asterisk users - Nov 2003 - *, Fritz!PCI and strange behavior

I'm testing * (CVS-09/16/03-02:07:49 with zaprtc 0.0.1) with Fritz!PCI
(chan_capi 0.3.0), and have a couple of funny things - I wonder if anyone
else has seen them:

- Now and then, * just exits. Until now I had lowish-level verbosity on,
  so all I saw was 'Executing last minute cleanups'. What can trigger
  * exits? (in other words, what should I pay attention to when
  attempting to debug this?)

- Very often, after * runs for a while, it stops recognizing incoming
  ISDN calls and refuses to send out ISDN calls. The funny thing is, 
  restarting * or CAPI doesn't work - I have to shutdown both, unplug
  and replug the ISDN cable, and then after startup everything works
  again. At first, I thought that it might be a bad cable, so I taped
  down everything in order to prevent it from moving. This didn't help.
  I really do not understand why the thing with the cable is necessary.

Any light that you can shine on this would be most helpful. OBTW: the
answer "don't use a Fritz" is not applicable here - I'm trying
to assess
the feasibility of making a <300$ ISDN SoHo PBX...

-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.tric.nl     <cg@tric.nl>
tric, the new way           helpdesk/ticketing software, VoIP/CTI, 
                            web applications, custom development

Hi Cees, 

I have a similar setup, I don't use zaprtc on that machine though, it also
has a X100P to deal with timings.
> -----Original Message-----
> - Now and then, * just exits. Until now I had lowish-level 
> verbosity on,
>   so all I saw was 'Executing last minute cleanups'. What can
trigger
>   * exits? (in other words, what should I pay attention to when
>   attempting to debug this?)
This I have not seen myself.
> - Very often, after * runs for a while, it stops recognizing incoming
>   ISDN calls and refuses to send out ISDN calls. The funny thing is, 
>   restarting * or CAPI doesn't work - I have to shutdown both, unplug
>   and replug the ISDN cable, and then after startup everything works
>   again. At first, I thought that it might be a bad cable, so I taped
>   down everything in order to prevent it from moving. This 
> didn't help.
>   I really do not understand why the thing with the cable is 
> necessary.
I have seen this too. Freakishly enough rebooting the machine is not good
enough, but leaving it powered down for a night works good too - it saves
the cable trick ;-)

Still, I too would like to know what causes this, but I have no idea where
to start on it...
> Any light that you can shine on this would be most helpful. OBTW: the
> answer "don't use a Fritz" is not applicable here - I'm 
> trying to assess
> the feasibility of making a <300$ ISDN SoHo PBX...
Wait another while for KPJ to finish the ZapBRI stuff ? :-) By the way,
X100P's work like a charm for this, except for dutch callerid...

Florian

> I'm testing * (CVS-09/16/03-02:07:49 with zaprtc 0.0.1) with Fritz!PCI
> (chan_capi 0.3.0), and have a couple of funny things - I wonder if 
> anyone else has seen them:
> 
> - Now and then, * just exits. Until now I had lowish-level
> verbosity on,
>   so all I saw was 'Executing last minute cleanups'. What can
trigger
>   * exits? (in other words, what should I pay attention to when
>   attempting to debug this?)
I have seen Asterisk spontaneously exit very occasionally, but not at 
this particular point.
 
> - Very often, after * runs for a while, it stops recognizing incoming
>   ISDN calls and refuses to send out ISDN calls.
I have this. If I try to dial out, I get an "all channels are busy at 
this time" error, when they are not.
>The funny thing is, 
>   restarting * or CAPI doesn't work - I have to shutdown both, unplug
>   and replug the ISDN cable, and then after startup everything works
>   again. At first, I thought that it might be a bad cable, so I taped
>   down everything in order to prevent it from moving. This
> didn't help.
>   I really do not understand why the thing with the cable is 
> necessary.
Straight asterisk restart always clears this condition for me.
 
> Any light that you can shine on this would be most helpful. OBTW: the 
> answer "don't use a Fritz" is not applicable here - I'm
trying to
> assess the feasibility of making a <300$ ISDN SoHo PBX...
I think the problem may be related to call progress indication from the
ISDN line. I have UK ISDN2e (packaged as Business Highway - which
includes what is effectively a telco-owned TA with two analogue ports).
I have noticed that outgoing channels getting tied up corresponds to
placing a call which is terminated prematurely (e.g. hangup before
completing dialing) or dialing a call which can't be completed because
the dialed PSTN subscriber number is invalid. I've learned to live with
it - but it would be great to get to the bottom of it.

Patrick

> I'm testing * (CVS-09/16/03-02:07:49 with zaprtc 0.0.1) with Fritz!PCI
> (chan_capi 0.3.0), and have a couple of funny things - I wonder if anyone
> else has seen them:
Hmm, I'm running plain vanilla * v0.5 and have no problems with that
particular card, same version of chan_capi. Did you compile fcpci driver
yourself? I'm on RH9.

Peter