 laptop program, I also know that the arrangement is also not without its downsides. The distraction factor alone of having such a rich, engaging device at hand can be overwhelming for a child. (Of course, it can for an adult as well, a lesson learned from many laptop-enabled meetings. Those are topics for another day, however.) In my opinion, the more significant downside to 1:1 programs is the unsuitability of current devices to the task. That's the second lesson I've drawn from my experience running laptop programs. Currently available laptops, designed for the corporate or consumer markets, are ill-suited for use by children. They are too fragile, too bulky, and too expensive, with too little battery life. There are exceptions, of course, but most attempts to address these problems have succeeded only in fixing one at the expense of exacerbating the others. A subnotebook computer might be light, but it becomes more expensive & more fragile. It may be ruggedized, but then it becomes bulkier & more expensive. Or it may be cheap, but then it's bulky and still breakable. Anyone who has supported school laptop programs knows how often one is replacing keys on keyboards that have "mysteriously" popped off or sending in for repair laptops that have suffered breakage due careless drops or compression in overstuffed backpacks, or replacing batteries that have been discharged one too many times, or just fixing the myriad of niggling errors that modern complex operating systems (read: Windows) pop up daily. The churn of equipment and drain on staff time is wasteful, expensive, and distracts from the learning process. And given these realities, I do understand why most teachers have not yet embraced the promise of "anytime, anywhere" laptop learning.

Windows PowerShell Version 2.0 CTP

Microsoft has published a Community Technology Preview of the next version of the PowerShell (aka Monad). The big news is the inclusion of remoting...the ability to execute scripts on remote machines.

...five minutes later....

Already I'm in trouble; even though I an execute an old script from the command line, I've already gotten an error, myscriptname cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on the this system. See get-help about_signing for more details

OK....so I get the following:

PowerShell execution policies provide security for the scripting environment by determining the conditions under which PowerShell loads configuration files and runs scripts. "Restricted" is the most secure policy and is the default. It permits individual commands, but does not permit scripts to run.

There is a rudimentary GUI editor too.

This is what DOS batch files have become now that they are all grown up.

Fixing Personal Hardware

There is a bunch of ideas in this NYT article about how to get personal hardware, like IPods fixed.

Borders installs Video Screens (!)

Many years back our local Grand Union supermarket installed TV screens at the checkouts. They lasted about nine months, and finally were removed because of customer complaints, vandalism, and customers who would surreptiously turn them off when standing in front of them being subjected to a barrage of advertising.
Now, according to this story in the New York Times, Borders is installing these things in their stores. Maybe this is the onset of senility, but I think this is a terrible idea. It is getting harder and harder to move around in a public space without having a video screen in your face. It makes interacting with real people in a public space much more difficult, if not impossible. It distracts from the ability to quietly read a book.
What were they thinking?

Stuff That Works November 2007

Looking at the Enthusiasm Score from a year ago, I'm amazed how unchanged most ideas are. So in this year's edition, I'll take a different approach rather than trying to score things incrementally

• Stuff That Really Works
  
• Stuff That Works with Minor Problems
  
• Stuff That Works with Major Reservations
  
• Stuff That Doesn't Work
  

Stuff that Really Works

The following technology items that I take for granted on a daily basis, that never seem to require troubleshooting. It is a short list.

• My landline. Verizon, with MCI long distance
  
• Verizon pre-paid cell phone plan.
  
• My ISP and web host:intermedia.net
  
• The FireFox web browser
  
• Microsoft Office 2003 - the file formats and interface changes of Office 2007 haven't been internalized by either me or colleagues with which I exchange Word or Excel documents.
  
• Microsoft OneNote 2007 - Solid as a rock.
  
• SightSpeed desktop videoconferencing
  

Stuff That Works With Minor Problems

• HP Procurve 2xxx Network Switch. Ended up replacing a couple of these because of a fan failure. The process was relatively painless, with excellent support from HP, and free warranty replacement.
  
