Thoughts, ramblings and rants…
We’ve put some time aside over the last week to do a major UI overhaul on ViMbAdmin – specifically incorporating Twitter’s superb Bootstrap framework. The before an after’s tell a lot about this.
Over a Open Solutions, we’ve put some time aside over the last week to do a major UI overhaul on ViMbAdmin – specifically incorporating Twitter’s superb Bootstrap framework. The before an after’s tell a lot about this. Here’s how it was:
And here’s the new improved look:
We’ve also closed a lot of bugs, improved the functionality and navigation and added a couple of small features.
Let us know what you think!
![[TallyStick Logo]](https://www.tallystick.net/images/logo-160x160.png "TallyStick Logo"){kind=logo}
Are you like I once was with scribbles in your diary to track what you were doing for whom and for how long on any given day? When you manage to remember to scribble that is.
I was once a member of your club. And I had enough. So we built TallyStick. Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention.
At Open Solutions, we manage networks, build Internet infrastructure, consult and develop web applications for many customers. Tracking the time our engineers spent on different projects – especially those on the front line hopping from customer to customer – was becoming an issue.
We believe in web applications that are simple, beautiful and functional. And after an exhaustive search, we couldn’t find one to fit our needs… so we built it. And who better to build a time tracking application for IT and other consulting professionals than those same professionals!
TallyStick allows you to focus on what you love to do while it takes care of tracking and accumulating the time you spend on projects. We believe it’s simple, efficient and quick. And we hope you agree.
As of today, TallyStick is live and open for business. Please sign up, take advantage of the one month’s free trial (with no credit card details required) and tell us what you think.
Also, all users signing up during the beta period will receive a lifetime discount of 10% on that account!
TallyStick allows you to focus on what you love to do while it takes care of tracking and accumulating the time you spend on projects. As of today, TallyStick is live and open for business. Please sign up, take advantage of the one month’s free trial (with no credit card details required) and tell us what you think.
Overt at Open Solutions, we manage networks, build Internet infrastructure, consult and develop web applications for many customers. Tracking the time our engineers spent on different projects – especially those on the front line hopping from customer to customer – was becoming an issue.
And we had enough. So we built TallyStick. Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention.
We believe in web applications that are simple, beautiful and functional. And after an exhaustive search, we couldn’t find one to fit our needs… so we built it. And who better to build a time tracking application for IT and other consulting professionals than those same professionals!
TallyStick allows you to focus on what you love to do while it takes care of tracking and accumulating the time you spend on projects. We believe it’s simple, efficient and quick. And we hope you agree.
As of today, TallyStick is live and open for business. Please sign up, take advantage of the one month’s free trial (with no credit card details required) and tell us what you think.
Also, all users signing up during the beta period will receive a lifetime discount of 10% on that account!
A howto on installing Asterisk with SS7 supported via libss7 on Sangoma hardware along with support for ISUP SAM messages.
After much head banging in bringing up an SS7 link with SAM support, I am documented what worked here.
Firstly, what is SAM support? One end of an SS7 link initialises a new call by sending an Initial Address Message (IAM). All SS7 software stacks support this and usually it’s enough. One case where it’s not enough is when one wants to address a phone number with more than the E.164 standard max length of 16 Â (usually to pass additional information tacked on the start, end of or even replacing an A or B number). In this scenario, SS7 uses a Subsequent Address Message (SAM)Â to send the additional digits. Most / all mainstream Asterisk SS7 software stacks do not support this.
The platform and software used is as follows:
Yes, I know some of the above are obsolete. Unfortunately it’s what’s required for everything to play nicely together. And, guess what, it works!
Ensure you have all the necessary packages for building the packages:
apt-get install build-essential libnewt-dev subversion \ libsqlite3-dev libsnmp-dev bison libtool flex \ autoconf2.13 libmysqlclient-dev
You can assume the working directory is /usr/local/src in the following.
