Updating Asterisk

Wow, I've not blogged for a long time! (In fact I wrote the bulk of this post in March.) I'd like to say my publishing hiatus has been due to something very exciting and worthy of your envy but alas any such stories would be not much more than fantasy. In any event, my Twitterings no doubt have revealed just what has been keeping me busy. A family update may soon follow this posting but for the time being, technical matters have my attention.

In a moment of springtime madness, far too late at night and when I was far too tired, I decided it would be a great idea to bring my 1.4.21.2 Asterisk installation up to the (then) current 1.4.23.2 release. This was in no small part prompted by Clint's commissioning of his FreePBX VM while we were skiing in France at the beginning of March, although there was no particular problem that I expected to remedy with this update. Predictably, the whole process turned to custard and another six hours of my waking consciousness was squandered putting things right. Here are my top three learnings.

The renaming of Zaptel to DAHDI seems to be spectacularly poorly documented. I didn't manage to find any easy way of removing the Zaptel 1.4.11 drivers so I had to hack these out manually. Installing the DADHI 2.1.0.4 equivalent (with the 2.1.0.2 tools) was quite straightforward but, for a while, that was as far as I got. The DAHDI module would not load in Asterisk and there was no sign of my TDM400P card or its associated channels. I had to resort to reading the source code to find out what was wrong. The promised 'etc/asterisk/chan_dahdi.conf' generated file was missing but, in this event, the code looks for the old 'etc/asterisk/zapata.conf' which unfortunately no longer works. Again I was left to manual editing.

Testing my PSTN lines once DAHDI was again working reminded me that UK caller ID is received intermittently and I summised ths same fix I discussed here was required. However, following the massive search and replace that has been enacted on the Asterisk source code, the old patch failed completely. (I'd forgotten this was just one more reason why my sane half had planned to stick with the existing versions until some imperative made me move.) I manually modified the 1.4.23.2 chan_dahdi.c file to apply the same fix and generated the revised patch file (here). One more recompile and I was back in business.

Everything has been very stable since. From the logs I can see that without the patch I would have missed CID on one in every four calls or so.

Update: I've since updated to Asterisk 1.4.25.1 and Dahdi 2.2.0 without problems. The patch file I created for 1.4.23.2 applies to fine for this and all intervening versions.

Gmail gadgets

While I was (spending far too much time) investigating the best Gmail theme for my purposes, I had another look at the other bits in Labs that might prove interesting to me. Google's own gadgets didn't seem very inspiring but the "Add any gadget by URL" caught my eye as, perhaps, having the greatest potential.

The only obvious this I could see missing from this gadget is the facility to adjust the order of the gadgets that it displays, with its default behaviour to apparently sort everything alphabetically. Perhaps this is a deliberate deduplication as another Labs option, "Navbar drag and drop", does allow you to tailor the gadget layout to your needs.

Having tried a few, PolyClock is by far my favourite. For me, this has completely replaced the erstwhile essential Qlock application that I had installed quite liberally around my PC estate. The developer responded instantly when I found my chosen theme had a narrower Navbar than the default, causing scrollbars to be unnecessarily displayed, thanks Sterling! I'm sure my friends living in the future, by a few hours at least, will be grateful of me realising the time before I try to wake them up with Chat and other annoyances.

The only thing with these gadgets that's not so nice is that they tend not to be available over HTTPS. This causes an "Always use https" Gmail session to warn of mixed content. Hopefully this is something that will get better over time, as the gadgets become more popular.

As an aside, it's quite scary to me just how much I come to depend on Google's email service, especially when I'm away from home, and quite amazing how very, very infrequently it's ever let me down. Long may this continue!

Houdini hound

We're not sure if this is a consequence of Belle's "current condition" but we are very sure that in recent days she's become quite adept at escaping from her cage.

As she's still a puppy, Belle sleeps in her cage overnight and goes in there when we leave her home alone. It's quite her favourite place and she gets anxious when the door's closed and she's left on the outside. The cage apparently "provides territorial reassurance" and limits the area she has to guard when we're out and about.

Unfortunately, she's learnt how to break out of her confines by either flexing the door sufficiently that it bursts open or by forcing herself out through one of the corners. Either route must be very uncomfortable for her, particularly the latter.

Once out, and on her own, she immediately feels responsible for looking after the whole of the downstairs and it seems she finds this very stressful (as well as very exciting). Even more unfortunately, she manages to calm herself by jumping up on the settee and eating huge chunks out of the arm rest, scattering fabric, foam and hardboard all over the living room. After four episodes she's managed to make a whole big enough for a football to comfortably pass through, or indeed a significant part of me as it's at my end of the couch. :-|

I suppose we should think ourselves lucky that this is the only bit of furniture she's taken to "modifying". We've attempted to spoil her fun with the liberal use of cable ties (on the cage!) and, hopefully, this has put an end to her destruction. I'd weld the thing up if we didn't have to fold it down once in a while for transporting.

