This Thanksgiving was one of the best Thanksgivings I’ve had in a very, very long time. Since the days that the whole family use to be together, and we’d play spy, or Mike, Dan and Ben would talk about girls and pat my head and say ‘when you’re older’. I miss my cousins, but Robin and John, their kids Dan and Alex, and of course Adury–but not so much her–are becoming family. There’s no seriousness, there’s no stifled laughter, it’s all…

Easy. Everyone talking at once, and I feel like I’m home. Will simply would not sit down for the life of him. Constantly getting up to help serve everyone, acting more like the woman than I was. And boy was there so much to eat, that the both of us were full a day later. Turkey, stuffing, sweet potato pie, mushrooms–oh lord, I can’t even go on, it was so mouth watering good. And the lasagna… Oh my god. Liz dropped the first batch on the floor–and everyone clapped. It’s not a Thanksgiving, they said, if you don’t drop something. Thankfully she made two. I would have died I couldn’t have had any. Ahaha.

The traditions have changed, and I had assumed all families were the same. Instead of sports being on, it was video games, and let me tell you I enjoyed the video games a whole lot more. Though secretly I miss the sports being on it the background. But this new life… it’s more lively and full of energy. And Lu was there! And the stories she had to tell got me laughing so hard.

And then Black Friday came. And I, claiming I didn’t want anything to do with it, turned to Will with big eyes and pleaded we go out. Luck he loves me, he said turning off FF9. He bought, surprise surprise Video Games, and got me a new wallet. I’m so pleased with it. Ahaha…

I wanna get closer to Jessie, but I’m unsure as to how to go about that. We’re like family, aren’t we? And Laura assures me that Jessie loves me. He asks about me all the time, she says. So there. He has a similar sense of humor as I do, and well. I dunno what or how to go about it.

Driving is much more fun than I had thought it would be. I guess I like it more since I’m alone, and I don’t have anyone judging me in the seat next to mine. Though I still drift to the shoulder. I tend to do that a lot. Eh.

My legs are getting worse. I can mind the pain while drivng, and while walking, but now they hurt when I lay down or sit. Just… they hurt. They burn. It’s usually my right leg/ankle that’s the biggest problem. I don’t know what to do about it. And I’m not so keen on getting more medication. And more, my week-long headaches are back. I mean, they use to be a lot worse than they are now, so I don’t really mind them as much, it’s just annoying.

Tra i file di configurazione di Asterisk, vincono a pari merito la il premio per i più inutilizzati extensions.ael e dundi.conf. La comunità degli utilizzatori del famoso IPPBX non sembra aver apprezzato lo sforzo di Mark Spencer e soci nel creare qualcosa di più dei soliti servizi. Eppure si tratta di due funzionalità molto potenti che semplificherebbero di molto la vita dei progettatori. Di AEL abbiamo già parlato in un precedente post, oggi volevo parlarvi dei miei esperimenti con DUNDi.

A cosa serve questo nuovo protocollo della premiata ditta Digium? A fare quello che tutti i progettatori di reti VoIP basate su Asterisk chiedevano da anni, anche se, quando la soluzione è arrivata nessuno se ne accorto. Con DUNDi è possibile condividere i piani di numerazione di macchine diverse, senza dover ricreare gli interni su ciascuna macchina. L’uovo di colombo è questo protocollo cifrato che interroga i vari servers alla ricerca dell’interno cercato, ricevendo come risposta l’indirizzo esatto a cui sparare la chiamata, sempre se esiste. La tecnica non è innovativa, dato che viene usata da tutti i principali software per il peer2peer ma unita alle qualità di Asterisk, fornisce un qualcosa di rivoluzionario.

Com’è ormai usanza di questo blog, voglio mostrarvi un semplice esempio applicativo. A tale proposito supponiamo di avere due aziende, la Acme Corporation e la Experience Ltd, dotate entrambi del loro bel Asterisk Server, con connesso un flusso primario dal quale ricevono e fanno chiamate. Ad un certo punto la Acme compra la Experience e le due aziend econdividono la stessa rete. Gli amministratori decidono di unificare i centralini per non passare dalla rete telefonica nazionale, quando la chiamata è da un interno di un’azienda all’altra. Le due macchine sono così fatte:

Asterisk Acme :                   IP address 192.168.1.10                   MAC Address: 11:11:11:11

Asterisk Experience :          IP address 192.168.2.10                   MAC Address: 22:22:22:22

Si decide di creare un link DUNDì tra le due, cosa fattibile in pochi semplici passi.

Generazione delle chiavi pubbliche e private

In Asterisk Acme, sotto il path /var/lib/asterisk/keys digitare:

astgenkey -n Acme

verranno generati due files, Acme.key e Acme.pub . Acme.pub deve essere copiato nella stessa sottodirectory nel server Asterisk Experience. La stessa operazione andrà eseguita, in verso opposto, sostituendo “Experience” nel comando astgenkey, nell’Asterisk di Experience Ltd.

