Telium Support Group

Don’t worry about your software. It will run for 60 days on the temporary license and if needed we can send you another temporary license by email.

Since the USB keys were never used we can issue a replacement set of USB keys. There is a $150 charge to cover the keys, shipping and handling, and we will email you an invoice for the replacement keys shortly.

Note that if the USB keys were used and then lost, you would have to purchase an entirely new software license since this situation enables a separate instance of our software to run. Normally you would claim this amount on your office insurance for a lost asset.

[discussion moved to email]

First you must enable insecure updates on your Windows DNS server as follows:

1. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click DNS.
2. Under DNS, double-click the applicable DNS server, double-click Forward Lookup Zones
3. Right-click the applicable zone.
4. Click Properties.
5. In the Dynamic updates box, click to allow insecure updates
6. Repeat the above for the associated reverse lookup zone
7. Click OK.

Next, you need to add some code to your Asterisk pre-start event handler to update the DNS entries:


#!/bin/bash
# Update DNS server with this IP 192.x.x.x address
HOST=pbx.mydomain.local
IP=$(ip addr | grep 192 | awk ‘{print $2}’ | cut -f 1 -d/)
TTL=600
SERVER1=192.168.0.2
SERVER2=192.168.1.2
#—————————————————————————-
NSU=/tmp/nsupdate.data
echo “server ${SERVER1}” > ${NSU}
echo “update delete $HOST A” >> ${NSU}
echo “update add $HOST ${TTL} A ${IP}” >> ${NSU}
echo “update delete $HOST PTR” >> ${NSU}
echo “update add $HOST ${TTL} PTR ${IP}” >> ${NSU}
echo “send” >> ${NSU}
logger “asterisk.start.pre updating DNS for host ${HOST} to IP ${IP} on server ${SERVER1}”
nsupdate -v ${NSU}
echo “server ${SERVER2}” > ${NSU}
echo “update delete $HOST A” >> ${NSU}
echo “update add $HOST ${TTL} A ${IP}” >> ${NSU}
echo “update delete $HOST PTR” >> ${NSU}
echo “update add $HOST ${TTL} PTR ${IP}” >> ${NSU}
echo “send” >> ${NSU}
logger “asterisk.start.pre updating DNS for host ${HOST} to IP ${IP} on server ${SERVER2}”
nsupdate -v ${NSU}
rm -f ${NSU}


Run result 3 means that it is taking too long to start Asterisk/FreePBX and something is wrong, so HAAst gives up.

In your case there are two compounding factors. First the old hardware is probably slowing started, but to an acceptable level. Second, FreePBX’s startup script can be very slow as it resets permissions on lots files, etc. If you start the FreePBX service manually you will even see a warning message about slow startup (and a link to their wiki on how to speed it up).

Your choices are to speedup the FreePBX start (as outlined by Sangoma on their website), or, increase the amount of time HAAst will wait. To properly solve the problem try to start the FreePBX service directly (with the HAast service disabled). Check for errors onscreen or in the log, and confirm how long it takes for FreePBX to start.

If you really can’t solve the reason for slow FreePBX start, then edit the maxstarttime (in haast.conf) to allow for a slower start. Note that if the error occurs on failover only (HAast already running) the promotesnoozetime is also available – but check with Telium support before you play with these values.

You should place the new file in your /usr/local/haast folder, and remove the old file called haast.license or rename is to haast.lisence.old

Upon next HAAst service restart the new license file will be used. The new license allows you to install new upgrades to HAAst, and benefit from new features as they are released. The new license file will also reflect the updated expiry date for your maintenance agreement (in terms of support and upgrades).

In case you have multiple HAAst license files (following one or more maintenance agreement renewals) then this is how HAAst picks which license file to use: When HAAst starts it will first look for a file called haast.license and use that as the license. If that file does not exist then HAAst will look for a file called haast.XXXXX.license where XXXXX is your license number. If there are multiple files that match this format then HAAst will choose the one with the highest license number (most recent). If you have multiple HAAst license files and you want HAAst to use a particular one then you can create a symlink from haast.license to the file you wish.

I think you are mixing up some network terms/concepts, but I’ll offer a solution to your problem and some networking concepts along the way.

First, the reason we recommend placing the gateway on the management subnet is that when a node promotes/demotes the route to the other peer must not change. If the route does change then the PeerLink will drop and both of your nodes may attempt to promote.

You can safely place the gateway on the VoIP subnet if:

• the addresses of your management NICs of your two nodes are on the same subnet since they will never make use of the gateway; or
• you create a permanent route which tells each node how to find the other across the management network.

So long as you setup your nodes such that management traffic will always go in/out the management NIC then you can configure your gateway/default route however you like.

HAAst performs all NIC control using the Linux system API; it does not use network configuration scripts (such as ifcfg-ethX, ifup, ifdown, etc). These scripts you are referring to are Linux distribution specific, and are ignored by HAAst. All configuration of a shared VoIP NIC is accomplished in the [voipnic] stanza of the haast.conf file.

In order to perform other actions on the PBX at the time of promotion/demotion (i.e. becoming the active or becoming the standby node), you need to use the HAAst event handler system. For example, if you wanted to change the default route of the PBX when it is promoted, you could create a file called /usr/local/haast/events/asterisk.start.pre which contains:


#!/bin/bash
# Delete old default route
ip route del default via 172.31.254.1 2>&1
# Add new default route
ip route add default via 172.31.253.1 2>&1


And if you wanted to switch the default route back when the PBX is demoted, you could create a file called /usr/local/haast/events/asterisk.stop.post which reverses these statements. You can place any code you like in the event handler, but it should complete quickly (ideally < 5 seconds), so if you need to start long-running executables from the event handler be sure to fork them in the event handler code. For example, if you wanted to deleted all temporary files (which can run for several minutes) when the node becomes standby, your event handler file would contain (notice the ampersand which forks the command):

#!/bin/bash
rm -rf /tmp &


If you want to open/close ports in a firewall, control virtual machine functions, etc. then the event handler system is the right way to accomplish this. Just be sure to fork each command, or fork a single bash script which serializes those commands if any of these commands can run for an extended period of time.

Please note that event handlers are only available in the Commercial Unlimited edition of HAAst. See the EDITIONS tab of the HAAst web page to see what functionality is available in each HAAst edition.

The “FEATURES” page for HAAst on the Telium website is far from complete. I would compare our “FEATURES” page to the window sticker of a new car at a dealership. It shows the highlights of a car but is not an exhaustive list of all features.

The root cause of your problem is a regression (bug) in your Linux distro. There have been similar Linux regressions noted by Digium in the past (eg: https://issues.asterisk.org/jira/browse/ASTERISK-15603)

The solution is to use the HAAst event handler to create the missing directory for Asterisk, before Asterisk even starts.

Create the file /usr/local/haast/events/asterisk.start.pre with the following contents:


#!/bin/bash
If [ ! -d /var/run/asterisk ] ; then
mkdir /var/run/asterisk
chown asterisk:asterisk /var/run/asterisk
fi

and set the permissions on /usr/local/haast/events/asterisk.start.pre to 550:


chmod 550 /usr/local/haast/events/asterisk.start.pre

Note: The event handler system (including use of the asterisk.start.pre file) is restricted to the Commercial Unlimited edition of HAAst only.