Trixbox CE Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is trixbox the same thing as asterisk@home?
A: Yes. We renamed the project to “trixbox” when Digium requested that we cease use of the word “Asterisk”; since trixbox is so much more than just Asterisk, we decided that a name change was in order anyway, and chose the name “trixbox” to represent the flexibility of the software.
A: Why does it take a team of people to develop the trixbox CE platform?
Q: trixbox CE is actually a very complex project. Not only do we have to author our original “dashboard” interface in PHP, but we now have folks who are constantly doing “welding” – baking in other 3rd party applications into RPMs so they can included in the distro. In addition, we are constantly spending time and money on interoperability. This means we spend considerable effort making various SIP phones, interface cards, network devices, etc. work reliably with trixbox. And of course, there is the considerable expense of managing such a massive community (database work, forum monitoring, hosting, etc.). The community has noticed the improvements, the least of which are the new levels of QA which go into each release. This is no longer a hobby distro – this is now a business phone system. As such, the quality requirements are of a much higher nature. Quality requires investment.
Q: Why do you spell “trixbox” with a lowercase “t”?
A: We liked the look of it in print. We felt “trixbox” stood out and made the brand more memorable. As such, it is inaccurate to spell the brand as “Trixbox” or “TrixBox” or “Tribox”. We don’t care all that much how you spell it, we just wanted to let your grammar police be aware of its formal spelling.
Q: What is the difference between trixbox CE and trixbox Pro?
A: trixbox CE is the original Open Source project. It is 100% free and 100% GPL and will remain such. trixbox Pro is a commercial, hardened, and 100% reseller-orientated IP-PBX. It comes bundled with an enterprise-quality version of HUD Pro and scales into larger installations and even call centers. You can learn more about it here: trixbox.com FYI: trixbox Pro is an independent project from trixbox CE and while they share some similar code (based on Asterisk, etc.) they are independently managed and operated. trixbox Pro is based on the hugely successful PBXtra technology which has been deployed extensively into thousands of businesses since 2004.
Q: What is the most important thing to know about installing trixbox?
A: During the install process, ALL hard drives connected to your system will be formatted and all data will be lost. This will even apply to any external USB drives.
Q: How do I connect analog lines to a trixbox?
A: You will need some kind of FXO interface, this can be an FXO card from Sangoma, Digium, Rhino, OpenVox or several others or a SIP gateway product like a Linksys SPA3102, Linksys SPA400, Grandstream GXV4104, Mediatrix 1204, or similair device.
Q: How do I make calls over the internet?
A: You will need an Internet Telephone Service Provider (ITSP) such as Vitelity, Teliax, Allgent, VoicePulse, cBeyond, Broadvoice, and many others.
Q: Can I use a "soft" phone with trixbox?
A: Yes, popular softphones are Zoiper, X-Lite, SJPhone, and others
Q: Can I use trixbox with a residential VOIP service like Vonage or Packet8?
A: Somewhat. You may not be able to connect a direct trunk to some of those services, but you can usually take the ATA they provide and connect that to an FXO device in your trixbox system. There are other providers that are more asterisk "friendly", such as those listed above.
Q: What phones will work with trixbox?
A: Most any SIP compatible phone from companies like Aastra, Polycom, Linksys, SNOM, Cisco, and others will work, you want to make sure it is fully SIP compliant. You can also use a regular analog phone if you have a card with an FXS port on it or you can use an ATA (analog telephone adapter) to bridge between SIP and the analog phone.
Q: What do I need to setup a home or office system?
A: You should run trixbox on a dedicated machine, preferably 2.4ghz or faster with 512mb of RAM or more. You will also need an interface card or SIP gateway to connect to your analog phone lines and you will also need to choose appropriate phones.
Q: Can I use RAID to make my system more reliable?
A: Yes, if you are using SATA drives, at the initial install prompt type: sataraid and then press enter and the system will configure RAID 1 (mirroring) across both drives; this step does not apply if you have a hardware raid controller, make sure your controller is supported before using the standard install (just press enter).
Q: Can I send/receive faxes with trixbox?
A: Officially this is not supported although the mechanism to do so is provided within the system. Receiving faxes is pretty simple as it should do it by default if you have FreePBX configured to receive and process the faxes. For sending, you will need to add a product such as Hylafax or AvantFAX, we will be having tutorials on these coming soon. Fax success depends upon the quality of your lines.
Q: What T1/E1/Analog cards do you recommend for trixbox?
A: trixbox is tested with Sangoma, Digium, and Rhino cards and support for PIKA cards and Xorcom Astrabanks is coming soon. We highly recommend that whatever you choose that you make sure it has hardware echo cancelation built in.
Q: What about other hardware? How do I know if a particular NIC or motherboard is compatible?
A: trixbox is built on CentOS which is itself based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Older versions of trixbox use CentOS 4 and newer versions of trixbox use CentOS 5. If you are unsure which version of CentOS your trixbox is built on, type the command:
cat /etc/redhat-release
And it will tell you.
Red Hat has a hardware compatibility list (HCL) for versions 3, 4 and 5 here:
https://hardware.redhat.com/
However, that list can not possibly cover every possible device. Google is your friend here. A good rule of thumb is to use the HCL (or specific recommendations from trixbox forum users) if you are purchasing, if you already have something and it doesn't work then you'll have to do a bit of investigating. There is also a Hardware section in the Wiki which is slowly growing.
Q: Help! All my RAM is being eaten up! What do I do?
A: Probably nothing. The short answer is that Linux (and other Unix like systems) use RAM differently than you may be used to in other operating systems. The long answer is outside the scope of this FAQ, but the following links have more information: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=175419
http://gentoo-wiki.com/FAQ_Linux_Memory_Management
Q: I am trying to use yum to install something, but it tells me "Error: Missing Dependency: kernel-headers is needed by package glibc-headers." Why isn't yum working?
A: It is, but for various reasons we don't allow kernel related things to be upgraded by default (there are many pieces of telephony hardware that might stop working if the kernel version changes, because the drivers (kernel modules) are built on a per-kernel basis.)
There are a couple of ways around this. First, you can just download and install the RPM manually:
wget http://host.tld/path/to/whatever.rpm
rpm -ivh whatever.rpm
Or you can edit /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo and comment out (put a # in front of) the line that says "exclude=kernel*" then run your yum command, then undo the change (for the same reason listed above.)
Q: How many users does trixbox support?
A: Lots, but it is not a service provider, its more geared towards office use, and there are many factors affecting usable size. For reference take a look in the wiki.
Q: Can I pay someone to help with configuration issues or problems?
A: Certainly, you can call us at 1-888-trixbox or you can click on the Resources tab at the top of the page to find a list of trixbox certified companies.
Q: Where can I find more info??
A: Go back to the Wiki Home page, and be sure to review the entire page, there are lots of links to more in depth guides and things like Tutorials, Troubleshooting, and Additional Scripts and Tricks, and finally there are specialty forums for many components, be sure to review the different forum categories before posting.
注：trixbox CE Frequently Asked Questions（原文出处，翻译整理仅供参考 !）
