News

Some of our more creative forum members have started working on getting PlugPBX working on the Seagate DockStar NAS, which is very similar to the SheevaPlug hardware platform (different form factor, and 1/2 as much ram), its possible PlugPBX may be supporting three platforms in the near future, being SheevaPlug, GuruPlug and DockStar hardware. Very cool!

Check out our forums for more details!

http://forums.plugpbx.org/index.php?topic=97.0

mattmc97 on the forums has gotten asterisk working with FreePBX WITHOUT having to compile asterisk from source! I suspect the debian squeeze builds of asterisk have been improving vastly since 6 months ago.

This is very cool, since when I built PlugPBX 1.00 waaaay back around xmas, I could only get a compiled version to work with FreePBX.

Sounds like mattmc97′s progress is good, so we’re hoping to build on top of that for the next release. Allows people to apt-get install and update Asterisk at will hopefully and eliminate all that compiling stuff.

It also means once a working install ‘sequence’ is known, you can easily build your own with a single script running all the apt-get commands, which would allow anyone to ‘roll’ their own PlugPBX. Would be cool to see versions that include add-ons, whatever people want (home automation, torrent/newsgroups down-loaders, upnp server, mp3 streamer) etc etc.

Aaaaanyways, my new SheevaPlug is on my desk, and once mattmc97 gets a little bit further i’ll have to image his progress on an SD card (or mirror his efforts) and see what it all comes out to.

This also will allow us to have the serial console work again on the newer rev devices (since mine is too). I suspect its something in the vmlinux boot image, between the old version I installed PlugPBX on versions later versions generated now, but have not had the time to find out what exactly is going on.

It’s cool to see other people starting to tinker along side myself. I always wanted to get a small community rallying around this neat little 3 watt hobby

Keep Plugging away fellow geeks. More are slowly discovering PlugPBX every day and the exciting home-brew PlugComputer hobby. Embedded is not just for the big guys anymore.

Anyone can build a server, but it takes a real man (or woman) to cram it down into a 3 watt box the size of a drinking box

Visit PlugPBX.org for our Wiki site.

Rallying the users to dump lessons learned and ‘updated’ guides into the Wiki. The plan is also to have living documents represent most user documentation on the Wiki so it can be fluid and updated by everyone, and slowly link more and more WordPress pages to Wiki Contents instead over time.

Visit http://wiki.plugpbx.org

Tiz, on our forums, has found a rather clever way of getting PlugPBX to work on the newly released GuruPlug. Kudos to all your hard work. Details follow.

http://forums.plugpbx.org/index.php?topic=71.msg360#msg360

Finally it seems I have got it working. That is, I can boot the RFS from Sdcard in USB adapter. Made some foolish mistakes along the way, but I think the following steps should get your there:

- Image a USB device of minimal 4Gb with the image from this site.
- Update boot, kernel and RFS with ones found here http://www.plugcomputer.org/index.php/us/resources/downloads?func=select&id=14 Use the plugcomputer wiki to find out how.
- Mount the second partition of the USB device and copy everyting under /lib/modules that to “path_to_usb_mount”/lib/modules. Delete what was in there already. Now remember which device was mounted, in this example it is /dev/sdb2
- Adjust boot parameters with ‘root=sdb2′ and add ‘rootdelay=10′  to that. (use printenv, setenv and saveenv, more info on the Plugcomputer forum and wiki)
- This will most probably be wrong, but look at the error message you get. A few options are being proposed and you should look for a device that shows 5 partitions. Then write down the number of the second partition (With me it was the sdd2 device , number 0832. Now reset the Guruplug and change root=sdb2 to ‘root=0832′
- Now it boots from the image! Write down what is not ok (with me dahdi was not ok) and repair afterwards with apt-get rituals.

Good luck and feel free to ask if something is not working.

With excellent user contributions like this, the time for a site Wiki is upon us. More on that.

I Also have received my third development SheevaPlug, so I can being work on assembling the next version of PlugPBX finally. More to follow.

So PlugPBX.org has been around for almost 6 months now (crazy how time flies) – This dawned on me today whilst I was outside pulling weeds, occupied with fancier thoughts other than gardening and chores….

Long story short, since starting this project I’ve received donations from people all over the globe, and thankfully continue to as interest slowly builds, and more people take their first step in PlugComputing by purchasing and setting up their SheevaPlug’ish devices, trying out PlugPBX on them. Very cool.

To those who’ve donated, thanks so much, as you are covering my monthly web hosting costs…. I hate advertising and refuse to rely on it for this website. Kudos. Even the smallest of donations pay for a partial Pint of beer, and I work better when full of yummy beer. Thanks for the odd cold drink and warm thanks internet friends!

All this being said, even in the summer months, I continue to slowly work on a new release as time permits. This will incorporate the exciting new flashybrid system offering a very robust system, as reliable as a router class device, with the ease of modification offered by conventional read/write systems when required by a user.

I would guess the fact I have not released anything in nearly 6 months means what was put out there back in December ’09 doesn’t entirely suck, which is good – as its a phone system – reliability is #1…. and the Wife is a good source of feedback on outages in my own household  *cough*

Thanks All, Be patient, keep the donations coming (beer and hosting are consumables after all) and most importantly, feel free to post, suggest, contribute, test, ask, help or muse on our forums. Everyone’s continued help is most welcome. Those who’ve posted ideas, patches, and suggested scripts or ideas, you rock each and every one of you.

Cheers!