I have looked through the forums here and online and I can't seem to find a clearly defined path to upgrade from the Jesse based FreePBX 13 image to the Stretch based FreePBX 14 image. I have tried a partial backup/restore, which breaks the modules.
Is there any path other than completely setting it up from scratch? I can't seem to find anything here or elsewhere.
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Is this project dead? Am I just better off moving away from this project? If it's not possible to upgrade, and I have to build again from scratch, maybe it's just better to move on to a new platform.
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It is unfortunately not possible to upgrade the Jessie based to the Stretch based image. Many changes had to be made in the Stretch image, and there are no automated scripts available to perform these changes in a running environment. Setting up the new image from scratch is the only option.
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Do you think it will be possible to backup/restore the database and configs between the old and new systems? I would prefer to avoid recreating everything - extensions, trunks, routes, etc.
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It is definitely possible as long as you are using the same major version of FreePBX on both systems. If you plan to upgrade FreePBX to a newer version on the new system then make a backup of your old one, then on the old one go into module admin and get the upgrader module and install and use that to upgrade FreePBX to the next higher version. Make sure everything works on your old system before transferring to the new one (or deleting the backup). Sometimes an upgrade doesn't go well at all so you really do need that backup.
You can use FreePBX's internal backup and restore module, which should work fine on the same version of FreePBX but in my experience fails miserably when going to a new version. Another option is to use RonR's PBX backup and PBX restore scripts, which are included in the download in the first post in this thread. You do NOT have to use his install script or give up RasPBX to use his pbx-backup and pbx-restore scripts, in fact I have used them on a larger system running Debian to transfer the configuration. Be aware though that they are rather aggressive about copying pretty much everything having to do with FreePBX, so if you change any settings prior to running the pbx-restore those changes will be lost, also if there is unwanted crud in the directories FreePBX uses that will be brought over too. But it will bring over entire FreePBX configuration, your CDR, all your voicemails and system recordings, and pretty much everything you would need to transfer the old system to the new and get the new one up and running in a very short amount of time. I don't know of any way to get those two scripts without downloading the entire package but then it's not a huge download to begin with. And as with FreePBX's internal backup and restore module, you will probably have anywhere from limited success to total failure if you try to use it to move settings between different versions of FreePBX, so always make sure the FreePBX version is the same on both systems. In my experience it doesn't seem to matter if Raspbian has been upgraded as long as FreePBX is the same, but YMMV so always make a backup before starting.
What about if you have upgraded Asterisk only? In that case either of the above methonds will likely work, but you'll almost certainly want to reload the FreePBX configuration and even reboot the Pi a couple of times before deciding if it is working or not, since newer versions of Asterisk can introduce new issues. Often everything still works fine, but there are exceptions.
Last edit: VoIPuser 2019-12-25
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Many thanks. Just completed the upgrade from 14 to 15 on my old system. Fortunately I have a spare RPi, so will try to make a clean install there and then play with the backup/restore.
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I abandoned this project due to the fact that they marooned us all without a path to migrate to newer versions. There are other projects out there that have figured out how to solve that problem and wont leave you stranded. I would suggest you spend your efforts getting one of those setup instead.
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They have been pretty good at supporting users with upgrades and not marooning everyone. One of the goals of the latest project is being able to do a backup and restore to upgrade to new versions. It's an absolutely critical feature if you don't want to spend hours reconfiguring every major release.
This specific release takes the best of multiple projects, including Raspbx, and combines it into one great preinstalled package. I'd suggest starting there and see if you like it. If not, stick with raspbx.
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In my opinion this is not a good idea - see my other reply for the reasons. Also just to point out, the Nerd Vittles site appears to be at least somewhat of a profit-making operation. No one but the maintainer really knows if it's generating pennies or dollars or thousands of dollars, but I believe he does use referral links and/or gets commissions or other benefits from providers he recommends. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that as long as he discloses it, but it might give him some motive to keep promoting his stuff, even possibly stuff that is quite long in the tooth and should have been retired or rewritten years ago. Again, all of this is just my opinion.
Last edit: VoIPuser 2019-12-30
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That all sounds personal to me. Nerd Vittles uses RonR's scripts and does give attribution . I will admit he has had some low spots, but the latest release is solid and a huge improvement over vanilla raspbx. I expect any raspberry pi to eventually kill the SD card and use SSD via USB for anything I care about, or move it to a docker or VM if its super important to me. I have a stack of dead SD cards of every brand and size, but none from an asterix system. HomeAssistant is by far the worst OSS project for Pi that I have seen so far. If you like RonR on your favorite Pi OS, go for it. If I am going to homebrew it myself though, I would move it off the Pi. YMMV
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Well I have used RonR's script since shortly after he first posted it in March of 2016 and it has yet to kill a SD card. As for the personal part, all I can say is that a couple of times I did actually try an install from Nerd Vittles and both times I was so unhappy with it that I replaced it with something else based on Asterisk and FreePBX within a week. Then I went to RasPBX and was pretty happy with that and used it for a few years, and then went to RonR's script, I don't even remember exactly why anymore, but I've been very happy with that.
