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johnj.jpgAsterisk Tips/Fixes/Features

by John Johnson

These are various Asterisk how-to items I have found/developed over the last few years. Feel free to use or share them, I look forward to adding more as I am able to compile them into a share-able format from my own notes.    

“Experience is what you don’t get until just after you needed it.”

 

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 Cisco 79xx Asterisk Setup

John Johnson 1/10/2013

Having recently rolled out an asterisk implementation re-purposing over forty Cisco 7941 and 7961 phones, I wanted to share my experience to hopefully save some other technicians some grief.

 

      The first step was to re-flash the phones to use SIP rather than SCCP.  While I did not include any 7940-60 phones in this implementation I will include them in these instructions in that I have tested successfully with one 7940 and good odds you will run into them out there. Now these phones, 7940-60 /41-61 look identical but are completely different! They use different firmware and different configuration file formats! On the other hand, the same method is used to load new firmware on each model and deliver the configuration files to connect them to an Asterisk server.

 

Requirements to flash phones:

DHCP and TFTP servers.

Appropriate firmware files.

 

The Cisco 79xx series (while running SCCP) use a special DHCP delivered code to identify their TFTP server, most systems use a more common code; 66, but the 79xx use 150. I have been unable to get the DHCP server included in Centos to deliver code 150 and have had to use an outside DHCP server to deliver it. Now, in many cases where you are replacing a Cisco Call Manager with an Asterisk server you will find a Cisco based DHCP server in place that can deliver the code 150 for you, but if not you can use Tftpd32, a piece of freeware from Mr. Philippe Jounin, you can download it here. Following are instructions to use it:

 

Using Tftpd32 you can set up a “mini network” that will; assign IP addresses to the phones, direct them to the new firmware files and flash the phones automatically. Under DHCP server within the tftpd32 program, enter the following and click SAVE:

-IP pool starting address as 192.168.1.2
-Size of pool as 250 (if doing multiple phones, this just makes sure your phones are able to receive an ip address)
-Default router as 192.168.1.1
-Mask as 255.255.255.0
-Additional option, enter 150 in the first box, then 0x0101A8C0  in the second box (this number is 192.168.1.1  in Hexadecimal).

 

Save the appropriate new firmware files for your phone model (see below) in the tftp folder specified in Tftpd32, then connect the phones to your network and watch them flash themselves. This is a picture of me using Tftpd32 on my laptop to re-flash a group of 79xx phones to SIP.

 

After the phones are re-flashed to SIP they can be attached to the live network and will respond to the standard DHCP 66 code or can be manually pointed to the Asterisk server tftp to pick up their individual configuration files (see below) and attach as extensions.

     Now, setup TFTP configuration files on the server so your newly flashed SIP phones can find them; (TFTP is generally installed and running by default, but here are instructions to check/install it if need be)

     You need to download the appropriate firmware files for your phones i.e. P0S3-07-5-00.zip and cmterm-7940-7960-8.2.00-sip.cop (For the 7940/7960) and/or cmterm-7941_7961-sip.8-5-2.zip (For the 7941/7961). They are available from Cisco via your SmartNet contract 7940-60 here and 7941-61 here. These are examples of what they should look like when unzipped into your tftpboot folder: 7940-60 files and 7941-61 files.

 

These are the files needed for 7940-60;

        OS79XX.TXT    The one line of text contained in this file is the filename of the firmware that these phones are to make use for connection, it is plain text and can be cut and paste from the example above. Only one of these is needed for all phones.

         SIPDefault.cnf     This file contains general settings for all the 7940-60 phones in the deployment outside of extension specific settings. It is also plain text, replace xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your server IP, the CST with your timezone and other fields you need with appropriate data. Only one of these is needed for all phones.

