FreePBX 13. No longer beta

What is FreePBX? This is one of the options for controlling the engine of modern IP telephony - Asterisk. No matter how much integrators like this “superstructure”, it is certainly she who is the leader of IP PBX installations.

Yes, in some places it is full of holes, not always clear, with a Russification curve, but free. FreePBX allows you to raise a phone server in an organization to almost any enikee in a matter of hours, and already in the default configuration provides opportunities that will suit almost all companies. Another thing, if you suddenly lack the functionality of the web interface, and you decide to add some kind of unique feature ...
Crutches, impossibility of a normal debag - here FreePBX will appear in all its glory.
')
However, back in March you had the opportunity to test the Alpha version, beta in June, and today I would like to have a quick overview of the final and stable FreePBX 13.



The company shmooze during 2012 - 2013 confidently moved its product to commercialization. Free modules suddenly became paid (end point manager, for example), more and more commercial modules were added to their distribution, and after the purchase by Sangoma, the approach did not change, but became even tougher.

And what does logung say on the main page of the project? "Free means Freedom" Not free, but free;)

At some point, management decided to share FreePBX only as part of its FreePBX Distro, but later died down. Today you can build Linux OC + Asterisk + FreePBX yourself, or install a ready-made ISO image of the system directly to the server.

So, what is included in the latest at the moment available image 10.13.66-6:

FreePBX 13
SHMZ OS 6.6 (CentOS)
Asterisk 11 or 13 (other versions are not supported)
DAHDI 2.10

The system is installed as usual, in a few clicks. Remember to choose --no raid if you have multiple hard drives installed. We, for example, periodically practice installing the system on an SSD of 60 GB, and recording conversations on a neighboring and solid HDD.

When the packages are installed, when connected to the network, FreePBX will automatically update its packages to the latest versions from the Sangoma repositories.

After installation, the address is assigned automatically (if a DHCP server is raised on the network, of course). We look at it in the console or DHCP licenses.

We get to the server, set the administrator login / password and see the new, rubber system interface.



And the first innovation that meets us is to close access to the Admin - System Admin section before registering the system on the Sangoma portal. Neither change the IP address, nor view the list of people who got into Fail2Ban, change TimeZone. DNS and more.

However, the registration is rather short, and you can get a login and password in advance here - portal.schmoozecom.com

As a bonus, you can activate paid modules Extension Routes and Sysadmin Pro for free.

Russification

System Interface: Settings - Advanced settings - Show language - YES

Voice phrases in the PBX, the commands in the console:

mkdir -p / var / lib / asterisk / sounds / ru /
then

wget -q --no-check-certificate github.com/pbxware/asterisk-sounds/tarball/master -O- \ | tar xzv --strip-components 1 -C / var / lib / asterisk / sounds / en /
basic phrases will be loaded, and then

wget -q --no-check-certificate github.com/pbxware/asterisk-sounds-additional/tarball/master -O- \ | tar xzv --strip-components 1 -C / var / lib / asterisk / sounds / en /
At this moment, an extended package of phrases will be loaded, there are more than 700 of them, which covers almost all actions with an asterisk.

In the FreePBX interface, go to Admin - Sound Languages ​​- Custom languages. Click the Add button.
Language Code = ru
Description = Russian
Submit.

Now, in Global language, Russian will be selected by default. (at least this is how it happened on my test machine, however, you can choose Russian and click Submit Advanced)

Interface FreePBX 13

The web interface of the system has been slightly reworked; it cannot be said that this is a revolutionary change, rather a really useful change.


For example, the user screen is divided into tabs (by connection type), and a button for quick adding users is added.

And yes, now you can customize your PBX using a tablet or smartphone, the menu and width will automatically adjust to your screen.

Fwconsole commands

Free PBX 13 adds the ability to manage PBX via Linux command line using fwconsole
Amportal will be “killed” finally in FreePBX 14
You can see the list of commands below (or type on the fwconsole list server)



Mix settings via web interface and Linux console commands. However, it can be useful if you forgot your web administration password or want to re-read configs.

System for updating paid modules

Another fly in the ointment for FreePBX users.

Most of the sold modules of the system were available according to the scheme: purchase of a license for 25 years and 1 year of free update of versions, that is, patches and functional updates. You use the year, and then pay the developers some extra money, supporting the further development of the module. Or do not pay and work with the version that you already have.

It seems everything is clear and beautiful, if it were not for one thing, there was no extension mechanism in FreePBX, and therefore all this time they provided updates for free. Now there is, and you can extend the modules directly from the GUI.

Firewall

The new module Sangoma Smart Firewall, is already included in the new FreePBX. To activate it - go to Connectivity - Firewall and click Enable. Of course, iptables gurus can work wonders, but is this a FreePBX target audience?

You can go through the simplest autoconfigurator, and configure the default protection, but you can dig a little deeper and configure the firewall more correctly.

Four submenus: About. Services, Status, Zones.
About - shows information about open ports, launch status
Services - allows you to open / close the service for the previously created network zone
Status - blacklisted list, as well as the list of registered SIP devices.
Zone - network zones that can be trusted. Indicated with a mask.

Conclusion

FreePBX 13 - the product is quite fresh, I would not be surprised if the next six months we will see a large number of dopilov and improvements.
Just today, I ran into the problem of a non-working Digium board and I needed a firmware update.


FreePBX 12 + Asterisk 11 + chansip. What could be better?