One thing I really hated about the NV stuff was the way the firewall was implemented and the fact that if you made any changes to it then you had effectively gone off the reservation and could not run their upgrade script without losing all the changes you'd made - it seems they really wanted you to use their firewall rules for some reason. I guess "Incredible" is fine if you are in effect willing to let someone else take over your system and to accept all the design choices they have made (or else do without upgrades), but I'm not some mindless little sheep that wants no control over my system. Also I hated all the crud they added in extensions_custom.conf; I have my own use for that file and don't want to have to waste time figuring out what of their stuff I could remove without breaking the system. I don't remember for sure if running their upgrade script also overwrote extensions_custom.conf, I tend to think it did but my memory is pretty foggy on that one. But also, at least for me, their stuff ran slow - some SIP-only calls were taking several seconds to go through, instead of going through instantaneously as is normal.
The only "personal" thing is that I personally don't like their stuff. AT ALL. I can't think of a single redeeming quality about it. It was not always like that; at one time they had some pretty great stuff. If you read their articles from the early 2000's (if you can even still get to those) the tone seemed much different, it was far more of a "here's a starting point, now take it and run with it" type thing, whereas now it seems like much more of a "here's what we've made and here's how you should use it, use it as we intend or don't use it" type of situation. Which, to me at least, seems more than a little arrogant when almost everything you offer is built using other people's software (such as Asterisk and FreePBX, and now you say he's including RonR's scripts). I guess some people like being in a walled garden; I find it suffocating.
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I'd again suggest you look at https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30661088-PBX-FreePBX-for-the-Raspberry-Pi - just follow the instructions and you will have a fully working Asterisk and FreePBX install, plus several useful utilities that you are free to use or ignore. The script lets you pick which version of Asterisk and FreePBX you want; if you want stability I'd suggest Asterisk 16 and FreePBX 14 (or 15 but be aware that 15 is not fully polished yet).
What follows is strictly my opinion: I most emphatically DO NOT RECOMMEND the Nerd Vittles version suggested by another poster. Basically as he notes that project "appropriates" code from other places, and I question whether proper attribution is given, but the biggest problem is that it's saddled down with decade old absolutely useless addons (the crap that the maintainer thinks makes it "Incredible" but that no one but him ever uses) that he refuses to remove or modify to bring up to today's standards, possibly because he has no idea how to do so. All that crap just might mean that the system runs slower or wears out the SD card faster by doing unnecessary writes to the card. Further, if you make changes to certain configuration files (even the ones that you are supposed to be able to change, I don't mean the ones automatically generated by FreePBX) and then do one of their recommended upgrades, all your changes may be nuked depending on whether he thinks he should just "upgrade" that file without your permission. I will grant that many years ago (back in the days of Asterisk@Home) the Nerd Vittles stuff was great, but it has not aged well, and I believe I recall reading comments by former users that have said they will not use anything from there again, at least not until it is brought up to date and gives more control back to the user. If you are a rank beginner you may not realize how bad it is at first, but my impression is that experienced users stay far away from that stuff; even using plain Asterisk would be preferable.
RonR's script on the other hand leaves you in control, he gives you a great initial setup with no crud imposed on you (there are some extras that only work if you run them from a command prompt, they are not left running in the background all the time unless you install one that works that way such as Hylafax), and if you later make changes to something (such as the firewall rules, which you may want to change if you don't use certain providers) your changes do not get overwritten during upgrades. Also RonR does maintain his script and seems quite interested in Asterisk and FreePBX; he has recently submitted several bug reports to the FreePBX project. And he assists users that post in that thread on DSLReports. Again, my personal opinion is that I most emphatically DO NOT recommend using anything from the Nerd Vittles page at this point in time - stay away and save yourself some grief!
Last edit: VoIPuser 2019-12-30
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Many thanks for all the suggestions. I already found RonR's script on DSLR and going to give it a try. I'm aware of Incredible... and I'm not going to install it, I share most of the points already mentioned. Many thanks for all the answers.
Raspbx did a very good job for me (respect to Gernot!) but after a few reinstallations over past years I simply need something different.