DUNDi.conf

A questo punto bisogna configurare il DUNDi, dichiarando le altre macchine che compongono il mega centralino. Nel nostro caso è facile perché sono solo due, ma il principio è lo stesso anche per molte macchine.

Nella prima sezione del file dundi.conf si dichiarano informazioni sulla collocazione della macchina locale e sul criterio di interrogazione delle altre macchine. Per il server Acme sarà:

[general]
organization= Acme Corporation
locality= Zona indistriale
stateprov= Milano
country=It
email=amministratore@acme.com
phone=+39.0255.144.915
bindaddr=0.0.0.0
port=4520
entityid=11:11:11:11  ; Per convenzione il MAC del server
cachetime=3600
ttl=5                 ; 2000 + ttl * 200 = 3000ms di attesa massima per le query DUNDi
autokill=yes
secretpath=dundi
storehistory=no

Segue poi una sezione in cui si dichiarano i criteri di ricerca degli interni nelle altre macchine e nella macchina locale. Sparo la parte di configurazione e poi l’analizzo:

[mappings]
priv => ext-condivise,0,IAX2,priv:${SECRET}@192.168.1.10/${NUMBER},nopartial

Il canale di ricerca DUNDi si chiama priv. E’ uno solo ma se ne possono avere quanti se ne vuole. Se una macchina esterna interroga questo server alla ricerca di un interno, si deve controllare un contesto del file extensions.conf chiamato [ext-condivise] per avere una risposta. E’ quindi possibile condividere solo gli interni che si vuole, vedremo poi come. Se l’interno che l’altro server cerca esiste, questo è contattabile in IAX sparando la chiamata al contesto IAX che si chiama priv. Esiste quindi un contesto IAX che accetta chiamate con autenticazione criptata, che accede ai contesti extensions di questa macchina.

L’ultima parte di questo file di configurazione è la dichiarazione dei servers che compongono il mega centralino. Si avranno tante sezioni come quella che segue. Nel nostro caso è solo una perché si ha un solo server da controllare, oltre il locale.

[22:22:22:22] ; MAC address del server Experience
model = symmetric
host = 192.168.2.10 ; IP del server Experience
inkey = Experience
outkey = Acme
include = priv
permit = priv
qualify = yes
order = primary

Et voila, il file dundi.conf è servito. Da notare che abbiamo citato parti dell’extensions.conf e dello iax.conf che dobbiamo andare a creare. Per la macchina Experience, il file dundi.conf sarà esattamente simmetrico, apportando le giuste modifiche.

IAX.conf

La parte IAX è forse la più semplice. Inanzi tutto è bene specificare che si poteva usare anche il SIP o l’H323 come protocollo, ma in Asterisk tutto è più semplice usando IAX per il trunking. Si tratta di creare un contesto per accettare le chiamate dagli altri server sulla base di un’autenticazione del tipo chiave pubblica/chiave privata ( a questo servono i file creati al primo step).

[general]
bindport = 4569        
bindaddr = 0.0.0.0   
disallow=all
allow=alaw
allow=gsm
mailboxdetail=yes

[priv]
type=friend
dbsecret=dundi/secret
context=incoming-dundi

La prima parte è un semplice contesto general di iax.conf. Nella seconda si dice che si accettano chiamate nel contesto [priv] , l’autenticazione usa il dbsecret del DUNDi e il contesto in extensions.conf che gestisce la chiamata si chiama [incoming-dundi]. Il dbsecret del DUNDi è un campo del DB interno Asterisk che viene continuamente modificato dal processo DUNDi secondo le chiavi segrete locali e pubbliche remote. Questo iax.conf può essere copiato pari pari nella macchina Experience, oppure basta aggiungere il contesto [priv].

Extensions.conf

Per finire l’opera bisogna popolare il file extensions.conf con tutti i contesti definiti nei precedenti files. Devo premettere che ho implementato questa soluzione tra due macchine con Freepbx , quindi non ho toccato extensions.conf, bensì extensions_custom.conf, ma la sostanza non cambia. Per prima cosa si crea un contesto dove si mostrano i numeri condivisi, come segue:

[ext-condivise]
exten => 0211144947,1,NoOp
exten => 0211144945,1,NoOp
exten => 0211144939,1,NoOp

Ho scelto di pubblicare i numeri esterni del centralino e non gli effettivi interni, perché volevo che le chiamate in arrivo dall’altro centralino fossero trattate come quelle in arrivo dalla Rete Telefonica. Così l’operatore di Experience che era abituato a fare il numero pubblico di un collega Acme, non si accorgerà del passaggio. Un interno è pubblicato e visibile agli altri server se si trova in questo contesto. Poi si crea il contesto che gestisce le chiamate in arrivo dal trunk iax:

[incoming-dundi]
include => from-trunk

Sempre perché lavoro su freepbx, ho incluso il context from-trunk, dove la chiamata viene trattata come se arrivasse dalla PSTN. Quando l’operatore Experience chiama il numero del collega Acme, il DUNDi fa un’interrogazione criptata sul contesto [ext-condivise] cercando il numero chiamato e, se lo trova, spara la chiamata sul trunk iax che la fa gestire dal contesto [incoming-dundi]. Sembra complicato ma ha una logica lapalissiana.

