On 7/29/06, Mike Ashton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <SNIP>
And when it is done, everything works. But there are shortcomings also: - firewall is not running - ssh accepts root login - no ntp synch running - g729 and g723 are not installed so only work in pass through. - ftp is running and accepts anon connections Now these shortcomings are there for a reason, assumption is running on an internal LAN, is for a home or a small office, you want CRM. The installs I have are very stable, and since it is so easy to install, you can build a test machine very quickly before deployment. On a P4 1.6takes 40 minutes to have a fully configured machine running and most of that is the compile time for the optimization, only really takes about 20 minutes of interaction/configure time ( longer if it is your first time, I've done about 10 ). The guys who have developed ths have done a great job for the target they are trying to hit. They have allowed for customization using includes, so they don't get whacked when the system regenerates conf files. But if your looking for a lean asterisk machine, this is not it since you have apache, ftp, mysql, Sugar all running on one box. So if you are building for a call center,a TISP then TrixBox is not your solution. But if you are a provider of small office solutions, you'd be hard pressed to do a better job yourself with fully integrated CRM. They have also integrated an update script for fetching and installing updates, and have a very active wiki. Mike <SNIP>
Mike, That is one of the most balanced appraisals of trixbox vs. naked asterisk I have ever read - nice going. I think you are mistaken, however, about anonymous access being enabled by default on trixbox, I just checked mine and anonymous login fails (and I know I havn't tweaked the config). As to the host based firewall, it certainly wouldn't hurt to set one but, in my opinion, any server should be in a dmz behind a dedicated firewall (as well as host based iptables, etc.) as a best practice. Your comments about the g7* codecs are spot on. Blaine, like some on the list, I do not have commercial experience in the production pbx world - but a fair amount in the IT world with what a production server ought to look like and how it should behave - so apply the amount of salt to my comments as you see fit. I have been running trixbox at home (and asterisk at home prior to that) for, wow, come to think of it, its been about a year. Trixbox is a nicely integrated solution. I have repeatedly read individuals (including in this thread) claim that it is not as flexible as installing asterisk from scratch on your favorite distribution. Personally, I can't agree with that: there is absolutely nothing that I personally have wanted to configure that I could not with trixbox. As one small example, I successfully integrated the control of my mp3 jukebox software (gjukebox.sourceforge.net) running on another server with my trixbox installation so that one number will pause, another will resume and a third will skip to the next song. Integrating this with trixbox was no harder than doing so with naked asterisk. I am not suggesting that this is the be all and end all of asterisk integration (far from it), but I think it does illustrate that making trixbox jump through hoops that the author(s) didn't put in the web based GUI is not difficult. I'm sure there are configuration options that may be more difficult but I have not run across any personally. Basically, trixbox comes with a number of configuration options already setup for you. The trick with trixbox (no pun intended) is to only manually edit the /etc/asterisk/*_custom.conf files and let trixbox, or more specifically freepbx, manage the standard configuration files via the web based GUI. Having said all that, I would agree with some of the insightful statements already made in this thread. One pearl of wisdom is: know every piece of software that goes into a production system. Personally, I would have no concerns with deploying trixbox into a SOHO/SME but would consider carefully whether to do so at say a call center. Not because there is anything wrong with trixbox, but simply because it has a fairly aggressive release schedule, and, until recently the upgrade path between releases can be dicey. As to patches, etc. the base distribution is CentOS, a.k.a. Red Hat Enterprise Edition only free, arguably the most widely distributed linux in production installations. The installation comes configured to pull updates from the default CentOS repositories so you do not have to wait for updates to be officially 'blessed' by the trixbox folks. (As to whether fresh updates will clobber your installation, well, you can test that in your non-production environment). And don't worry too much about starting a flame war on win vs. linux on this list. - but word to the wise, keep your comments about vi vs emacs to yourself :)
