A400M with G400P on a Debian

Hello there,

I have recently purchased an A400M along with a G400P GSM card. As I have other distro specific applications written for Debian, I'm trying to utilize both cards to work under Asterisk.

I have tried several things just to make sure both cards are functioning;
- installed trixbox on another system (was able to use the A400M without any issues, could not install G400P)
- on the debian system I have tried to install both cards using the http://www.chan-extra.org/index.php/OpenVox_G400P_User_Manual_for_dahdi how-to document. I can see that after the boot process all LED's on the A400M are lit and related operational LEDs on the G400P are functional (but I do not know how I can test the GSM card, as the Asterisk 1.6.2.11 - that's been installed with the how-to - does not accept "gsm show" command on the CLI)

It appears that I was able to load the correct drivers for both A400M and G400P in my second attempt (with Debian) as the LEDs function as supposed.

Here are my questions;
1. How should I configure the trunks and channels in Asterisk? Which file to edit and what to enable?
2. What are the new gsm related commands for the Asterisk CLI? How can I try and send an SMS? In the old versions I guess it was pretty simple "gsm send sms 1 1357078XX "hello, this is openvox gsm card." would accomplish the job.
3. In the how-to document for G400P, you're using both Bristuff and DAHDI in two different how-to documents? Which one do you prefer?

Thanks,
Hakan

i] Last edited by dolmax at 2010-11-20 09:13 [/i

Hi,
Please send ssh to my Email, I will configure it for you, we will put out the chan-extra version with the command 'dahdi_genconf' working later!
The way of send SMS is the same with bristuff. Which driver is chosen is depand on the asterisk version which you choose, the latest version of asterisk can use bristuff is asterisk-1.4.26!
My Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Thanks for a response. I just wanted to add a couple of things that I have accomplished after my last message.

1. I have used a separate system for testing the cards. I have installed a clean copy of CentOS, and used the G400P User Manual for dahdi as the guide. This time I was able to operate the G400P with success.
2. After the installation I have noticed that both cards were recognized by the OS. I understand that G400P driver is now part of the udev set, and the card is initiated way before the DAHDI command set is realized during boot procedure. The only issue that I have realized about the G400P is, if I reboot the system, the card is non-functional. If I turn the system OFF and ON it works as expected. So I need to find a way to kill the device before the reboot procedure.
3. Once the G400 is recognized by Asterisk, I was able to use the "gsm" command set in the CLI mode. So sending SMS messages and receiving them via the CLI monitor are accomplished. I need to find a way to enable local character encoding.

I can give you access on SSH to the server, but can you please point me into the direction on how I should rewrite the following configuration files, in order to enable both cards;

/etc/dahdi/system.conf
/etc/asterisk/extra-channels.conf

I would like to learn the process.

Thanks to svolta.

Using SSH he has connected to the production server and reinstalled the packages from the SVN repository. The latest packages were updated in order to query several cards installed in a server. In my case A400P + G400P. In my earlier attempts, I was able to install A400P and G400P alone but not together.

Once the installation is completed using the G400P using Dahdi HOWTO, you use the following set of commands to finalize the procedure.

modprobe opvxg4xx
service dahdi restart
dahdi_genconf

Genconf script edits the /etc/dahdi/system.conf file. You'll notice that both cards will appear in that conf file.

I do however have a two issues with this configuration;
1. I can use the GSM channels and the FXO channels in my extensions.conf file. For example, if I use "exten => _NXXXXXX,1,Dial(dahdi/3/${EXTEN})" parameter in the dialplan, I can use the 3rd channel in my FXO card. But I could not locate how to assign all four channels in this plan. I want the users to be able to dial a seven digit number, and have the system dial the number through which channel is available at the FXO board. How can I do that?
2. I have checked and noticed that I can use the "asterisk" command anywhere, but the startup script which should be inside the /etc/init.d/ folder is not available. So currently I can not start asterisk server during boot. How can I create related script?

Thanks