RasPBX Installation for Beginners • Hacker News Board

Re: RasPBX Installation for Beginners

#21

Post by moreentropy » Fri, Nov 26, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

saghul wrote: post #9

moreentropy wrote: post #6

While these tutorials are a great way to teach system administration to those who want to start tinkering, I wish people would put more energy into building well crafted firmware images using frameworks like openembedded or buildroot and teaching people how to use those. Most of the raspbian-based tutorials or images out there treating the raspberry pi like a normal server are just going to trash the SD or fail becau…

That sounds actually like a good idea. Do you have a resource on how to get started?

I have some buildroot external trees on github that build images using github actions. It's for personal stuff I needed and only need to update occasionally.

The Buildroot manual is fantastic and it's worth working through the getting started section to get an idea. It boils down to creating a br_external tree that contains everything necessary to create a custom sdcard image as documented here:

https://buildroot.org/downloads/manual/manual.html#outside-b...

Building images from a br_external tree is pretty trivial, see the gitub actions in these example repos:

This builds a raspi4 64 bit image for tvheadend (I'm using this image for a SAT-IP TV dish w/ Kodi clients in my sister's house - so far no complaints about a crashed tv server after 1.5 years of uptime). This image runs the whole rootfs from initramfs w/o mounting a persistent root filesystem. I don't care for the additional ~150MB RAM that is used in this use case:

https://github.com/markuslindenberg/dvbheadend

My most recent buildroot based raspi image builds a 32 bit image pulling binary distribution of openhab and it's recommended jre into the image, running them from a read only root filesystem. I'm using this to reliably run openhab home automation in multiple places. This repo also is a br_external tree and embarrasingly doesn't have a README yet, I really really need to write one becaus I think it's quite useful and mature.

https://github.com/markuslindenberg/habfw

Re: RasPBX Installation for Beginners

#22

Post by emteycz » Fri, Nov 26, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

pauke wrote: post #10

emteycz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, calling any other EU country from the EU costs a lot. 1 dollar/minute and more. The most expensive plans (50+ dollars a month) usually include 100 EU minutes or so, but not many people have these plans. Data costs vary a lot across the EU. I pay 70 dollars a month for unlimited data with unlimited speed, for example.

That's not true for over two years. Capped by EU at 19 eurocents a minute. And 70 dollars is pretty expensive, I think you should check if there aren't better deals available (I assume it's CZ?) https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_1...

You're right it's cheaper than I said. I didn't check for a few years.

Re: RasPBX Installation for Beginners

#23

Post by supertrope » Fri, Nov 26, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

Security is paramount when running your own PBX. Make sure all SIP extension passwords are strong and any IVRs do not allow unauthenticated callers to get a dial tone. Otherwise toll fraudsters can make tens of thousands of dollars of calls in one night!

Re: RasPBX Installation for Beginners

#24

Post by supertrope » Fri, Nov 26, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #3

How is this better than just getting a VoIP line in the country you want cheap calls to/from, and installing a SIP softphone app on your phone or computer? Or using something like Signal, where the call is not only better than "HD voice", it's e2ee encrypted? There are other services that offer varying levels of encryption. Does it really cost lots of money to call someone from one part of the EU to another? As an Am…

I agree. Only businesses and VoIP hobbyists bother to self-host their PBX. And smaller businesses are often better off using a hosted service. The time money and hassle spent setting this up and maintaining it can buy a lot of calling plan minutes or months. Or you could train your contacts on how to use Signal.

Re: RasPBX Installation for Beginners

#25

Post by Shish2k » Fri, Nov 26, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

moreentropy wrote: post #6

While these tutorials are a great way to teach system administration to those who want to start tinkering, I wish people would put more energy into building well crafted firmware images using frameworks like openembedded or buildroot and teaching people how to use those. Most of the raspbian-based tutorials or images out there treating the raspberry pi like a normal server are just going to trash the SD or fail becau…

Speaking of building immutable images - I want to do that for one of my projects, but scanning the docs for buildroot and yocto, I don’t see anything about applying updates - which is the part where I most want an off-the-shelf battle-tested solution so I won’t need to fly out and fix it in person.

Specifically, I want to have a disk image with two root partitions - by default (ie, what I flash to the SD card) the first partition has a read-only root FS and the second is empty. When an upgrade is ready, the system downloads the update from the internet, writes it to the second partition, and reboots - if the reboot is successful and the system passes health checks, it marks partition 2 as the default. If something goes wrong, it reboots again back into the original partition. (Then when v3 comes out, v2 downloads and writes it to the first partition, etc)

I keep thinking “surely this must be a solved problem?”, but I can find very little information about it; and the few things I can find are proprietary cloud-based management systems, when I’d much rather have my image hard-coded to poll an update-feed-URL that I control myself...

Re: RasPBX Installation for Beginners

#26

Post by 3151 » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

Shish2k wrote: post #25

moreentropy wrote: post #6

While these tutorials are a great way to teach system administration to those who want to start tinkering, I wish people would put more energy into building well crafted firmware images using frameworks like openembedded or buildroot and teaching people how to use those. Most of the raspbian-based tutorials or images out there treating the raspberry pi like a normal server are just going to trash the SD or fail becau…

Speaking of building immutable images - I want to do that for one of my projects, but scanning the docs for buildroot and yocto, I don’t see anything about applying updates - which is the part where I most want an off-the-shelf battle-tested solution so I won’t need to fly out and fix it in person. Specifically, I want to have a disk image with two root partitions - by default (ie, what I flash to the SD card) the fi…

That is what Android is doing. You can read up on it here: https://source.android.com/devices/tech/ota/ab?hl=en

Re: RasPBX Installation for Beginners

#27

Post by throwoutway » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

hollander wrote: post #15

madviper wrote: post #2

I am going to show you, how you can install telephony server Asterisk on a small computer RaspberryPi in order to be able to make calls from your computer or smartphone to ordinary phone numbers. So basically, you will end up literally with your own PBX in your pocket. Actually no, because RaspberryPi needs to be connected to power supply and network, and you would look weird with cables going into your pocket, but y…

I've worked with Asterisk in a former job, but we needed a VOIP provider to make the link to the normal network. But everyone connected to the company Asterisk server could phone with eachother for free, all around the world.

> But everyone connected to the company Asterisk server could phone with eachother for free, all around the world.

How does this work?!