[App_rpt-users] Fwd: Re : Re: Fwd: Suitability of boot media

Mon Feb 18 21:07:11 UTC 2013

Not a bad effort.

Sorry I haven't responded before now, I was asleep. Grumpy bear ^.^

Ok, I can set the nodes up on a private network. I understand the
concept - simply replace the AllStar servers with one of your own.
Cool.

Now, how do I actually *do* that?

Essentially, this radio network is planned to cover a large
geographical area, and for redundancy, I want at least two app_rpt
controllers feeding a network fanout of RTCMs. Pretty much, I'm going
to wrangle that one is placed at my home, and one at my place of work,
on dual redundant fibre links, and with appropriate battery backups. I
am investigating this as we speak.

Thats the easy part - all hardware, actually, something I do well.
Where I fall down every time is the software.

Imagine I have my two... well, I guess "AllStar server" lookalikes,
since they'll be the main computers on the network to control and
conduct the network. I imagine they'd publish the links back to the
PABX system (ie, AllStar SIP service alike?), and they'd have these
thin client nodes scattered around the place, potentially at radio
sites on hills, being fed by either fibre or microwave links (Ubiquiti
gear rocks!). Anything wrong with this picture so far? I look at it
and it makes sense... so far.

Now, my two AllStar servers are being fed from the nodes, and thus the
RTCMs around the place. Connections back to the PABX network are
effected by a SIP or IAX trunk, and thus back to the PSTN. All good so
far.

So now my question is: how do I create an AllStar server lookalike? Is
there a nice guide that I can begin with, and take it from there? I
mean, these $80 T5630w's are brilliant - just don't plug a non-working
keyboard into them, they don't like booting if thats the case. I find
these have the internal flash memory wiped, but thats ok, did I really
want Windows XPe? I could, at the moment, realistically, fit another
three in my rack, if I so wished (the rest of the rack is taken up
with rectifiers and power supplies, and switch shelves and the like).
On top of the rack - its an 18RU - will host a 3D printer in the next
couple of weeks.

I don't imagine the AllStar servers themselves would be a closed
source product, especially if some of you are telling me you have some
lookalikes that you've configured to look like the AllStar network.
However, in my travels of the ohnosec website, I haven't found much
reference to that software. So... where do I start?

Thanks everyone for your help!