A questo punto manca solo un contestino per fare le query nell’altro verso: dalla macchina Acme a quella Experience. Segue lo striminzito contesto:

[lookupdundi]
switch => DUNDi/priv

Switch è l’extension che scatena la query usando il protocollo DUNDi sul contesto DUNDi chiamato [priv]. That’s all folks a livello di files di configurazione. Su Freepbx ho dovuto creare un trunk custom per sparare le chiamate prima sul DUNDi e poi, se non esisteva il chiamato sull’altro server, sulla rete telefonica pubblica.

There’s always drama before/during holidays, a sort of bad luck thing that I tend to skip away from. Last year there was two sets of drama on the same day, on Thanksgiving, and now last night, a night before thanksgiving. I just don’t like Thanksgiving–what the hell do I have to be thankful for? I suppose a lot of things, but not anything I really want to admit to or share. Plus, I really don’t like my family. Or do I? It depends on my mood and how I want to present myself. Fern I love, my cousins–well, I do, but I’m annoyed with them. Who thought I’d ever carry a grudge?

You feel
The force of nature
We touch
And something charges

It’s something that’s overwhelming and I feel completely abandoned, though it’s something I could fix if only my mind didn’t spin tales. And all I want is to curl up and cry. And cry. And cry.

We all know that g711 (alaw / ulaw) is meant to sound the best. It’s uncompressed and equivalent quality to ISDN, which most businesses are used to with their traditional PABX System.

However, it comes at a price, 64kbps + overheads means around 111kbps when you factor in everything else over an ADSL PPPoA / PPPoE connection.

Now that’s a LOT when you think about it, considering on a standard ADSL2+ line you’re going to max out at around 5-7 SIP lines, especially if it’s a shared connection. This is where a compressed codec such as (My personal favorite) iLBC, or g729, can be incredibly cost effective, as you can load up around 15-20 on the same sort of bandwidth. When you’re a small business, that means with the right kind of QoS, you can share your ADSL Broadband connection and still have 5-10 concurrent phone calls, all happily living together.

So do away with expensive BRI interfaces and monthly charges, and go SIP!

We’re going to look at a few things very briefly:

1) MOS – What is it and why do I care?

2) Which codec is right for me?

3) g729 – Installation

4) iLBC – Installation

5) Trunk and Extension setup

6) Testing the codecs

1) MOS – What is it and why do I care?

MOS stands for “Mean Opinion Score“, and in a nutshell it’s a way of determining out of 5 how good a particular codec (Read: Phone call) will sound. The Wikipedia article is a good overview of MOS, each codecs ratings, and some phrases you can use to test the compression yourself and see if words become difficult to understand.

Now, we all want a nice good MOS, because at the end of the day if you’re using a PBX system, there’s nothing worse than it sounding like a VoIPBuster call to some exotic island. Personally I aim for higher quality, this is why iLBC stands out well for me. That said, the choice is yours, try a few out and see what sound you personally (And quite possibly the person who writes your paycheck) are happy with.

2) Which codec is right for me?

Well that is a very good question, and that’s something that you’re going to have to answer for yourself. Lets look at some of the benefits of each:

It’s not difficult to see there could be benefits for either. If you’re looking for low-cost deployment, or over a shaky ADSL connection you can’t seem to QoS well (Or perhaps Wireless?) then iLBC is probably the way to go. If you’re doing a larger installation, or an installation for a customer then it’s worth investigating g729, especially if you’re running underpowered hardware or have a large number of Exts or lots of expected concurrent calls.

Please keep in mind that you do not have to stick with just one codec, feel free to mix and match box on a per-customer level, or on a per-machine level also.

3) g729 – Installation

OK so I’m going to cheat here and direct you to Digium. Yes, there are “free” binaries out there, but at the price of $10 per-channel surely it’s not that expensive if you’re going to add it to your PBX’s you deploy.

Anyway if you’re downloading a “free” version, simply pop it in /usr/lib/asterisk/modules and chmod 755 the file. 64-bit versions go in /usr/lib64/asterisk/modules

Other than that, follow Digiums excellent instructions here, it should take you less than 5 minutes: http://kb.digium.com/entry/5/

4) iLBC – Installation

We’re going to be compiling this from source. Lucky for us Elastix makes this nice and easy! We won’t be installing a complete asterisk system, we don’t want to break the RPM’s because, let’s face it, it’s the easiest way to keep a system updated / secure.

