HowTo install sipX 3.6 on Debian Sarge
From SIPfoundry sipx, The Open Source SIP PBX for Linux - Calivia
Installing sipX 3.6 on Debian Sarge
| Important note: sipX-3.6 is beta software |
Below is a step-by-step guide on how to install Debian Sarge as well as sipX 3.6.0 sipX Runtime and Build Dependencies.
The SIPfoundry site provides a list of features, sipX roadmap, screenshots, as well as an architecture discussion.
Note: You are encouraged to report bugs to the project's Jira Tracker.
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HW Requirements
For a reasonably performing system we recommend the following minimum configuration. This is a rough guide line for a production system. sipX can be installed on significantly older HW provided there is enough system memory available (>384MB). Media server performance profits from a dual CPU system.
- Pentium 4 or Xeon processor @ 1.8 GHz or higher (For a test system even a P III will work fine)
- Minimum of 512 MB of memory with sufficient swap space (1 GB RAM preferred)
- 18 GB to 36 GB disk recommended (dependent on required voicemail storage)
Install Debian Sarge
We chose a minimal text based install of Debian Sarge (3.1) without any additional packages (network install from a minimal CD). The example hostname chosen was sipx with the domain name domain.com. We chose not to configure the mail system (Exim) at this point.
Note re: kernel: By default Debian Sarge will use kernel 2.4.27. If you want a 2.6 kernel type linux26 at the initial boot prompt.
Once installed, login as root.
| Important note: For production systems it is recommended to use a separate partition for /var. This is to prevent system crashes should the /var partition get filled up either because the logs run over or the voicemail store grows too big. |
Verify /dev/null
Verify the permissions on /dev/null; they should be 0666 or the installation of PostgreSQL will fail (with /usr/lib/postgresql/bin/initdb: line 86: /dev/null: Permission denied).
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 Oct 10 16:27 /dev/null
Verify Host and Domain Name Settings
The Debian installer by default sets up networking for DHCP. It is typically an advantage to assign a fixed IP address to a sipX system. In order to switch from a DHCP assigned IP address to a fixed IP address, comment out the existing iface line and add the settings for a fixed IP address as shown below.
| File: /etc/network/interfaces |
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5). # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary network interface auto eth0 #iface eth0 inet dhcp iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.5.177 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.5.1 network 192.168.5.0 broadcast 192.168.5.255 |
Add the hostname and domain to the /etc/hosts file. Make sure the IP address matches and also make sure that the hostname sipx is removed from the first line. The file /etc/hostname should already include the hostname sipx. Note that the file /etc/host.conf includes the order by which Debian resolves its hostname (order hosts,bind).
| File: /etc/hosts |
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 192.168.5.177 sipx.domain.com sipx |
| File: /etc/resolv.conf - Set the DNS server responsible for your domain |
search domain.com nameserver 192.168.5.10 nameserver 192.168.5.5 |
Test hostname:
| Code: test host and domain name settings |
hostname (outputs your fully qualified name) dnsdomainname -f (outputs the fully qualified name) dnsdomainname -d (outputs the domain name) dig -t A sipx.domain.com (outputs the DNS response) |
Setup DNS
By default sipX will install using a fully qualified host name (FQHN) and without using DNS SRV. Still, configuring DNS SRV for SIP is a good idea as this allows you to use SIP URLs that do not have to include the hostname of the sipX server.
In any case, make sure the machine is setup in DNS. This requires the editing of the configuration of your domain's DNS server and is critically important.
sipX can use DNS SRV records, which allows you to establish a SIP service for your domain. In addition, DNS SRV is a powerful mechanism for load balancing and fail over and is typically used for scalable and resilient Web server installations. See DNS man pages for additional information.
Please refer to the Fedora HowTo Documentation for a more detailed description of the required DNS setup.
Setup Debian apt Package Management
See the | list of Debian mirrors and chose one near you. 'contrib' needs to be enabled for ant.
| File: /etc/apt/sources.list |
deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ stable main contrib deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib deb http://scm.calivia.com/pub/sipx/debian sarge 3.6 |
Note: The Debian build scripts are available from the Calivia repository.
| Code: Update apt repository |
sudo apt-get update |
Optional: Install Sun JRE 1.5
If JRE is not installed here it will be automatically installed when installing sipxpbx. The Sun Java Runtime .deb packages are available from the Calivia Repository. (Manually Install Sun Java (JRE) 1.5)
| Code: Install Sun JRE 1.5 |
sudo apt-get install sun-j2re1.5 |
Install sipX
The required .deb packages are available from the Calivia Repository. All necessary run-time dependencies are installed automatically.
| Code: Install sipX packages |
sudo apt-get install sipxpbx sipxconfig |
Package Configuration
PostgreSQL configuration:
- Accept the default directory for the PostgreSQL database: /var/lib/postgres/data
- Should data be purged: No (default)
- Locale: en_US
- Day/Month: US (pick as you like)
SSL self-signed certificate configuration (libsipxcommserver1):
- Even though all the data is collected to create the certificate, it is not. The new script would hang badly in debconf so I turned it off. See below for manual creation of the certificate. sipXpbx will fail to start at the end of the installation because of this. Check out the CAcert.org page on how to use free certificates from CAcert.org with sipXpbx.
TFTP Server configuration:
- Server started by inetd <yes>
Java configuration (sipxconfig):
- Enter JAVA_PATH. On a stock Debian Sarge with Sun JRE 1.5, this is /usr/lib/j2re1.5-sun
Apache configuration (sipxpbx):
- Apache configuration file: /etc/apache2/httpd.conf - Accept package maintainer's version and answer "Y"
Note: If you see this error "psql: FATAL: IDENT authentication failed for user "postgres"" during setup of sipxconfig, ignore it. This is a bug in the config script.
