Matt G. Watson

Archive for the ‘How To’ Category

Synopsis

This HowTo will guide you through the process of installing and configuring AstManProxy.  AstManProxy is a proxy server for Asterisk’s Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI).  The reason we want to use a proxy server infront of AMI is that AMI was not really designed to handle alot of simultanous connections and can cause extreme performance problems on the PBX.  A proxy server like AstManProxy can help this problem by acting as a hub for all of those connections and aggregating them into a single connection to AMI.  Using a proxy server also allows us to have a little more control over the input and output formats.  Asterisk uses a rather unique protocol for AMI, one which some developers find rather difficult to interface with.  AstManProxy can help by allowing you to interface using a REST/XML-RPC like interface, as well as getting plain text or XML responses.  Something that developers would much rather deal with. AstManProxy also has an ‘autofilter’ function which also helps developers interface by automatically filtering out un-wanted messages from Asterisk. (more…)

Synopsis

Sendpage is a SNPP server available for Linux (and other UNIX varients probably) that allows you to send SMS text messages to either your cellular phone or pager.  How does it differ than using the SMTP gateway that your cell carrier probably already provides?  Well the biggest benefit is that it does not require Internet access to deliver pages.  Instead Sendpage delivers pages to your device through Paging Central servers that most cellular carriers offer - many of which for free.  Paging Central servers implement a protocol called TAP which is used for one-way text messaging.  This means if you are using paging to notify support employees about server outages and such, your monitoring/alerting solution does not require internet access to deliver pages… which means if your internet connection is the device that dies on you, your support people will know about it.  For instance, we use sendpage in combination with ZenOSS core for alerting our support staff of problems.  ZenOSS has native support for SNPP built right in. (more…)

Synopsis

This How To will be a guide to installing Zenoss Core on Gentoo Linux. Zenoss is an enterprise-grade open-source IT Monitoring and Alerting suite. This guide should work on any Linux distribution, but it has only been tested on Gentoo Linux. (more…)

Synopsis

This HowTo is a guide on using Asterisk’s AlarmReceiver() application to make Asterisk act as an Ademco Contact ID alarm monitoring station. In short this application is capable of receiving calls from your alarm panel every time an event occurs on your system. This is essentially a complete home grown self-monitored alarm setup.

I should mention upfront that this application is not approved by the Underwriter’s Laboratory and as such, any insurance benefits you have from having an alarm system will probably be null and void with your insurance company if you go down this path. Personally, I think alarm systems in homes that do not utilize cellular connections are useless anyways. Landlines are too easy to disconnect on most homes… rendering the alarm monitoring useless.

Additionally, this guide assumes that your system is already programmed for monitored and that you just want to interface it with Asterisk. (more…)