On Feb 13, 2007, at 11:53 AM, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
On Tue, Feb 13, 2007 at 10:23:17AM -0500, Tom Rymes wrote:
[snip]
Not to start a flame-war, but I completely disagree. Troubleshooting
a GUI is much easier, given that you don't have to scout for typos,
transposed numbers, etc throughout the dialplan. With the GUI, you
have to double check the information that you input into the GUI, but
that's it. As for hardware, it should be no more difficult to get
Trixbox to play nicely with hardware than any other Asterisk install.
You may have to patch and/or recompile zaptel, asterisk, etc, but
that's no different than what you would have to do with a non-Trixbox
install.
Hmmm... I installed a trixbox system. 'yum update' failed to work, due
to funny games with yum's configuration. A default centos server
installation did not have the same issue.
This is just one example.
I have never run into this problem before, and the only change that I
know of was to exclude the kernel from updates (to avoid having to
recompile zaptel) Of course, if you want to update the kernel, change
the yum settings and download and recompile zaptel. YMMV, so if it
doesn't work for you, then act accordingly, I suppose. As a
counterpoint to your example, I have installed Trixbox easily and
successfuly many times with Sangoma hardware.
(and you really shouldn't have to in almost all cases)
A GUI does its absraction. By that it hides some information that it
deems irrelevant. In many cases this information is relevant.
My point that you quoted originally referred to the fact that you
shouldn't normally have to recompile Zaptel, Asterisk, or anything
else to get hardware working with Trixbox. As for your comment about
the GUI, I agree. My earlier e-mail tried to state that neither the
GUI or the non-GUI method of installing and configuring Asterisk is
better. The GUI is better for some, whereas the non-GUI is better for
others. If the limitations imposed by the GUI are too much for your
application, then the GUI isn't for you. If the relative difficulty
of administering an Asterisk server without a GUI is too much for
your application, then use the GUI.
One example: just figuring out if FreePBX actually dial, or not at
all,
requires either a sufficiently-trained asterisk guy to review the
log/cli just to understand why a call did not go through.
I fail to see how this is different from a non-FreePBX setup? Don't
you still need a sufficiently-trained Asterisk Guy to view the logs
and CLI to determine why your custom dialplan didn't dial? Not to
mention to create that custom dialplan in the first place? How does
troubleshooting a non-GUI asterisk install require less technical
know-how than troubleshooting a Free-PBX system?
Anyhow, I reiterate that I don't think that either solution is better
than the other. Determine your requirements, weigh the pros and cons
of the various GUIs and of running without a GUI and see which is the
best fit for your requirements. I only object to those who say that
"No one should use Trixbox/FreePBX, it's too restrictive" or "Running
Asterisk with a GUI is always Better." Both statements are erroneous.
Tom
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