Download and extract dahdi-linux-complete into /usr/local/src. Then, in the same directory, create some symbolic links:
ln -s dahdi-linux-complete-2.4.0+2.4.0/linux dahdi-linux ln -s dahdi-linux-complete-2.4.0+2.4.0/tools dahdi-tools
Now build dahdi-linux:
cd dahdi-linux make make install
Now move onto dahdi-tools:
cd dahdi-tools ./configure make menuconfig # (and select tools or accept defaults) make make install make config
There is a patched version of Digium’s libss7 referred to as Attila’s libss7 available via SVN. Download and install it:
svn co https://observer.router.hu/repos_pub/libss7/trunk alibss7 cd alibss7 make make install
Download and extract the Asterisk 1.6.0.28 package reference above.
cd asterisk-1.6.0.28
Now this next bit is very important and easy to miss – you also need a patched version of chan_dahdi.c that is compatible with the patched version of libss7. This is also available from SVN:
svn co https://observer.router.hu/repos_pub/chan_dahdi/trunk achan_dahdi
Then copy it to your Asterisk source:
cp achan_dahdi/chan_dahdi.c asterisk-1.6.0.28/channels/chan_dahdi.c
Now continue with the Asterisk installation:
./configure make menuconfig make make install make samples make config
Download and unpack the above referenced add ons package and build and install:
cd asterisk-addons-1.6.0.6 ./configure make menuconfig make make install make samples
I’m using one of Sangoma’s E1 / T1 interface cards and so I need Wanpipe also. I’m using version 3.5.24 and preceed as follows after unpacking:
cd wanpipe-3.5.24./Setup install
During the install, follow these prompts:
We now need to set various options in Wanpipe, Dahdi and Asterisk for SS7 as it’s PRI/ISDN by default.
Edit all /etc/wanpipe/wanpipeX.conf files as necessary and change:
 TDMV_DCHAN        = 16
to
TDMV_DCHAN Â Â Â Â Â Â Â = 0
Now edit /etc/dahdi/system.conf and change (for example):
span=1,1,0,ccs,hdb3,crc4 bchan=1-15,17-31 echocanceller=mg2,1-15,17-31 hardhdlc=16
to
span=1,1,0,ccs,hdb3,crc4 bchan=2-31 echocanceller=mg2,2-31 mtp2=1
which of course assumes signalling is on channel 1. If you have voice only links, you might need something like:
span=1,0,0,ccs,hdb3,crc4bchan=1-31 echocanceller=mg2,2-31
Lastly, we need to configure Asterisk. Replace lines such as:
;Sangoma A102 port 1 [slot:4 bus:5 span:1] switchtype=national context=from-pstn group=0 echocancel=yes signalling=pri_cpe channel =>1-15,17-31
with an appropriate configuration. Mine follows below with some edits and some important notes at the end:
;Sangoma A102 port 1 [slot:4 bus:5 span:1] switchtype=national context=from-pstn group=0 echocancel=yes signaling=ss7 ss7type=itu ss7_called_nai=dynamic ss7_calling_nai=dynamic ss7_internationalprefix=00 ss7_nationalprefix=0 ss7_subscriberprefix= ss7_unknownprefix= linkset=1 pointcode=1 adjpointcode=2 defaultdpc=3 networkindicator=national_spare cicbeginswith=2 channel=2-31 sigchan=1
Now start wanrouter (/etc/init.d/wanrouter start); dahdi (/etc/init.d/dahdi start); and Asterisk (/etc/init.d/asterisk start). You should see your link come up via logs available with the dmesg command. Launch the Asterisk console and check the status of your links:
ast-deg1-1*CLI> ss7 show cics 1
CIC DPC DAHDI STATE BLOCKING
2 3 2 Idle
3 3 3 Idle
4 3 4 Idle
5 3 5 Idle
6 3 6 Idle
7 3 7 Idle
8 3 8 Idle
9 3 9 Idle
10 3 10 Idle
11 3 11 Idle
12 3 12 Idle
13 3 13 Idle
14 3 14 Idle
15 3 15 Idle
16 3 16 Idle
17 3 17 Idle
18 3 18 Idle
19 3 19 Idle
20 3 20 Idle
21 3 21 Idle
22 3 22 Idle
23 3 23 Idle
24 3 24 Idle
25 3 25 Idle
26 3 26 Idle
27 3 27 Idle
28 3 28 Idle
29 3 29 Idle
30 3 30 Idle
31 3 31 Idle
You should now be okay to make test calls.
While I will try to respond to comments and questions on this blog, I don’t have the time to provide one on one assistance pro-bono. Professional consultancy on Asterisk and SS7 is available worldwide through my company, Open Solutions with contact details here.
For posterity, I have added Domjan Attila patched libss7 and chan_dahdi to GitHub:
We create a lot of Nagios installations for our own systems over, for customer systems which we manage and as a service over at Open Solutions. We’ve written a lot of custom Nagios plugins over the years as part of this process.
We are now making a concerted effort to find them, clean them, maintain them centrally and release them for the good of others.