Fixes for the Current Debian Post-Install Scripts
Stopping sipxpbx
/etc/init.d/sipxpbx stop
Postgres Database Initialization
/usr/bin/sipxconfig.sh --setup
Note: If you see this error "psql: FATAL: IDENT authentication failed for user "postgres"" during setup of sipxconfig, ignore it. This is a bug in the config script.
Generate a valid SSL certificate
There currently is no certificate generated during the install process. You can generate it manually as follows:
| Code: Generate valid SSL certificate |
mkdir $HOME/sslkeys cd $HOME/sslkeys /usr/bin/ssl-cert/gen-ssl-keys.sh
enter the data as requested (anything works):
- CA Common Name (DNS name for CA): Enter anything but NOT the DNS name of your server
- SIP domain name: The domain name of your installation
- Full DNS name for the server: Enter fully qualified hostname of your sipX server
/usr/bin/ssl-cert/install-cert.sh |
Configure TFTPD
TFTPD needs to be configured to serve the sipXconfig directory instead of the default one. Edit the inetd configuration and restart inetd.
| File: /etc/inetd.conf |
# change this line tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /var/lib/tftpboot # to this tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /var/sipxdata/configserver/phone/profile/tftproot/ |
| Code: Restart inetd |
/etc/init.d/inetd restart |
Install sipX CallResolver
The CallResolver is the deamon that produces CDR records from the CSE (Call State Events) collected by the sipX proxy and stored in the Postgres database. It is written in Ruby and therefore requires Ruby to be installed.
Installing Ruby and Rubygems
See here http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/debian-sarge.html
apt-get install ruby irb rdoc libopenssl-ruby1.8
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/pool/main/libg/libgems-ruby/libgems-ruby1.8_0.9.0-2_all.deb wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/pool/main/libg/libgems-ruby/rubygems_0.9.0-2_all.deb dpkg -i libgems-ruby1.8_0.9.0-2_all.deb rubygems_0.9.0-2_all.deb
gem install --no-rdoc activesupport actionpack actionmailer activerecord actionwebservice gem install --no-rdoc postgres-pr gem install --no-rdoc rake rails
Note: gems are installed from RubyForge and therefore the system requires an active network connection for this to succeed.
Installing the CallResolver
Install the sipx call resolver Ruby gem:
apt-get install sipxcallresolver gem install -l /usr/share/sipxpbx/lib/sipxcallresolver-1.0.0.gem
The apt-get command installed the gem into /usr/share/sipxpbx/lib/sipxcallresolver-1.0.0.gem. It still needs to be installed into the Ruby system using the gem install -l command. The install directory for all the gems is /var/lib/gems/1.8/cache.
Debugging: List the gems that are installed on your system:
gem list
Initializing the CallResolver Database
Note: sipxcallresolver.sh is currently broken on Debian.
| Important note: The file sipxcallresolver.sh still needs to be patched and does not work as is. Work in progress.
a) Sed needs to be upgraded to 4.1.5 b) The path to to the callresolver gem is /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/sipxcallresolver-1.0.0/main.rb |
The following script initializes the SIPXCDR database:
sipxcallresolver.sh --setup
Run sipxcallresolver.sh --configtest to test for proper configuration. CDR recording needs to be enabled first in ConfigServer for configtest to report a properly configured sytem. To do this go to System, General. Call Detail Records and enable CSE logging for proxy and authproxy.
Install the sipXconfig SOAP Interface Agent
The sipXconfig SOAP Web Services interface is written in Ruby. The respective gem needs to be installed manually still:
gem install file-tail gem install -l /usr/share/sipxpbx/lib/sipXconfig-agent-1.0.0.gem
Start sipxpbx
Note: sipXpbx is started automatically after the installation completes
Start sipX manually (as root):
| Code: Start sipxpbx |
/etc/init.d/sipxpbx start |
The post install script adds sipxpbx to the default run level. Therefore, sipxpbx will be started automatically at boot time. Make sure postgresql and tftpd are configured for automatic startup as well.
Login to the sipX Configuration Server Web Interface
Use your favorite browser from a different system with access to the sipX server and go to (after starting sipxpbx wait for up to 30 seconds for all deamons to start properly before trying to login, check for listening TCP port 8443 with 'netstat -lnt'):
http://sipx.domain.com
First, you are asked to define a password for the superadmin user. Once entered successfully, you should then login as user superadmin.
You are all done!
Troubleshooting
See SipX ConfigServer Troubleshooting.
Uninstalling sipX
apt-get remove --purge libsipxport2 apt-get remove --purge postgresql rm -rf /etc/sipxpbx rm -rf /var/sipxdata rm -rf /var/log/sipxpbx rm -rf /var/run/sipxpbx rm -rf /var/lib/postgres/data
Some Useful Commands
The following commands are available to better support administration and troubleshooting tasks:
Checking start-up status of sipX’s services:
/etc/init.d/sipxpbx status
Checking sipX configuration:
/etc/init.d/sipxpbx configtest
This is a useful command whenever you modify the configuration files, and is run for you before sipX services are started. Any problems are displayed on standard error and logged to /var/log/messages. If this test is performed as part of starting the services, the startup is not affected by finding an error; the services will continue to start even if errors are found (but may not operate correctly).
Reset Superadmin password using the command line:
/usr/bin/sipxconfig.sh --database reset-superadmin