• Microsoft Windows 2003 Small Business Server. I installed on a repurposed Dell Optiplex workstation, and the combination has worked almost flawlessly for over two years. And yet, the SBS is more than most small shops need...eventually I can see a replacement with a straight Windows Server with added SharePoint, leaving aside things like Fax, and Exchange.
  
• On workstations, Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2. This is starting to get more difficult to find. Upgrade any workstations now, or you'll have to cope with Windows Vista.
  
• WiFi. As long as you keep expectations reasonable, and remain aware of the security implications, WiFi is great.
• BaseCamp web-based project manager.

Stuff That Works with Major Reservations

These are things that we're using, but we are still looking, or items that are not yet ready for prime time.

• VoIP - I had hoped to be a lot farther along with VoIP, both on a casual occasional basis using applications like Skype and Gizmo, and with a PBX solution such as Trixbox or Asterisk. To date there has been unreliable connection quality when using Internet VoIP connections. Like some other aspects of life, when it is good is very good, but when it is bad it is unworkable. Are expectations unreasonable here?
  
• Windows Vista
  
• The Mac OS X and Linux. The reason these are on the list is that indeed they work, but they don't necessarily play easily with Windows, particularly when it comes to printing and sharing files. The problems here aren't insurmountable, but they require more than a casual engagement and technical expertise. I think this is a reasonable major reservation...and it remains the reason to insist on a single operating platfom for your IT infrastructure. It should be easier than this.

Stuff That Doesn't Work

In general, I can just point to John Dvorak and the Cranky Geeks for endless tales of chaos and disfunction.

Switching from PC to MAC

I've been fiddling with my MacBook for the better part of a week and, for the most part, I really like what I see. I'm still wondering about discarding certain applications; notably OutLook (with the X1 search capability) and OneNote. Eventually, I may install Windows on the machine, but to keep things interesting, I'm determined to to push the Mac as far as I can before caving. Below are some web sites that I've found that help with the transition. Maybe we need an organization for Windows Users Anonymous for those of us attempting to kick the habit.

General Hints and Overview

The Tao of Mac has a good page with of hints for switchers.

Another similar essay is located at Apple Matters.

Listings of keyboard equivalents

The Mac keyboard has additional modifier keys, including the "Apple" key, and the "Option" key. David Pogue posed the question of how to get a right-click from the Mac one-button mouse or trackpad when you are running Windows on a Mac via Boot Camp. The short answer seems to be.."spend $20.00 and get a two-button mouse" but there are also odd combinations of keystrokes that appear to work. This has been an issue so far when attempting to switch from Windows to the Mac OS... I feel like I've lost a hand, not being able to right-click. And it isn't as if there aren't things that pop up on the Mac side when you right click... Both the Finder and Safari, for example have right-click menus just like a Windows application.

Loose Ends and Unsolved Mysteries:

• I can't print to networked printers, or at least to any printer that isn't connected directly via a USB port.
  
• While I know there is a "dashboard"... a combination of applets like clocks and so on, I don't know how to switch between the dashboard and regular applications.
  

Web-based Project Management

The excellent webworker daily, posted a link to an online-project management system called Wrike.
Here is the story and review.

Bill Gates on VoIP

Over at CRN, they have an interview with Bill Gates on Microsoft's sally into VoIP. Ok, I can't exactly imagine my phone system running on Windows, but Microsoft Office Communicator and the Office Communications Server are the latest and greatest entries from Microsoft. Predictably, Gates isn't enamored about open source solutions for VoIP. This is one of those things...you think that Microsoft is really late to a particular party, and then after five years of chipping away at it, they flatten the competion. (c.f. Novell and Netscape).

There's a growing open-source community around VoIP right now. Do you expect that open-source will take on as big a role in voice as it has in some of the other technology areas you're playing in?

