Hardware VOIP phones

[half_life]

Folks, I have searched the archives and can't find anything that comes close to answering this so here I go.   I have about 20 Cisco VOIP phones that I will be setting up in Asterisk in the next few weeks.  IN plain vanilla Asterisk this is a breeze.  Now enter the twist that has me scratching my head.  Each SIP client should be authenticated via password.  Zentyal has chosen to use end-user passwords.  Phones like Cisco 79XX use XML configuration files to set themselves up.  The password for authentication therefore gets put in an XML file for the phone as a standard practice.  When the user changes their domain password,  how do I get that info back around to the phone?

I am the IT manager for my company and have chosen Zentyal as my server/gateway of choice because I need a straight forward setup if I ever happen to have an accident.  It would be nice to keep everything together under one GUI if I can.  Can anyone give me a hint?

Thanks

Update: Feb20 18:42 EST

On further digging around it is looking like the solution is to modify the res_ldap.conf
line
   md5secret = eboxRealmPassword
to
  md5secret = SomeOtherPassword

and append SomeOtherPassword =  SomeFixedPassword to each users LDAP record.

More on this as I experiment with it.  Anyone with thoughts on the matter feel free to jump in.


Denny

[jsalamero]

Some changes like adding phones support will be shortly released on the 2.1 branch.

[half_life]

Can you see any problem with my solution in the mean time? Might it break an upgrade for instance?  I have toyed around with the idea of adding my phone xml/flat config files back into the ebox .mas file paradigm.

[half_life]

I have tested the ldap changes with a soft-phone.  I changed:
res_ldap.conf:

md5secret = eboxRealmPassword

to

#md5secret = eboxRealmPassword
secret = AstAccountSecret

note that I changed from md5 hash to plain text (not reccomended on public networks)

I used Luma (ldap browser/editor ) to add AstAccountSecret to an account with a plaintext password.

To finish the job with a hardware phone I would add my user account name and plaintext password to the phone (in my case via a few config files served up by an tftp server since they are Cisco).  I leave it as an exercise to the reader how to use md5 passwords and configure other phones.  I will re-post a complete explanation with Cisco config file examples after I have done more testing.

Since my needs involve more than basic asterisk functions (as provided in Zentyal), I will be overriding parts of the default config (multiple DID's and several queues plus an operator panel) I can post a more detailed explanation of how I did it if anyone is interested.   Because I am mindful of the fact that others in my company aren't linux savvy, I am using GUI's wherever possible such as a visual dialplan tool etc. 

[mmullenders]

Hi Half_life,

are there any updates? Please let me know if you succeeded in implementing hardware voip-phones.

Kind regards,


Maurice
 

[robb]

Softphones are no problem at all. I can even use a softphone from home while connected through VPN.

I ordered a Linksys PAP2T-NA ATA. I hope I can use it with Zentyal and an ordinary DECT phone. I will keep you posted on this.

However, ideally in a business situation I guess an IP phone would be preferred but since I don't have (and can't buy) such a phone I can't test that.

[ichat]

but i agree if sutch things are stored in plain text...   an alternate password woudl be desired...

maybe eventually we  could ad an interface to zentyal that managers passwords. 

and you could (for example)    set an altenate paswoord for  jabber or pbx   or other  (less secure) services.

[Escorpiom]

Softphones are no problem at all. I can even use a softphone from home while connected through VPN.

I ordered a Linksys PAP2T-NA ATA. I hope I can use it with Zentyal and an ordinary DECT phone. I will keep you posted on this.

However, ideally in a business situation I guess an IP phone would be preferred but since I don't have (and can't buy) such a phone I can't test that.

I have a total of four linksys PAP2T in my network, but was unable to use them with the present Zentyal-Asterisk system.
I can get them to authorize against Zentyal but no calls can be made. The issue seems to be the leading "0" that has to be dialed to get an outside line.
That kind of screws up the PAP2T internal dial plan and gives me the busy tone no matter what number I dial.
The numbers specified as "test" don't work either.
I haven't tried with softphones.
Asterisk in Zentyal seems very basic, can't adjust anything. Let's hope 2.2 has made some progress with the Asterisk implementation.

Cheers.

[half_life]

Escorpion,  here is a link to an explaination of the pap2 dialplan.  I think you will find your answer there.   http://74.6.238.254/search/srpcache?ei=UTF-8&p=pap2+dialplan+tutorial&fr=yfp-t-420-s&u=http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=pap2+dialplan+tutorial&d=4978773609414879&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=cc4f1b02,aee25639&icp=1&.intl=us&sig=FDuC84omusZBkj5A_CPkPQ--

[half_life]

I am sorry that I abandoned this thread.  While I was able to get a phone to register and function using the methods I have already shared,  the task kept getting bigger with more customisations required.  This violated my requirement of being able to get outside asistance due to the highly customised setup.  I decided to go with an Elastix install on a separate virtual machine.  I assume that you are struggling right now with hardware phones?  Maybe I can help you with your issues.  Have you had a chance to play with the new release candidate yet?  I have it installed on a testbed at work but haven't had a chance to really dig in yet.

Hi Half_life,

are there any updates? Please let me know if you succeeded in implementing hardware voip-phones.

Kind regards,


Maurice

[jsalamero]

Zentyal Asterisk on 2.1-2.2 has been successfully deployed on multiple customers. Our aim with this module is not to have everything on the GUI for give the admin a basic configuration LDAP integration, etc, to customize for each scenario.

[half_life]

Sorry,  I wasn't throwing stones.  I was merely stating that for my use case, the amount of customization required would make it difficult for an outside vendor to follow up behind me and make sense of it all.  I am the lone IT person in my company and if I were to suddenly be taken out of the picture, it would be up to my superiors to find outside support.  How I wish I could have integrated the ldap functionality from zentyal into my current setup in the timeframe I had.  This evening I have had a chance to look around the new release candidate and it has me thinking about ways of incorporating zentyal back into my setup for voip.  Something like Elastix(DID handling/time conditions/ Outgoing Trunks) ------ IAX trunk---->Zentyal (extension control and voicemail).  Thanks for a fine product.

[Escorpiom]

Thanks for the link half_life, after the release of Zentyal 2.2 I will try to make use of the voip part.

Cheers.

[half_life]

No problem sir.  Back in the early days of VOIP I purchased a Sipura 3000 and had fun getting its FXO port working under asterisk.  The PAP2 is a descendant of the SPA3000 and shares quite a bit of its configuration. The default dial plan is probably not setup to allow a zero+digits except for international calling.

[robb]

Any updates on getting the papt2 ATA working on Zentyal?