First off, download Asterisk from here: http://www.asterisk.org/downloads

Get it to your elastix box any way you want (SCP / SSH / local terminal) and pop it in /usr/src

Now, run:

tar xvzf asterisk-1.4.*.tar.gz

change in to the newly created “asterisk” directory and run:

./contrib/scripts/get_ilbc_source.sh

Press “Enter” after it displays the warning presuming you’ve read the documentation (Which I’m also going to assume you’ve done) and shortly after you’ll get a lovely message telling you “The iLBC source code download is complete.”

Now, run:

./configure

That should run through without any issues, so now we’re going to tell Asterisk that we only want to build a very basic system (for the sake of time) and we want the iLBC codec. To enable the iLBC Codec you need to ensure in “4. Codec Translators” that “codec_ilbc” is checked.

Note: When you press “Esc” to quit “make menuconfig”, make sure you press S to save changes.

Now, just type “make” and watch the system build! As soon as you see codec_ilbc you can press Ctrl + C to stop it building. You’ll notice codec_ilbc being built just after all the app_ files, so it’s safest to stop the build process when you see the format_ files being built. Either that or let it run right the way through.

Almost done now, you just need to copy ./codecs/codec_ilbc.so to /usr/lib/asterisk/modules (or /usr/lib64/asterisk/modules on a 64-bit system) and chmod 755 /usr/lib/asterisk/modules/codec_ilbc.so

5) Trunk and Extension setup

Now depending on if you want your Ext or SIP Trunk to use the codec, it may be desirable to “force” the system to only use that codec.

To setup a Trunk: Open the SIP / IAX2 Trunk that you wish to limit in Elastix to the particular codec. In the PEER Details add an additional two lines:

disallow=all
allow=g729&ilbc

You may want to opt for something such as “allow=g729&g711″ or perhaps “allow=ilbc&alaw” for example. Review your needs and act appropriately. Save and submit the changes.

To setup an Ext: Open the Ext that you wish to limit the particular codec on. Scroll down to “disallow” and enter in “all”. Next in the “allow” field enter in something such as “g729″ or “ilbc”, or perhaps “ilbc&alaw” as above with the Trunk. Save and submit the changes when done.

Notes: Try and avoid transcoding where possible. It’s nice that asterisk does it so well, however it does add marginal delay to your calls, not to mention CPU overheads etc.

Also keep in mind that if you limit the codecs, say to just g729, and a particular device is unable to use g729, the call will simply fail.

6) Testing the codecs

The best part, testing! Hopefully everything has gone according to plan thus far. You’ve got one or two new codecs setup and you’re dying to test them out (In a development / testing environment naturally and not on your companies production PBX). Now you need to ssh in to your asterisk system and run:

asterisk -r

This brings up the asterisk console. Now, make a call on one of your new Ext’s that should be using iLBC / g729, or over the trunk that should be compressed.

While that call is active, rush back over to your ssh session and in the asterisk console type:

sip show channels

You should see something like this:

x.x.x.x   09xxxxxxx   2408517b625  00101/00102  0x400 (ilbc)     No       Rx: ACK

If you’re making a pure SIP call, you’ll see one line for the Ext -> Asterisk, and one line from Asterisk -> your SIP Provider.

Success!

Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions please feel free to leave comments or post in the Elastix forums.

Please also keep in mind that whilst g729 / iLBC are not the only codecs, almost every device that supports compression is likely to support one of them, or if not it will support GSM.

Hopefully as you’re reading this you’re happily making calls via iLBC or g729. Enjoy!

Shock is the first thing that filtered through me, and I hate how you went about saying it. Numb, completely numb, and disbelieving–should I even be allowed to feel those things? Considering our relationship, I feel like I shouldn’t, like it should be nothing to me, but it is something. I hate knowing that you died without knowing that I wanted to see you, that I wanted a relationship with you.

Why is it that everyone in my family dies? Do I even get to call you my family? And here I am, sitting, crying. Isn’t that pathetic? I’m so completely selfish. I cry because I didn’t get the chance to make memeoris with you, I cry because I’m bitter and angry that another person left my life. You’re suppose to be here for me to meet, you’re suppose to be my dad, you’re suppose to live forever even if we’ve never met.

I never meant to bad mouth you, I never meant to mock the idea of you, I never meant to use you as an excuse. And now you’re gone, and it’s just another thing to add to my list, and now you’re another thing for me to feel bad over.

And fuck, I’m crying so hard I think I might puke it all back up, and my head is spinning and it hurts, and I just wanna curl up and cry, and cry, and cry.

Okay, so having Victor, lovely mister Kitty, as a muse was a completely moronic thing to do. He’s like Mischa and Jayden combined with such animalist rage that it’s almost pee-producing frightening. I’m surprised he actually agreed to being my muse for a bit, though I’m not sure he realized he had a choice. What more, he came to school with me, and curiously, still somehow violently, explored my classrooms, mimiced my professors, and ripped apart things. Holy hell. Having him breathing down my neck while taking the road test was not a plus. He kept pointing out things I did wrong, told me to do this and then quickly barked out “Just kiddin’!”

But Victor is my good luck charm, and so I let him loose in Ellenville. If he likes me, he’ll come back. If not… well I guess he’ll spook the towns folk.