Gates: Well it hasn't taken on a big role in most areas. Take a look at virtual machines or databases or things like that. Go back and look at the prognostication about the role they would play. The value of support and having the relationship and the way that packaged software certainly from us and some others is sold in a very high-volume, low-priced way. There's always an interest in open-source. Open-source will always be there. I'm not saying it's going away, but in terms of what's actually used in many of these categories, it's actually proven to be very, very small.

And you're expecting to see the same in VoIP?

Gates: Well in consumer voice, Messenger is free, Skype is free, so at the consumer level, it doesn't have to be open-source but you've got a lot of free options. But as you move up and you want the encryption, manageability, connection to the directory and just that incredible relationship ... I think this would be a category that's particularly difficult for open-source software to have an impact on. You never know.

Tech Friday: New MacBook with Leopard OSX 10.5

In the Pournelle tradition, "we do these things so you don't have to"... and contrary to advice to clients, I've remixed my operating systems, and gotten an Apple Macintosh, a MacBook. This is the little laptop with a 13.3 inch screen.

It was fun to place the order last Friday and then watch the machine wing its way over from China to Anchorage Alaska, and then down to the lower 48 over the course of the next couple of days on the FedEx tracking site. I was told that the unit would come with the latest version of the Mac operating system installed. It wasn't, but there was a CD enclosed, and the first thing I did was to do an OS update, which went without a hitch. Now I've been reading on-line discussions about the update, but since I had zero experience with Mac operating systems since the first Mac was introduced about twenty years ago, I was blissfully ignorant about all the changes. My baseline is simply the latest and greatest...and my early experience has been favorable.

There are still a few hold-overs from the earliest Macs. The startup sound is the same. The finder "logo" with the two faces is still the same. I wonder if someone, somewhere, has a digital recording of the first Mac floppy drives as they sort of clicked away. I can still remember that sound.

The OS comes with an embarrassment of riches. Like Ubuntu or other Linux distributions, there are enough applications in there to keep you busy (and unproductive) for days. So far the only things I've added are the iWork suite (word-processing, presentations and spreadsheets), and an upgrade from the standard GarageBand recording software called Logic Express. I also installed the Cisco VPN client for our university's wireless network. A second power brick for the office is $70.00.

Frankly my first impetus for the change was to solve a hardware problem. My Dell Inspiron is falling apart, and the keyboard never worked the way it should.

The MacBook hardware is quite complete. It includes an integrated microphone and camera. There is integrated Airport wireless networking which works flawlessly. Integrated BlueTooth, (haven't tried it yet...need to get one of those nerdy headsets). A FireWire port. Two USB ports. External microphone input, and headset output. All this is wrapped up in a sleek black package which weighs a little over five pounds.

Of course the underlying OS is Unix, so all the Unix command-line goodies are available. And Boot Camp, which allows you to set up a dual-boot Mac/Windows is now out of beta and integrated directly into the Mac OS. So, even if I relegate the Mac to "personal" use, I'll still be able to use it with Windows XP or Vista.

HP Printer Drivers - Foiled Again!

Honestly, I just don't get it. I'm trying to install my printers to a new MacBook. I can open the printer dialog box and see the printer, the K5400 ink-jet, but when the installer searches for a driver, it doesn't find one. So I trot out the CD that came with the printer, and attempt an installation. All I want is THE DRIVER. I don't want PhotoSmart, I don't want to participate in the HP customer participation program. I don't want to install a bunch of third-party crapware. I just want to PRINT.

But there is no single driver file available either on the CD, or the CD image that you can download from the HP site. You have to run the HP installer. Fine.

So I run the installer and just after I say I don't want to participate in the HP Customer Satisfaction Program, and receive valuable offers and updates, the thing hangs. And it stays hung.

So, HP, I won't be printing to my HP K5400 today, and using up all those expensive inks.

Could it be a Leopard thing?

Update: Still not entirely satisfactory; I installed the printer directly by connecting the USB port. On a whim, (just lucky) I chose the OfficeJet Pro K550 driver which was in the list. This seems to work, when the printer is connected directly. It doesn't yet work, over an IP network, even though the printer shows up with a "Bonjour" connection.