Heading into Winter

It seems I'm reminded every single day that Christmas is fast approaching. With teacher training days, autumnal illnesses and school half terms, we rarely seem to have a child free house or indeed a moment's peace and quiet. I'm very happy to report my personal shopper is doing a great job of getting everything ready for the festive event, so I suppose I shouldn't complain too much(!).

We're contenting ourselves with planning holidays for the next year. First will be another boys' trip high up into the French Alps. The star-studded guest list has the boy and I very excited, it will be good to catch up with all the foreigners (yes, even the one from Basingstoke). After that will come a two family trip to sunnier climes in Cyprus at the far end of the Mediterranean. The only depressing part of this is the £/€ exchange rate at the moment, fingers crossed that will bounce back a little before we travel.

Work for me is quite fun at the moment. I've just about got back into the routine of 9 to 5 and of going to bed at a reasonable hour. My journey to the office involves a 50 mile trip across the Pennines and Peak District. This trip can be very pretty, especially some of the sunrises and sunsets, but can also be pretty hairy with the heavily loaded quarry lorries and other locals / lunatics who choose to drive without lights in all but the pitch dark. The weather can be pretty spectacular too, so much so I've invested in chains and socks just to make sure I am able to make it home every night. I've not needed them - yet.

Belle's integration into family life has continued, pretty much to plan. She now knows her place in the pecking order and is generally a good deal more relaxed for that. The back garden still looks like we regularly host speedway races with an oval muddy track cut from corner to corner. We're having some fun and games walking her at the moment as, at just over eight months, she's currently "enjoying" her first season. This will also prove to be her last as she will be visiting the veterinarians in the New Year for a jolly good dose of spaying.

Other than that, not so much news at this end. How about you?

Web-non-sense?

In recent days I've found myself perusing the electric Internet through the eyes of a rather prudish WebSense device. The policy that has been deployed is as draconian as I've witnessed in a real World environment but some things are more than odd. For example...

I wanted to refer to a friend's posting on his blog. Trying to visit http://clintspot.blogspot.com/ fairly predictably redirected me to a page saying that "personal and social networking" sites were disallowed.

With my tutting out loud, a colleague said he thought I was "doing it wrong" as he was able to reach my (this) blog from his work PC. A vigorous investigation was immediately kicked off.

Indeed this blog is available via the filter. Clint's blog is so far the only blogspot.com site I've been unable to reach. Random sites such as http://clint.blogspot.com/ and http://spot.blogspot.com/ are rendered without complaint.

So, what's up with http://clintspot.blogspot.com/? Am I missing something? Or perhaps WebSense can't cope with the NZ accent... :-)

Hurrah for version 2.0

Following on from my rather miserable post berating Google for letting themselves down, I was delighted to see that they promptly took my comments on board and on the 23rd announced v2.0 of their "Gmail for mobile" application. Now I've had chance to live with it for a couple of days I feel I need to rave on once more about Goliath's latest offering.

I use the S60 3rd Edition version of the app on my Nokia E71. I've been very happy with this handset, finding it much quicker and more reliable than the E61i and E61 that preceded it (although at the time I said the same about each of these). The built-in IMAP client for my work email is good but I like the threaded interface of the Gmail app and have persevered in spite of the lack of a similar offline mode.

As my current workplace happens to be sited in a "chuffin' great 'ole" in the Derbyshire hills, cellular network reception varies from extremely patchy to non-existant. With the old v1.5 app, when I did find a signal it would frequently not last long enough for me to connect and read my email online. Now with v2.0 I can do a quick burst of send/receive and then peruse my inbox and compose messages/replies at my leisure.

Another good thing is that I can now have the "always use HTTPS" option ticked in my Gmail settings as this version doesn't barf in the same way as its predecessor.

For my own reference, I installed the updated app on my venerable E61. The Gmail app on this phone had become progressively slower, so much so that in the end it took over 30 seconds from clicking start to actually seeing something appear on the phone's screen. Whilst not as quick as my current phone, this version starts up quickly enough on the old hardware.

So, happy again with Google Corp I've decided to waste more hours of my life on the new Google Earth for iPhone/iPod touch. Très super.

A Saturday morning lie-in

With the boy under strict instructions not to leave his room until 8am at the earliest, Mrs S and I were looking forward to a reasonable lie-in after an unusual string of early morning starts during the past week. Thanks go to CE Electric UK for preventing our attempted lapse into this slothful sort of behaviour.

07:32 Power off. Everyone's house alarms sounding, my UPSes beeping and Mrs S nagging. :-(
08:16 Power back on but at 88VAC. Stuff with motors being fried. :-|
08:32 Power off. Motors breathe a sigh of relief. :-)
08:48 Power restored. :-)

A few things spring to mind. Firstly, I noted the hexadecimal symmetry of the timings, all taken from the UPS logs. Secondly, what the chuff caused a power cut at seven thirty on a Saturday morning? Hardly a time when demand would be at a peak. And thirdly, I discovered that I am unwilling to fire up my generator when it's early and cold. Perhaps I should have splashed out on the auto-start option after all.

We're now looking forward to the extra hour in bed tonight as the clocks go back. Woe betide anything or anyone who wakes me up in the morning!