VoIPuser - 2014-01-28

Every so often FreePBX will issue an upgrade where they "take over" an existing system file by making it a symlink to something else. But if the file already exists it can't create the symlink and will show a warning on the FreePBX status page, often accompanied by the ominous warning "This can result in FATAL failures to your PBX"!

A typical waring looks like this, though the filenames may change:

retrieve_conf failed to sym link:
/etc/asterisk/http.conf from core/etc (Already exists, not a link)
This can result in FATAL failures to your PBX. If the target file exists and not identical, the symlink will not occur and you should rename the target file to allow the automatic sym link to occur and remove this error, unless this is an intentional customization.

If you encounter this, the easiest thing to do is find the file it is attempting to replace with a symlink (it will usually be in the /etc/asterisk directory, such as /etc/asterisk/http.conf in the example above) and temporarily rename it to something else (for example, if it is http.conf, rename it to http.conf.old). Then go to any configuration page in the FreePBX GUI (such as an existing route or extension page) and submit it (you don't need to change anything), to make the red button appear, then click the red button to apply the configuration. After that, you should find the warning is gone, and the new symlink in /etc/asterisk (or wherever the file was) and if everything is working as it should be you can delete the renamed old file. And if you messed up somehow, you can always rename that file back to what it was originally.

 

Last edit: VoIPuser 2014-01-28