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I have looked through the forums here and online and I can't seem to find a clearly defined path to upgrade from the Jesse based FreePBX 13 image to the Stretch based FreePBX 14 image. I have tried a partial backup/restore, which breaks the modules.
Is there any path other than completely setting it up from scratch? I can't seem to find anything here or elsewhere.
Is this project dead? Am I just better off moving away from this project? If it's not possible to upgrade, and I have to build again from scratch, maybe it's just better to move on to a new platform.
It is unfortunately not possible to upgrade the Jessie based to the Stretch based image. Many changes had to be made in the Stretch image, and there are no automated scripts available to perform these changes in a running environment. Setting up the new image from scratch is the only option.
Do you think it will be possible to backup/restore the database and configs between the old and new systems? I would prefer to avoid recreating everything - extensions, trunks, routes, etc.
It is definitely possible as long as you are using the same major version of FreePBX on both systems. If you plan to upgrade FreePBX to a newer version on the new system then make a backup of your old one, then on the old one go into module admin and get the upgrader module and install and use that to upgrade FreePBX to the next higher version. Make sure everything works on your old system before transferring to the new one (or deleting the backup). Sometimes an upgrade doesn't go well at all so you really do need that backup.
You can use FreePBX's internal backup and restore module, which should work fine on the same version of FreePBX but in my experience fails miserably when going to a new version. Another option is to use RonR's PBX backup and PBX restore scripts, which are included in the download in the first post in this thread. You do NOT have to use his install script or give up RasPBX to use his pbx-backup and pbx-restore scripts, in fact I have used them on a larger system running Debian to transfer the configuration. Be aware though that they are rather aggressive about copying pretty much everything having to do with FreePBX, so if you change any settings prior to running the pbx-restore those changes will be lost, also if there is unwanted crud in the directories FreePBX uses that will be brought over too. But it will bring over entire FreePBX configuration, your CDR, all your voicemails and system recordings, and pretty much everything you would need to transfer the old system to the new and get the new one up and running in a very short amount of time. I don't know of any way to get those two scripts without downloading the entire package but then it's not a huge download to begin with. And as with FreePBX's internal backup and restore module, you will probably have anywhere from limited success to total failure if you try to use it to move settings between different versions of FreePBX, so always make sure the FreePBX version is the same on both systems. In my experience it doesn't seem to matter if Raspbian has been upgraded as long as FreePBX is the same, but YMMV so always make a backup before starting.
What about if you have upgraded Asterisk only? In that case either of the above methonds will likely work, but you'll almost certainly want to reload the FreePBX configuration and even reboot the Pi a couple of times before deciding if it is working or not, since newer versions of Asterisk can introduce new issues. Often everything still works fine, but there are exceptions.
Last edit: VoIPuser 2019-12-25
Many thanks. Just completed the upgrade from 14 to 15 on my old system. Fortunately I have a spare RPi, so will try to make a clean install there and then play with the backup/restore.
I abandoned this project due to the fact that they marooned us all without a path to migrate to newer versions. There are other projects out there that have figured out how to solve that problem and wont leave you stranded. I would suggest you spend your efforts getting one of those setup instead.
can you suggest any good alternative?
I would suggest this one from Nerd Vittles:
http://nerdvittles.com/?p=30403
They have been pretty good at supporting users with upgrades and not marooning everyone. One of the goals of the latest project is being able to do a backup and restore to upgrade to new versions. It's an absolutely critical feature if you don't want to spend hours reconfiguring every major release.
This specific release takes the best of multiple projects, including Raspbx, and combines it into one great preinstalled package. I'd suggest starting there and see if you like it. If not, stick with raspbx.
In my opinion this is not a good idea - see my other reply for the reasons. Also just to point out, the Nerd Vittles site appears to be at least somewhat of a profit-making operation. No one but the maintainer really knows if it's generating pennies or dollars or thousands of dollars, but I believe he does use referral links and/or gets commissions or other benefits from providers he recommends. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that as long as he discloses it, but it might give him some motive to keep promoting his stuff, even possibly stuff that is quite long in the tooth and should have been retired or rewritten years ago. Again, all of this is just my opinion.