“I wish there was like a GED for college. We could take it together and rule the world.” -Molly “We could share the lols and kill things and then get dobs somewhere together. I’m going to be a massues lol spelled wrong. When I get enough money I plan to open my own spa.”

“Oh, I plan on being a guidence counselor.”

“Yay. >:f beat the children. Beat them with soap until they’re normal. Like us.”

I’ve asked Molly that if I come up for a weekend if I was allowed to stay at her house, which she said I was, as long as her parents didn’t know I was an internet friend. Which is fine. I plan on going as much as I can.

I think it would be amazing if we lived close by to each other, though I’m sure when she’s not with a client and I’m not with a student we’ll be texting each other things and mocking the kids/clients. Or she’ll tell me about her sex life in detail while I’m talking to a troubled child. I DUNNO MAN.

So midnight, on Friday–I guess, it’s gonna be actually Saturday–Wally, Tara, Will and I are seeing Twilight. I’m not so much looking forward to it. Tara had previously thought that because it was midnight that nobody would be there, but I have a feeling that it’s gonna be so packed that we might not find seats together, and there’s always the high chance that Will has to pick his sister up at 11.

I had origionally backed out of seeing it, since Tara wanted to see it opening night. So a month ago she went to preorder the tickets and found it to be sold out. Wow. A full fucking month in advance. Are these pre-teens all on crack or something? I mean, Werewolves are cool and all, and so are vampires–but I’m a Harry Potter fan, and not so much a Twilight fan. Bella has no personality, other then her deed love for Edward–but I can admit the author writes well, and has a way about alluring her readers. So that’s respectable. I just wish she made her characters have more depth to them. Eh. It’s more of a teeny romance than anything. Which is fine. But honestly, she really could have stopped after the first book.

So anyhow. I’m going to be surrounded by fangirls who obsesse over something I don’t really care for. Wally, who got talked into going, talked me into it, by promising to snap anyone’s neck who comes near me, and I, inturn, pleaded with Will to come. He finally agreed–mostly because Tara already bought the tickets.

Something… SOMETHING… bad is gonna happen that night, I just have a feeling.

It was really not expected when one of my ip08 box got a problem. So I need to reinstall my firmware.

Good thing i have a usb/serial devices that will help me do this reinstallation.
My minicom is also in place,so no problem at all communicating to my ip08 box.

The missing components are my tftp server on my KahelOS that also need to be installed and some packages on ip08.
In a gist,here some of the steps that i did to resolve my dillema.

Step 1:Install and Implement tftp on my KahelOS

pacman -S tftp-hpa
vim /etc/hosts.allow

tftpd: ALL
in.tftpd: ALL
/etc/rc.d/tftpd start
note:tftp folder
/var/tftpboot/

Step 2:IP08 install Image to NAND

ip04>set autostart
ip04>set serverip your.tftp.server
ip04>tftp 0×1000000
ip04>nand erase clean
ip04>nand erase
ip04>nand write 0×1000000 0×0 0×300000
ip04>set bootargs ethaddr=your:mac:address root=/dev/mtdblock0 rw
ip04>save
ip04>bootm 0×1000000

*this will reboot
root:~> copy_rootfs.sh
root:~> reboot

ip04>set autostart yes
ip04>set bootargs ethaddr=your:mac:address root=/dev/mtdblock2 rw
ip04>set nandboot ‘nboot 0×2000000 0×0′
ip04>set bootcmd run nandboot
ip04>save
ip04>reset

Step 3:IP08 install packages.
vim /etc/ipkg.conf
src voiptel http://update.voiptel.no

ipkg update
ipkg install asterisk-spandsp-1.4.21.2 libcurl libssl oslec libtiff libxml net-snmp ntpclient pagecache rsync ssmtp busybox cron dropbear gettext
ipkg install zaptel-sport voiptel-gui voiptel-ntp voiptel-sounds
reboot

Finally: configure the timezone:

vi /etc/TZ
PHT-8

@/etc/rc.d/S30ntp
insert this line.

start) ntpdate pool.ntp.org;

That’s it. everything now is back to normal.

I’m just a little bit caught in the middle
Life is a maze and love is a riddle
I don’t know where to go, can’t do it alone
I’ve tried and I don’t know why

Maybe it’s because we’re more like best friends, two complete immature prats, than anything that we get along the way we do and connect on a level that I’ve never dreamed of connecting on. There is no embarrassment, no topic left untouched, no secret kept hidden. It’s free for-all of just truths and laughter.

But it’s been that way from the beginning; just laughter.

Sitting in the waiting room of Nicole’s shrink, time passing by and I was suppose to be home thirty minutes ago. The room is overly bright, newly remade, and smells of turkey and gravy–we assume the Shrink isn’t coming out for Nicole because he’s devoring an entire Turkey dinner. Time clicks by and Will turns to me, “Potato” he deadpans, emphasizing the p, causing spit to splatter all over my face…

And I crack up, nearly peeing myself in the process.