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 1:40 AM, pete M <petem001 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Corey you made my day, I was pretty sure that was the answer.
>
>
>
> -----Message d'origine----- From: Corey Dean
> Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 9:15 AM
> To: Shane Morris ; app_rpt mailing list
> Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] Fwd: Re : Re: Fwd: Suitability of boot media
>
>
> You just create private node numbers that allstar doesn't know about.
>
> I think some people confuse the system with the software.  Asterisk app_rpt
> is the software, allstar is the public network they may connect to.  I have
> both Private and public nodes.  My public node has an allstar node number
> that authenticates itself to the allstar server.  My private nodes
> authenticate to a seperate private server of my own and is not associated to
> the public allstar network.  I can however add my node info into the
> rpt.conf on a public and private node and be able to access the public
> network from a private node...
>
> You can do what ever you want with it!
>
> Corey N3FE
> ________________________________________
> From: app_rpt-users-bounces at ohnosec.org [app_rpt-users-bounces at ohnosec.org]
> On Behalf Of Shane Morris [edgecomberts at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 12:59 AM
> To: app_rpt mailing list
> Subject: [App_rpt-users] Fwd: Re : Re:  Fwd: Suitability of boot media
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Shane Morris <edgecomberts at gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:57 PM
> Subject: Re: Re : Re: [App_rpt-users] Fwd: Suitability of boot media
> To: pete M <petem001 at hotmail.com>
>
>
> Ok, I'm finding it hard to get my head around this, as I have held
> both amateur and commercial licences, and indeed used both.
>
> As far as I know, legislation in Australia wouldn't allow for me to
> arbitrarily - even by accident - link an amateur network to a
> commercial network. I'd lose all my licences, and probably my job. Not
> a good situation.
>
> However, according to Don, it sounds like hes doing precisely what I'm
> thinking. What he isn't explaining is what ARE the networks. Ok, its a
> large SIP network with an endpoint that just happens to be a ACiD
> install. Cool. But what does the ACiD install connect to? Amateur, or
> PMR? And if its commercial, how does he stop all the nice amateurs
> playing AllStar, as we do, from connecting to his PMR network, and
> thus not losing any licences?
>
> Look, these might be silly questions - but I'm told its "a radio
> network." Ok, theres many types of radio networks. I understand you
> guys mostly play amateur. I want to play commercial. Is that allowed?
>
> I mean, realistically, do you have any CBRS or GMRS endpoints on
> AllStar? If so, how does that work? If not, then its cause of the
> licences. I'm working under being totally in the dark about the
> licencing here.
>
> Would it help if I just described what I want to do, and someone gives
> me a "Yes it can be done" or "No you can't do that"?
>
> Thanks!
>
> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:49 PM, pete M <petem001 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> If you dont use any linking that is not. On your licence I dont see why it
>> would not be ok. But I am notvthe best to answer that question
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> From: Shane Morris
>> Sent: 18 Feb 2013 05:32:41 GMT
>> To: Don Hackler
>> Cc: app_rpt-users at ohnosec.org
>> Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] Fwd: Suitability of boot media
>>
>> Just as a point of interest, could you use the AllStar SIP service for
>> commercial (ie, non amateur) applications?
>>
>> However, your configuration you describe is pretty much what I envisage...
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Don Hackler <donh at sigma.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> While improved security is a factor, the main reason for separate
>>> installs
>>> is that AllStar/app_rpt runs on a forked asterisk distribution based on
>>> Asterisk 1.4
>>> and PAIF runs on much later Asterisk versions.  Asterisk 1.8 is the
>>> oldest
>>> stable distro for PAIF you would want to run on a new install.
>>>
>>> The main reason for the fork is that AllStar/apt_rpt runs on the Zaptel
>>> framework and the newer Asterisk versions don't support Zaptel.
>>> The app_rpt that is in the current Asterisk distributions was pretty much
>>> abandoned in place.
>>>
>>> PAIF offers a much nicer web-gui PBX operation and is substantially
>>> easier
>>> to run for general purpose PBX situations.
>>> Out of the box, PAIF has several dozen nice features already running
>>> while
>>> the Acid/AllStar distro is very much a totally stripped down basic
>>> command
>>> line
>>> driven system.
>>>
>>> If all you are going to do is glue a couple of radios together and maybe
>>> hook up one SIP trunk, then just use the ACID AllStar distro.
>>> It's fine for that, preferably using the AllStar SIP trunk service, since
>>> the configuration is well known and it's inexpensive.
>>>
>>> I run several PAIF installations all tied together in a fairly large
>>> network, serving SIP phones at several locations.
>>> The single ACID AllStar distro running on a dedicated box appears to my
>>> larger network as a single extension that happens to be a radio.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Feb 17, 2013, at 3:28 PM, pete M <petem001 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> What would this kind of setup give aside more security?
>>>
>>> Envoyé de mon iPad
>>>
>>> Le 17 Feb 2013 à 17:45, "Don Hackler" <donh at sigma.net> a écrit :
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>> From: Don Hackler <donh at sigma.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] Suitability of boot media
>>> Date: February 17, 2013 2:44:31 PM PST
>>> To: Shane Morris <edgecomberts at gmail.com>
>>>
>>> You will need to run PAIF and AllStar on separate boxes.
>>> Use IAX to connect the two.
>>>
>>> If you only have one outside IP address, you can put change AllStar to
>>> use a
>>> different port for it's outside IAX connection to the AllStar network and
>>> then the PAIF box can use the standard IAX port (if needed).  Your the
>>> PAIF
>>> box to connect to the usual VOIP trunk providers.
>>>
>>> Use the 32 bit Centos 6.3 PAIF distro and install PAIF Purple for a
>>> stable
>>> setup.  (Asterisk 1.8, FreePBX 2.10)
>>>
>>> For light duty applications, I've heard good reports about running PAIF
>>> on a
>>> Rasberry Pi, but that's still a bit experimental.
>>>
>>> On Feb 17, 2013, at 1:05 PM, Shane Morris <edgecomberts at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I am supposed to be having a HP T5630w thin client delivered to me today,
>>> and I was planning to install PBX In A Flash on it, which was recommended
>>> by
>>> one of the members of the list.
>>>
>>> First up, can I install from say a 1GB stick to a 8 or 16GB stick, and
>>> leave
>>> the larger stick semi-permanently in the machine as boot media under the
>>> cover at the top? The thin client is quoted with only a 2GB IDE SSD,
>>> certainly not enough for this OS, and I don't want to wait another couple
>>> of
>>> weeks for postage on a 32GB IDE SSD.
>>>
>>> Next question, which is the best version of PIAF to get? Nowhere that I
>>> can
>>> see does it quote which version of Asterisk its using or whether it would
>>> be
>>> suitable for use with the correct version for app_rpt (which is 1.4 as I
>>> take it from numerous discussions).
>>>
>>> Last question - this'll be running on the thin client, and as we know,
>>> there
>>> are *some* security issues with 1.4 (of course, theres probably security
>>> issues with 1.8 too, but they haven't been exploited yet, so I'm not
>>> bashing
>>> 1.4, I know no piece of networked software is totally secure) so would
>>> you
>>> recommend using this "repeater controller" box on an IAX trunk to a 1.8
>>> "PABX controller" box, and let the PABX face the world? I fully intend on
>>> using the internal but offsite connections over a VPN, but to get to the
>>> outside world and onto the PSTN it needs to go through my ITSPs, Exetels,
>>> indial account(s).
>>>
>>> Of course, if this is recommended, which I strongly suspect it is, I'll
>>> have
>>> to get another thin client and load 1.8 on it, and establish the IAX
>>> trunk,
>>> which I imagine would be a simple exercise.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance for all your help!
>>>
>>> Shane.
>>>
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