         SIPMacaddress.cnf  This file contains the extension specific details for each individual phone extension replace Macaddress” in the file name with the mac address of the specific phone (all alpha uppercase!!), one file for each phone. It is also plain text, replace xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your server IP, “extension” with the appropriate number, “label” with a short word (6 Chrtrs) for the extension button, “secret” with the extension password from FreePBX, and “device_label” with a longer word or phrase (app 12 Chrtrs).

         SEP79x0.cnf.xml   This file contains specific details for each individual phone model This file is not plain text but an .xml file! So don’t cut and paste it casually! Download the appropriate version for the phone and use an editor like notepad++ or other .xml editor if you need to change info in the file. Here is the 7940 version and here is the 7960 version

 

These are the files needed for 7941-61;

       dialplan.xml  This is a default file for all phones, you only need one. This file is not plain text but an .xml file! So don’t cut and paste it casually! Download the file and use an editor like notepad++ or other .xml editor if you need to change info in the file.

       XMLDefault.cnf.xml This is a default file for all phones, you only need one. This file is not plain text but an .xml file! So don’t cut and paste it casually! Download the file and use an editor like notepad++ or other .xml editor if you need to change info in the file.

       SEPMacaddress.cnf.xml This file contains the extension specific details for each individual phone replace Macaddress” in the file name with the mac address of the specific phone (all alpha uppercase!!), one file for each phone. This file is not plain text but an .xml file! So don’t cut and paste it casually! Download it and use an editor like notepad++ or other .xml editor to replace xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your server IP, “extension” with the appropriate number, “label” with a short word (6 Chrtrs) for the extension button, “secret” with the extension password from FreePBX, and “device_label” with a longer word or phrase (app 12 Chrtrs).

 

When you create the Asterisk extension(s) for the Cisco 79xx phones, use “Generic SIP Device” within FreePBX, and within the extension under “This device uses sip technology” set Nat to “no” or “never” (it varies from one version to another)

 

Some additional configuration that may be necessary:

    These phones do not auto-answer on command for paging. To accommodate paging, you have to set up a second extension in Asterisk and within the extension specific configuration file (SIPMacaddress.cnf for 7940-60 or SEPMacaddress.cnf.xml for 7941-61) assign it to another button and make that button/extension auto-answer by using “<autoAnswerEnabled>1</autoAnswerEnabled>” within the button program. Here is an example file for a 7961, “Button 3” is the auto-answer extension. We chose to make the extension number the same as the main phone with the addition of 0 at the end. We then created paging groups that included those numbers, and were able to present this as a “feature” in that to “intercom” a single extension, just dial the extension number with a 0 on the end. We also chose to label the button “Intercom” rather than the number with 0, just for looks.

    When you re-flash these phones to SIP they will lose the ring-tones users may be used to. The phones will only have two “chirp” style ringtones left, and while that might not seem important, my customer was also using Plantronics wireless headsets with “lifters”. These headsets can produce a “beep” in the users ear to let them know their phone is ringing when they are out of ear-shot, but only with certain ringtones that the lifter picks up through from the phone speaker. Here is a .rar file that has the ringtones and the .xml files that will make them show up on the phone.  You must unzip it into the tftpboot folder where the phones can find it.

 

You can perform a factory reset of the Cisco 7940, 7941, 7960, 7961 and 7970 phone by holding down "#" as it powers up (or resets), at which point you then dial 123456789*0#. This is useful for many types of recovery, especially when the phone is so disabled that it cannot enter Network Configuration to reset to factory default. If you do this YOU MUST HAVE DHCP delivered TFTP settings to re-flash the phones.

To enter administration mode, or “unlock” sections within the settings screen enter **#. If prompted for a “password” try: cisco

To reboot a 79xx phone press the “Settings” key and then enter **#**

 

Some excellent reference pages (by some really smart guys) I used to muddle my way through this implementation:

“Reflash your Cisco 7940, 7941, 7960 or 7961 phone to SIP”

“Configure Cisco IP Phones with Asterisk”

“How to load SIP or SCCP on a Cisco 7940 7960 7941 7961”

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