It’s been a year and almost two months, and still, nothing but the amount of time we’ve spent together has changed. Since the start of our relationship it was smooth and open like this, no topic forbidden. But I wonder… Why no butterflies? Surely true love has butterflies, doesn’t it?

I’ve been bratty and pressuring him to buy me an engagment ring–just to be a brat. He won’t, since he wants to “buy you a really nice one”, which means he’d need moneys, and because he and I both know nothing would change. I still wouldn’t be allowed to sleep over.

I need a job and a place to live. I had a dream Ryan and his friend Shane, despite not knowing him–why’d I even dream of him?–, bought this shabby Ranch that had a basement, and the old couple was desperate to sell so it was pretty cheap, and they decided to leave most of their furnature in the house when they moved–so I left home and moved in with them, and got a job. I think it would be nice to live with Ryan, to be roommates. xD To bad he lives in California. He should move to New York. It’s amazin’. I’ve known him since I was 13, him 15.

I have another road test tomorrow, which I really don’t feel ready for. Blah, I don’t know how well I’ll do. I’m worried I’ll get an anxiety attack.

So this morning at 9, I got dropped off at Will’s, and at 9:30 Wally came over, which from there we drove to the bank, then the mall for L4D2, Assassins Creed 2, and Modern Warfare 2 and of course Senzu Beans at FYE. The Senzu Beans are pretty good, actually.

I don’t really like L4D2 much, but Ellis makes it all better by making me laugh a lot. Blah. Modern Warfare 2 is amazing from what I’ve seen–Homfg. I like Wally’s gamertag, it kind of makes me wish I had my own 360. Though at the same time… when would I even play? Never. I’m way to distracted to play, and I’m usually with Will anyhow.

I mainly don’t want to drop out of college because then I’d have to get a job, which means even less time with Will. And it’s awful how I center my priorities around him.

UGH.

UGH UGH UGH

I hate Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Jesus Christ, he does a terrible job, he’s WAY to much of a pansy, and, his looks? Pfft, non-sexy. So I’m back in an X-Men kick, so we bought all four seasons of the origional X-Men cartoon. You gonna end up like Storm… in da box. Hehe. KNOWLEDGE IS POWAH.

I’m thinking of having Victor as a muse, just because he’s violent and he’ll be destructive while I’m at school. Distracting, yes, but amazingly fun to watch.. Mmmm. I was gonna have Professor X, but his mind reading would get old fast. Kurt would just poof away whenever, and I’d lose Mystique. Sure, I’m well aware that Victor may just tell me to fuck off, or slash my room apart, or whatever, but he’s completely worth it.

We are migrating our Asterisk test environment from VMware to Xen.  We always used the free VMware (VMware Server) which worked fine other than one huge limitation: There was no way for our virtual machines to access telephony cards (eg: Sangoma or Digium T1 pci cards).  Xen provides that feature and more by allowing your virtual machines to access pretty much any device you can access from within a regular linux installation.

Here are the steps I took to add Xen to my CentOS test server and fire up my first asterisk guest complete with its own digium pri card.  For my first asterisk guest i created a server with all the latest and greatest asterisk software and appropriately named it bleeder.

1. Install Xen – This step turns your current server into the Dom0, or “the special privileged domain that is used to administer normal guest domains”

yum install xen kernel-xen
modify /boot/grub/grub.conf to boot the xen kernel by default
reboot

2. Download a 1G partition image that contains an ext3 filesystem with the linux kernel and a minimal set of CentOS packages and extend it to 4G.  Stacklet.com is a great resource for these.  I found the CentOS image i was looking for here.  This comes with the partition image and two example config files.  I copied the partition image to a directory i could remember where i had sufficient space and extended it using the following commands.  The first command (dd) extends the actual file.  This is analogous to extending a partition on a disk.

[root@fsdev images]# dd bs=1k seek=4096k count=1 if=/dev/zero of=centos.5.3.x86.img

Note that this command produces a “sparse” file. That means that though the file can grow up to a total size of 4GB, it only takes up the space on disk that it is actually using.  Here’s the proof:

[root@fsdev images]# ls -lh
total 2.1G
-rw-r--r-- 1 k3leland k3leland  4.1G Nov 15 19:33 centos.5-3.x86.img
[root@fsdev images]# du -h centos.5-3.x86.img
1.1G  centos.5-3.x86.img

The rest of the commands are to resize the actual ext3 filesystem.  Find the first available loopback device and assign our partition image to it:

[root@fsdev images]# losetup -f
/dev/loop0
[root@fsdev images]# losetup /dev/loop0 centos.5-3.x86.img

Now Resize!

[root@fsdev images]# resize2fs /dev/loop0
resize2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Please run 'e2fsck -f /dev/loop0' first.

[root@fsdev images]# e2fsck -f /dev/loop0
...output omitted...
[root@fsdev images]# resize2fs /dev/loop0 4G
resize2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Resizing the filesystem on /dev/loop0 to 1048576 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/loop0 is now 1048576 blocks long.