To that end, we have created a repository on GitHub for the task with a detailed readme file:
They main goal of Nagios plugins that we write and release are:
--verbose on new kit. This will provide an inventory of what it finds as well as show anything that is being skipped. OIDs searched for by the script but reported as not supported on the target device should really be skipped via various --skip-xxx options.--help or -?Over the past ten years I have left many many new and hacked Nagios plugins on many servers around the globe. I’m now making a concerted effort to find them, clean them, maintain them centrally and release them.
To that end, I have created a repository on GitHub for the task with a detailed readme file:
As a starting point, there are four plugins available now:
I have recently been converted from and SVN user to a Git user. You can read about my road to Damascus moment over in my personal blog.
As such I have converted my co-workers and we have migrated ViMbAdmin to GitHub. We feel that the project is in an early enough stage to not cause too much annoyance with the current user base. We do sincerely apologise for all and any inconvenience caused.
Feel free to svn switch your base from Google Code to the following which tracks our master (i.e. stable / production / release) branch:
http://svn.github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin.git
Just follow the instructions at:
https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/wiki/Install-using-git
and skip the database setup. Just copy over your application/configs/application.ini file to the new Git clone.
No problem – you’ll now find new versions at:
https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/archives/master
…and I’m bloody delighted.Â
The straw finally came when Nick forced my hand for a project we wanted to release through our work in INEX. I was pushing for Google Code but he had his heart set on GitHub. Now, in fairness, GitHub has some SVN bindings but after some research, I decided to dive right in.
Now, there’s both a steep learning curve but also a complete change of mindset required from centralised source code management (SCM) with SVN to the distributed model of Git. In the end, most projects will decide on a canonical Git repository anyway which pushes you slightly back towards centralised but there’s still a world of a difference.
So, what’s so good about Git? Well, lots. But first and foremost is it’s exceptionally powerful yet simple branching and merging that just works. And works fast – remember, with Git everything is local.
One work flow that used to kill me in SVN was that you’d be implementing feature X but someone needed bug Y fixed immediately involving some of the same code. Getting just the fix for Y in was tough and complicated. And branching in SVN isn’t quick or simple. In Git, I branch from the main development branch for every new feature, bug fix, etc and then merge what I need between them and back into develop when they’re ready to be pushed back to the agreed canonical repository.
I’ve been so impressed with Git that I’ve moved an open source project we created in Open Solutions over to Github: ViMbAdmin. I’ve also forced the rest of my team in Open Solutions over to Git and migrated a number of customer projects already. And we’re reaping productivity rewards!
How we work Git for projects was taken from this excellent post which I would fully recommend:Â A successful Git branching model.
We’ve added a new service to our website: Data Centre Services. In reality, this is a service we have been providing since our inception in 2007 and our employees have been doing for other companies long before that.
We’ve added a new service to our website: Data Centre Services. In reality, this is a service we have been providing since our inception in 2007 and our employees have been doing for other companies long before that.
By data centre technical services we mean that Open Solutions provides a full data centre service portfolio including:
And, of course, intelligent engineers with problem solving ability!
We’re very familiar with all the carrier neutral data centres around Dublin as well as most of the carrier owned data centres. We also have good relationships and contacts with data centres in Cork and Galway.
Continuing on from today’s earlier post, Benchmarking the Mikrotik Routerboard RB1100, I now present some results for the RB750 and RB750G using the same methodology and platform.
The RB750 and the RB750G are two identical looking routers intended for the SOHO environment:
The specifications for the RB750 (with differences for the RB750G in italics and parenthesis) are:
Both routers come with an L4 license of Mikritik’s RouterOS which is built on the Linux kernel so anyone familiar with Linux networking will get up to speed on these boxes in no time.
As a disclaimer in case it is not clear, all routing tests are done using just two ports – one for the traffic generator and one for the receiver – with the device under testing routing the packets between two networks. As such, on the RB750, the maximum throughput we could achieve would be 100Mbps.
I ran tests for plain routing and also, in evaluating it for certain uses, over a VPN tunnel.
All results are presented below. Given the wealth of features, I think these are super boxes at a super price. So far I’ve put them on the end of an Imagine DSL line providing IPv4 and v6 over PPPoE and the end of a 30Mb UPC line taking its UPC IP via DHCP. They provide firewall, NAT, port forwarding, OpenVPN tunnels, QoS, DHCP, DNS caching and VLANs for phone / VoIP and managment networks.