Last edit: VoIPuser 2019-12-30
That all sounds personal to me. Nerd Vittles uses RonR's scripts and does give attribution . I will admit he has had some low spots, but the latest release is solid and a huge improvement over vanilla raspbx. I expect any raspberry pi to eventually kill the SD card and use SSD via USB for anything I care about, or move it to a docker or VM if its super important to me. I have a stack of dead SD cards of every brand and size, but none from an asterix system. HomeAssistant is by far the worst OSS project for Pi that I have seen so far. If you like RonR on your favorite Pi OS, go for it. If I am going to homebrew it myself though, I would move it off the Pi. YMMV
Well I have used RonR's script since shortly after he first posted it in March of 2016 and it has yet to kill a SD card. As for the personal part, all I can say is that a couple of times I did actually try an install from Nerd Vittles and both times I was so unhappy with it that I replaced it with something else based on Asterisk and FreePBX within a week. Then I went to RasPBX and was pretty happy with that and used it for a few years, and then went to RonR's script, I don't even remember exactly why anymore, but I've been very happy with that.
One thing I really hated about the NV stuff was the way the firewall was implemented and the fact that if you made any changes to it then you had effectively gone off the reservation and could not run their upgrade script without losing all the changes you'd made - it seems they really wanted you to use their firewall rules for some reason. I guess "Incredible" is fine if you are in effect willing to let someone else take over your system and to accept all the design choices they have made (or else do without upgrades), but I'm not some mindless little sheep that wants no control over my system. Also I hated all the crud they added in extensions_custom.conf; I have my own use for that file and don't want to have to waste time figuring out what of their stuff I could remove without breaking the system. I don't remember for sure if running their upgrade script also overwrote extensions_custom.conf, I tend to think it did but my memory is pretty foggy on that one. But also, at least for me, their stuff ran slow - some SIP-only calls were taking several seconds to go through, instead of going through instantaneously as is normal.
The only "personal" thing is that I personally don't like their stuff. AT ALL. I can't think of a single redeeming quality about it. It was not always like that; at one time they had some pretty great stuff. If you read their articles from the early 2000's (if you can even still get to those) the tone seemed much different, it was far more of a "here's a starting point, now take it and run with it" type thing, whereas now it seems like much more of a "here's what we've made and here's how you should use it, use it as we intend or don't use it" type of situation. Which, to me at least, seems more than a little arrogant when almost everything you offer is built using other people's software (such as Asterisk and FreePBX, and now you say he's including RonR's scripts). I guess some people like being in a walled garden; I find it suffocating.
I'd again suggest you look at https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30661088-PBX-FreePBX-for-the-Raspberry-Pi - just follow the instructions and you will have a fully working Asterisk and FreePBX install, plus several useful utilities that you are free to use or ignore. The script lets you pick which version of Asterisk and FreePBX you want; if you want stability I'd suggest Asterisk 16 and FreePBX 14 (or 15 but be aware that 15 is not fully polished yet).
What follows is strictly my opinion: I most emphatically DO NOT RECOMMEND the Nerd Vittles version suggested by another poster. Basically as he notes that project "appropriates" code from other places, and I question whether proper attribution is given, but the biggest problem is that it's saddled down with decade old absolutely useless addons (the crap that the maintainer thinks makes it "Incredible" but that no one but him ever uses) that he refuses to remove or modify to bring up to today's standards, possibly because he has no idea how to do so. All that crap just might mean that the system runs slower or wears out the SD card faster by doing unnecessary writes to the card. Further, if you make changes to certain configuration files (even the ones that you are supposed to be able to change, I don't mean the ones automatically generated by FreePBX) and then do one of their recommended upgrades, all your changes may be nuked depending on whether he thinks he should just "upgrade" that file without your permission. I will grant that many years ago (back in the days of Asterisk@Home) the Nerd Vittles stuff was great, but it has not aged well, and I believe I recall reading comments by former users that have said they will not use anything from there again, at least not until it is brought up to date and gives more control back to the user. If you are a rank beginner you may not realize how bad it is at first, but my impression is that experienced users stay far away from that stuff; even using plain Asterisk would be preferable.
RonR's script on the other hand leaves you in control, he gives you a great initial setup with no crud imposed on you (there are some extras that only work if you run them from a command prompt, they are not left running in the background all the time unless you install one that works that way such as Hylafax), and if you later make changes to something (such as the firewall rules, which you may want to change if you don't use certain providers) your changes do not get overwritten during upgrades. Also RonR does maintain his script and seems quite interested in Asterisk and FreePBX; he has recently submitted several bug reports to the FreePBX project. And he assists users that post in that thread on DSLReports. Again, my personal opinion is that I most emphatically DO NOT recommend using anything from the Nerd Vittles page at this point in time - stay away and save yourself some grief!
Last edit: VoIPuser 2019-12-30
Many thanks for all the suggestions. I already found RonR's script on DSLR and going to give it a try. I'm aware of Incredible... and I'm not going to install it, I share most of the points already mentioned. Many thanks for all the answers.
Raspbx did a very good job for me (respect to Gernot!) but after a few reinstallations over past years I simply need something different.