Lastly unassign our file to the loopback device:

[root@fsdev images]# losetup -d /dev/loop0

Here is an extra command that may come in handy when dealing with partition images. This allows you to mount the image and explore the contents:

[root@fsdev images]# mount -o loop -t ext3 centos.5-3.x86.img /mnt
[root@fsdev images]# ls /mnt/
bin   dev  home  lost+found  mnt  poweroff  root  selinux  sys  usr
boot  etc  lib   media       opt  proc      sbin  srv      tmp  var

3. Copy the pygrub config to /etc/xen/bleeder and make some slight modifcations to it.  I gave it its very own ip address and indicated i wanted it bridged at the ethernet level by adding this line:

vif = [ 'ip=xx.xx.xx.xx, bridge=xenbr0' ]

I updated the disk directive to reflect the new location that i moved the image to:

disk = ['file:/var/asterisk/xen/images/centos.5-3.x86.img,sda1,w']

And lastly I assigned the virtual machine the digium T1 card using the pci directive.  Note: I found the pci identifier in the output of lspci.

pci=['0a:01.0']

4. Unbind the pri card from my Dom0 so that i will be able to boot my bleeder guest by loading the pciback kernel module with the hide option:

modprobe pciback 'hide=(0a:01.0)'

If this worked you will see some messages in dmesg:

pciback 0000:0a:01.0: seizing device
PCI: Enabling device 0000:0a:01.0 (0310 -> 0313)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:0a:01.0[A] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:0a:01.0 disabled

If this command doesn’t work it will not give any indication other than you will not see those messages in dmesg. This command will not work if you currently have a driver loaded that is binded to that device. That means you may have to:

service zaptel/dahdi stop

and try again:

rmmod pciback
modprobe pciback 'hide=(0a:01.0)'

5. Now we are ready to boot our guest for the first time using the xm command.  The -c option indicates we want a console on the new vm, and the name of the vm, bleeder, corresponds to the name of the config file in /etc/xen.  If everything works you will eventually get a login prompt (root/password by default)

[root@fsdev ~]# xm create -c bleeder
Using config file "/etc/xen/bleeder".

One error that prevented booting for the first time was:

Error: pci: improper device assignment specified: pci: 0000:0f:00.0 must be co-assigned to the same guest with 0000:0f:06.0, but it is not owned by pciback.

I resolved this by moving my pci card to a different slot in the system. I believe this is a limitation in Xen but if you have the flexibility to move your card it beats waiting for a bug fix;)  Here is the output of lspci and lspci -t before and after the move:

[k3leland@Dom0 ~]$ lspci | grep Digium
0f:06.0 Ethernet controller: Digium, Inc. Wildcard TE120P single-span T1/E1/J1 card (rev 11)
[k3leland@Dom0 ~]$ lspci -t
-[0000:00]-+-00.0
           +-01.0-[0000:01]--
           +-1c.0-[0000:09-0a]--+-00.0-[0000:0a]--
           |                    \-00.1
           +-1c.4-[0000:0d]----00.0
           +-1c.5-[0000:0e]----00.0
           +-1d.0
           +-1d.1
           +-1d.2
           +-1d.3
           +-1d.7
           +-1e.0-[0000:0f]--+-00.0
           |                 \-06.0
           +-1f.0
           +-1f.1
           +-1f.2
           \-1f.3

[k3leland@Dom0 ~]$ lspci | grep Digium
0a:01.0 Ethernet controller: Digium, Inc. Wildcard TE120P single-span T1/E1/J1 card (rev 11)
[k3leland@fsdev ~]$ lspci -t
-[0000:00]-+-00.0
           +-01.0-[0000:01]--
           +-1c.0-[0000:09-0a]--+-00.0-[0000:0a]----01.0
           |                    \-00.1
           +-1c.4-[0000:0d]----00.0
           +-1c.5-[0000:0e]----00.0
           +-1d.0
           +-1d.1
           +-1d.2
           +-1d.3
           +-1d.7
           +-1e.0-[0000:0f]----00.0
           +-1f.0
           +-1f.1
           \-1f.3

6. Now we can proceed to configure and install software on our new virtual guest as it was a physical server. The output of lspci in the guest should produce a single line with our digium T1 card. The system we got from Stacklet.com provides the bare minimum so the first step is to bring it up to date and install the prerequisite tools:

yum update
yum install vim-enhanced gcc gcc-c++ subversion make kernel-xen-devel libtermcap-devel

Checkout Asterisk and Friends from svn and make and make install asterisk, dahdi-linux, dahdi-tools, libpri.

Deviations from boring ‘configure;make;make install’ routine included a couple of things:

When configuring asterisk i chose to disable xmldoc:

./configure –disable-xmldoc

After making and installing dahdi-linux be sure to modify /etc/dahdi/* to your needs, or use dahdi_genconf.

