Switching from T1 Flexgrow to T1 PRI

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

Hi All

I had a little trouble switching over from a T1 Flexgrow line to a PRI T1 line. This was using a Digium card.

This is the error:

Jun 17 16:01:32 VERBOSE[29436] logger.c: == Primary D-Channel on span 1 down
Jun 17 16:01:32 WARNING[29436] chan_zap.c: No D-channels available! Using Primary channel 24 as D-channel anyway!
Jun 17 16:01:32 VERBOSE[29436] logger.c: == Primary D-Channel on span 1 up
Jun 17 16:01:40 VERBOSE[29436] logger.c: !! Not good - head of queue has not been transmitted yet
Jun 17 16:01:41 VERBOSE[29436] logger.c: == Primary D-Channel on span 1 down
Jun 17 16:01:41 WARNING[29436] chan_zap.c: No D-channels available! Using Primary channel 24 as D-channel anyway!
Jun 17 16:01:41 VERBOSE[29436] logger.c: == Primary D-Channel on span 1 up
Jun 17 16:01:50 VERBOSE[29436] logger.c: !! Not good - head of queue has not been transmitted yet
Jun 17 16:01:51 VERBOSE[29436] logger.c: == Primary D-Channel on span 1 down
Jun 17 16:01:51 WARNING[29436] chan_zap.c: No D-channels available! Using Primary channel 24 as D-channel anyway!

the D channel was going up and down.

I discovered that the cause of the issue was the order in which the zaptel.conf file had the loadzone and defaultzone listed.

This is the correct order:

/etc/zaptel.conf

loadzone=us
defaultzone=us
span=1,1,0,esf,b8zs
bchan=1-23
dchan=24

To recreate the errors, place the loadzone and defaultzone lines at the bottom of the other lines.

The second thing I noticed (in my case) was that the PRI requires the local area code to prefix a local number. The flexgrow does not require this.

After googling the first issue, I did not find a solution, so I hope this helps someone.

Jonathan Galpin

2

When switching to the same PRI from a flexgrow T1 when using a Sangoma card on another server, I had an even harder time.

Hopefully this will help someone:

On a 2.6.9-42.0.3.ELsmp centos version of Linux (both servers).

Basically, the sangoma card needed to have its software reinstalled, zaptel recompiled and its /etc/wanpipe/wanpipe1.conf needed a change.

The problem was that the sangoma wanpipe/wanrouter modules were loaded into the kernel on startup, and needed to be unloaded before the installation could succeed. There was a warning saying as much at the start of the wanpipe ./Setup install script, but no help from Sangoma’s website, nor google. I tried the script anyway as it was ambiguous, no luck. Zaptel needed to go as well.

Try as I might, using modprobe -r modulename after lsmod, I could not get the order of removing the modules correct.

The server would hang at some point in the module unloading with some of the following errors:

Kernel Panic - not syncing: Fatal exception

Fatal exception: panic in 5 seconds - Kernel panic - not syncing: fatal exception

The only remedy at this point was a server restart.

The final solution was:

1>to rename the /usr/sbin/wanrouter file to prevent it from being loaded
2>reboot the machine
3>service zaptel stop
4>change to the wanpipe source directory and run ./Setup install
5>change to the zaptel directory and execute “make clean;make;make install”

I found that using the new vesrion of the wanrouter1.config file caused asterisk to immediately report “all circuits are busy”.

The problem here was that the TDMV_DCHAN was somehow set as channel 1 when it should be #24 on a PRI.

TDMV_SPAN = 1
TDMV_DCHAN = 24

A restart after that got it all loaded properly.

I googled all the problems to no avail, so hope this helps.

Jonathan Galpin