COMP 6204 VOIP:

FreePBX
(Asterisk based)
. . . . . . . . . .

Installation and configuration report

with physical Cisco Phones, the Issues,
Problems and Troubleshooting and Final
Result

Written By Nathan Fitness 27026688

 Table of Contents:

Introduction............................................................................................. 3

Installation............................................................................................... 4

Operating System Patching....................................................................6

Cisco Phone firmware.............................................................................7

Cisco Phone Configuring...........................................................................7

. . . . . . . . . .
Introduction

This report is going to document what I have done in attempting top get FreePBX installed and
configured to work with Cisco phones loaded with sip firmware.

There are putty log files included as well as screenshots

The hardware used is as follows:

Pc:

Core 2 Duo E8400 @

4Gb DDR2 800Mhz
80gb 2.5” sata

Phones: used (tried)

Cisco
IP Phone SPA502G
Serial number: CCQ16421HAH
Mac address: 58BFEA11A7CE
PID / VID SPA502G V02

IP Phone 7941
Serial number: FCH120797Z0
Mac address: 001F6C802164
PID / VID CP-7941GV02

IP Phone 7911
Serial number: FCH141192ZJ
Mac address: 081FF3624FC1
PID / VID CP-7911GV08

Switches:

Cisco Catalyst 3560 POE-48

Serial number: CAT1049ZHNH
Mac address: 001A6DB18880
PID / VID WS-C3560-48PS-S V04

Generic POE switch

Serial number: PS201604220004
Mac address:
PID 1004POE-AF

2
Installation

Installation of FreePBX 1805.1 x64 was via dvd-r written and verified using easyburn.

The operations system base is proprietary to Sangoma (who releases FreePBX)

The Installation instructions followed was from: https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/PPS/Installing

%2BSNG7%2BOfficial%2BDistro

This had to be used twice as after the first install the computer would refuse to receive an IP
address via DHCP.

One everything was checked for consistent connectivity, the install was run that second rime and
the computer successfully got assigned the number 192.168.1.153/24.

Once the computer ______ ______ ______ __ __

had booted it | ___| | ___ \| ___ \\ \ / /
shows the | |_ _ __ ___ ___ | |_/ /| |_/ / \ V /
following: | _| | '__| / _ \ / _ \| __/ | ___ \ / \
| | | | | __/| __/| | | |_/ // /^\ \
\_| |_| \___| \___|\_| \____/ \/ \/

NOTICE! You have 2 notifications! Please log into the UI to see

them!
Current Network Configuration
+-----------+-------------------+--------------------------+
| Interface | MAC Address | IP Addresses |
+-----------+-------------------+--------------------------+
| eth0 | 00:1C:C0:1E:A2:C6 | 192.168.1.153 |
| | | fe80::21c:c0ff:fe1e:a2c6 |
+-----------+-------------------+--------------------------+

Please note most tasks should be handled through the GUI.

You can access the GUI by typing one of the above IPs in to your
web browser.
For support please visit:
http://www.freepbx.org/support-and-professional-services

+------------------------------------------------------------+
| There are 22 System updates available. |
| Run yum update to update them. |
| No PBX Module updates information available |
+------------------------------------------------------------+

3
Once you have an IP number you can access the Web based GUI

Unfortunately this distro is only useable with Sangoma’s own IP Phones. This means we need
some more instructions to modify the install to get Cisco phones working.

4
Operating System Patching

Firsts things first – Static IP

I chose a static IP as it makes sense for a VOIP server to be always found at one IP number for
efficient scripts

The instructions I followed were found at: Wiki freepbx org how to set network settings from the cli

They were open the following file

nano /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcong-etho

change file to look like this:

then restart the network service via this command:

service network restart

Now the patching:

The instructions I followed were found at: https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FOP/Cisco

I started to configure via the console line directly at the pc, but found it was taking longer than
expected to proceed, so I switched to putty and ssh’d into the box.
This enabled me to “copy and paste” the lines from the website into the pc, a lot faster, and more
accurately.

There were a few command line issues due to updated files. An example is:

(Excerpt out of instructions via: https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FOP/Cisco)

Now source files are needed the source for mISDNuser is needed for Asterisk to build, but it won't
be installed.

cd ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES
yumdownloader --source asterisk13

the next line was to be:

wget http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/src-oss/suse/src/mISDNuser-2.1.0-
1.4.src.rpm

but since the file was not being found, I Had to change it to:

wget http://download.opensuse.org/source/tumbleweed/repo/oss/src/mISDNuser-2.1.0-
1.6.src.rpm

This slowed progress down a bit due to locating the new file via the source depository.

3
Once completed the rest of the build, except for a double up of patch10 while editing
asterisk13.spec via nano, went smoothly.

6
Cisco Phone firmware

Now we had the main part patched the rest should work (or not work)

Fist part was copying the phones flash firmware to the /tftpboot folder

Next we had to find and configure the network and user locales
This is where the instructions broke down – asks to refer to another website for answers…..so in
other words, even the writer had trouble understanding,

At the moment I have not fully understood the user and network locale files

Cisco Phone Configuring

Next up is individual configuration files for each phone according to their mac address

After copying and pasting the example into notepad, editing it and then via ssh and nano pasting
the contents into the folder under linux cli

We should have some response from the phones

Conclusion

This is where I am up to. (with no working phones)

I stopped and decided to try IPBX (asterisk based)

With success coming from ipbx eXpress with two working phones and working scripts
It was time to reattempt freepbx

One thing was certain, US$150 is cheap compared to the run around freepbx gives you just o
configure phones entirely manually.

With time spent on this freepbx project ticking into hours of frustration, and having to patch an
operating system in a way that renders upgrading scripts broken, just to get cisco p[hones
working to save US$150 is not worth the time and hassle. Not to mention that manually assigning
a static ip to the server and then installing a dhcp/tftp service. It makes a build your own setup
seem cost efficient.