TODO in Future:

• test performance of virtualized asterisk
• install asterisk and dahdi-linux on vm from binaries using asterisk xen pacakges at packages.asterisk.org.
• install thirdlane, trixbox, and asterisknow a xen guests

Recommended book and primary reference for this project:

She’s about four, I think, shoulder length chocolaty hair and small staring dark eyes. Her name is Jayden and I nearly died–what are the chances of that? And spelt the same way too! Jayden, Jayden, Jayden. Chrissa call her Jay. Her younger brother runs through the room screaming “JAAAYYDEEEENNN” in a high pitched drawl-screech and I stare. And stare. And holy hell do I ever stare. Three devil children running about, smacking, hitting, wrestling, yelling. This Side-Quest–shut up, it’s totally a side-quest, kay? I don’t care if there’s nothing else–is turning out to be more than I bargined fer.

Maybe I should rethink having children so soon. With The Day After Tomorrow spooking me from the TV, and a hot plate of Baked Ziti in my lap, I don’t know how anyone can stand to baby-sit. Plastering a smile to my face, I hide a grimance, a wave of fear washing over me. Children scared me.

But…

So now there’s two Sam’s I can’t stand. One, I use to love like my brother. The other–well, who cares about that Sam, eh? I can’t, and I won’t understand what happened. How’d it all go down hill? Jen no longer feels anything? She’s a walking zombie? And he hasn’t been to school since, when? September? Where’s the lovable brat I grew up with? What is this talk of suicide? How does everything get so tangled and distorted? Pathetic angst, you aren’t real, you’re just a heartless git. Can’t you even see you’re ripping your family apart? Sorrow is one that I know only briefly.

It’s heart wrenching to known this, and a horrible sense of helplessness jolts. What the hell can I do but offer my home? And still. What best friend am I? I can’t even do anythin, and do I even get to call myself a best friend? With months of absenses–and yet it’s her. We’ll always be close, despite the lack of seeing each other, ’cause that’s love.

McRinny xB: Lets go to a club.
derblauenSharpie: K, be there in 12 hours. >.>

My daily pill in take. I just got new batteries for my camera, and like any other normal girl I decided to start taking pictures immediatly. Just of my pills though, trying to get an artys shot. I ended up failing MISERABLY, but hey, what can I do? I’m not a photoghrapher.

I’m still anxious. All these medications, and I’m still anxious. No matter how higher the doses go, I’m still freakin’ anxious. Maybe it’s just how it’s always going to be. I spent the entire daying sleeping against Will ’cause I’ve just got so much anxiety.

So, we bought ff VII, ff VIII, ff IX, ff X, ff x-2, ff xII and Dirge, plus the guide books for 9, 10, 10-2, and 12. Which is great. We just finished CC, and KH–which I now want KH2 <3. So, we started playin’ 9, his favorite.
And I fell asleep for most of the beginning. I’ve been sleeping a lot lately. I’m just so tired. I’m not so excited about Christmas, hell, it’s not even thanksgiving yet. Will and I decided to spend Thanksgiving at his house this year, like last year, which is alright, I guess, I was kind of hoping to see Cousin Fern. She rarely comes up and I really need to catch up with her. But whatevs.

So Melissa has a… friend. Who is a booooy. He looks like a red-headed fatter version of Dennis, with a squashed face and pimples… or are they freckles? But I like him. His name is Tommy and he’s the sweetest boy I’ve come across in a long time. He cheriesh her, and it’s a shame. I hope maybe she won’t hurt him or twist him around her devilish fingers.

So Nicole is getting pretty serious about Lu. A few times a week she goes down to the city to see her. I’m hoping this one lasts, cause I really, really like Lu. And Liz got a boyfriend! At first I liked him… he’s a bit older, and he isn’t attractive but he treats her right.
He’s just an ass to Will. D:< Which means, I don’t like him anymore.

underneath the moon,
underneath the stars
heres a little heart for you
up above the world,
up above it all
heres a hand to hold on to

A warm lazy haze falls over me and sleepily I snuggle closer to the where the heat is being emitted from; the soft dark purple fabric. Oh lovely love, how can anyone in their right mind resist cuddling up to such warmth? How can anyone not be lulled to a lazy nap, much like a fat cat on a summer day?

I’ve said it before. I don’t want to make memories with anyone else but you, darling. I don’t want to love anyone else’s smile, and I don’t want to laugh with anyone else like I do with you. I can tell you anything without feeling embarrassed, I can finally be me. I don’t have any use for lies, even small white ones.

With the world of pretend playing at my fingertips, I much rather play in reality with you. Oh, darling. You know what you do to me. I wish I could pour my love into a little jar, and show you. I want to hold your hand forever, I want my fingers laced with yours always, I want to be able to smile at you for the rest of my life.

We’ve come so far in our relationship, but that’s only month-wise. I feel like I’ve always known you, I feel as though you’ll always be my best friend, whether it’s romantic or not, as long as you’re in my life nothing can be better.