At the start of this process I decided to use the Centos ISO for installing FusionPBX. Well, I'm beginning to question this decision now for the following reasons:
1. although I can update the FusionPBX code very easily with a single button to press, I cannot update the Freeswitch version without learning how to compile updates from git. This is because there are no updates available for FusionPBX using a package manager in Centos at this time.
2. There are permission issues in the Centos image - as you will have already seen earlier in my blog - I've fixed some of them but I suspect that there are others as there are still some things that don't work right.
3. It seems that Centos is not the most efficient OS and takes more memory to function well than something like FreeBSD does.
So I'm looking to change to FreeBSD. Actually to be more precise, I'm looking to change to pfsense because this runs on FreeBSD and actually uses an even more stripped down version of FreeBSD so that it runs with less memory. Doing this apparently solves all the problems I've identified above. I'm going to start by trying pfsense 1.2.3 not pfsense 2 as I understand it isn't quite working well with version 2 yet.
UPDATE: Well, I've installed pfsense a few days back (using the download here: http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=46) and loaded fusionpbx on top of it (using these instructions: http://wiki.fusionpbx.com/index.php/PfSense_Install#pfSense_1.2.3_or_pfSense_2.0). I'm still fiddling with the setup a little and experimenting with it and when I'm happy I'll post more details. For now the update is that it seems to be good, although I think I may have a permission problem right now that I need to overcome and document. One of the nice benefits that there seems to be is that pfsense appears to come already setup with OpenVPN which means that once I have that up and running remote administration should be very straightforward in theory, though I haven't tried it yet.
Warning: I have been informed that there is a problem running fusionpbx on an embedded version of pfsense - apparently due to the file system used by pfsense, some data is lost when the machine is rebooted and this impacts the operation of fusionpbx. This issue apparently does not apply to pfsense installed on a harddrive though.
My conclusions may not suit you. You need to work out what is important to you and to test it yourself!
Really nice blog you have going on here. FusionPBX and Freeswitch are Really amazing projects. I've also tried the bluebox GUI @ 2600hz.com for Freeswitch. Their GUI looks really better then FusionPBX but bluebox is still not working under windows and lacks so many nice features in comparison to FusionPBX.
ReplyDeleteCongrats for your blog.
The challenge of making it work on pfSense is that pfSense has removed the tools to be able to compile FreeSWITCH. In order to upgrade FreeSWITCH will require building it on a box that uses the same version of FreeBSD and copying it over. Or waiting for new builds of FreeSWITCH.
ReplyDeleteCentOS is a popoular choice. As far as ram is concerned it reserves it for later use rather than releasing it immediately. I recently added detailed CentoOS instructions.
http://wiki.fusionpbx.com/index.php?title=CentOS_Install
Responding to sergiomoreira FusionPBX development has focused on what counts the most and that is features. Recent features that were added to FusionPBX granular permissions, domain based multi-tenant. In the future FusionPBX will have a template based front end that will allow it to have more than one front end to choose from. Including jQuery and jQuery mobile style front ends and the potential is there for others.