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james January 23rd, 2009

Quick Update (Summer 2010): After firmware version 7.1.4.1 (May 4 2010), Allworx revised the firmware update method to be a web pull or desktop push. So now you can get the files from your rep (if you have one) or just have the box pull from the web and install automatically. This is a significant improvement over the non-working old method. As such, we recommend users upgrade to 7.1.4.1 or higher on Allworx 6x boxes in order to easily stay up to date. I will leave the article below intact for users of older firmware.

Another Allworx phone problem here. I still intend to put up a comprehensive review in the future but for the moment I am only going to cover the firmware issue. In the summer of 2008, I upgraded our Allworx 6x box to version 6.9.3.3 firmware. After this version, every time I went to the web interface and chose Maintenance -> Update -> “download from the web” or “check the web” I would get the error (listed receptive to the errors above):

There was an error downloading the files from the web. Please check your network connection, then try again.

OR

Unable to obtain the information about the latest version of the software from the web.

Ok, so this is another instance where Allworx screwed something up and they are certainly not going to help resolve the issue. I look in the logs and see the following:

7 01/23/2009 09:28:37am tWebT0055: Install: Downloading (/releases/allworx6x/upgrade.dat) from upgrade server
7 01/23/2009 09:28:37am tWebT0055: Web Client: Problem fetching URL (upgrade.inscitek.net:80) (/releases/allworx6x/upgrade.dat)
7 01/23/2009 09:29:35am tWebT0055: Install: Downloading (/releases/allworx6x/upgrade.dat) from upgrade server
7 01/23/2009 09:29:35am tWebT0055: Web Client: Problem fetching URL (upgrade.inscitek.net:80) (/releases/allworx6x/upgrade.dat)

Once I see this, I quickly realize the solution which is to simply download the necessary files from this location:
http://upgrade.inscitek.net/releases/allworx6x/filename

BUT you need to know the file names, so here they are:
installFiles.arc
installFiles.ini
newFlash.sre
oisapp
upgrade.dat

Here are the actual links for those who just want to right click and save:

http://upgrade.inscitek.net/releases/allworx6x/installFiles.arc
http://upgrade.inscitek.net/releases/allworx6x/installFiles.ini
http://upgrade.inscitek.net/releases/allworx6x/newFlash.sre
http://upgrade.inscitek.net/releases/allworx6x/oisapp
http://upgrade.inscitek.net/releases/allworx6x/upgrade.dat

Of course it seems that the actual Allworx software should work and perform this action already when telling it to upgrade but hoping for Allworx support or hoping for their software to work in all cases increasingly seems to be a lost cause. We recently upgraded from 6.9.3.3 to 6.9.6.1 because we purchased a new 9224 phone (which is still NOT DUPLEX SPEAKERPHONE, does not have an actual rj11 port (its a handset rj22 port) for the headset and still suffers from poor audio quality compared to other phones we have on the same system but is better than the 9212 phones we have). I really wish Allworx would stop falsely advertising that they have DUPLEX SPEAKERPHONES among the other falsely advertised features.

After our upgrade to 6.9.6.1, we cannot add speed dial numbers anymore… great.

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james January 11th, 2009

Well here I am on a Sunday trying to change my TiVoHD from a 160gb internal drive and 250gb external drive I added several months ago via MFS Tools to a nice 750gb Seagate DB35 (quiet, reliable a/v drive). I find out that I don’t have an operating workstation here at this moment that will properly identify the SATA controller properly to mount the drives I wish to use when using the MFStools iso to boot. I have some older machines that are already ubuntu that I could use to do this but I would have to start ripping apart more machines.

So the MFSTools 2.0 install fails, it can’t recognize the drives with AHCI on and with it off all drives show up as 137439 MB. I decided I was just going to boot via Ubuntu LiveCD and then run MFSTools. I come to find out that when trying to boot with the Ubuntu 8.04 CD without changing anything (the LiveCD function). This only gets me to a blank screen that just says (initramfs) and goes nowhere. I do a little digging and find some people with a similar problem:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/222176

and used the following advice:

I was able to boot from ubuntu 8.04 HH live CD desktop. After selecting language, install, F6 I entered:

The image booted from cd-rom and the installation proceeded without problem. I am hopeful others will have the same success.

It worked so I wanted to put it here as well to help others on this issue when and if they run into it.

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james January 9th, 2009

mysqltuner, to quickly get this working just run the following:
wget mysqltuner.pl
chmod 0700 mysqltuner.pl
./mysqltuner.pl

To run again, just use this line:
./mysqltuner.pl

MySQLReport
wget hackmysql.com/scripts/mysqlreport
chmod +x ./mysqlreport
./mysqlreport --user USER --password PASSWORD

To run again, just use this line:
./mysqlreport --user USER --password PASSWORD

Guide for MySQL report: http://hackmysql.com/mysqlreportguide#questions_report:total

and the obligatory diagnostic syntax to restart your mysql server:
/etc/init.d/mysqld restart

Also a nice summary of all your MySQL variables:
mysqladmin -u USER --password=PASSWORD variables | more

We had a query go out of control here and take over all cpu on our server recently so we initiated a cpu load control system with respect to mysql queries. However, do implement this we had to bring apache down too. Here is the appropriate command:
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

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james January 9th, 2009

Here is the syntax to optimize all databases from your command line:
mysqlcheck -Aao -o --user=USER --password=PASSWORD

And here are the chron settings for twice per day:
0 4,16 * * * mysqlcheck -Aao -o --user=USER --password=PASSWORD

if you also want to repair and check the tables (I don’t recommend this), then here is the syntax:

mysqlcheck -Aao -o --auto-repair --user=USER --password=PASSWORD

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james January 8th, 2009

1. mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new -> change to true
2. mail.server.serverX.trash_folder_name (create string if not set) -> [Gmail]/Trash
3. Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings -> Advanced…. -> Maximum number of server connections to cache -> Set to 2 (if you have multiple devices or people trying to use one account such as sales, purchasing, etc or have lots of gadgets like blackberry/iphone.
4. Tools -> Accounts Settings -> Server Settings -> Copies & Folders -> Check place a copy in: and choose other: Sent mail on accountname. If using a group account where you want others to see your responses also click place replies in the folder of the message being replied to.
5. Tools -> Accounts Settings -> Server Settings -> Composition & Addressing -> Automatically quote the original message then start above the quote, and place signature below my reply. Once this is set, click ok and go to Tools -> options -> advanced -> config editor -> type in sig_bottom and change all values to false if you want your signature to be at the top. Now restart thunderbird.
5. Add identities as needed, attach signatures for each identity. Be sure the base idenity has the above settings already set so you won’t need to repeat the copies & folders or composition & addressing features. Once done with setting the identities click ok and go to Tools -> options -> advanced -> config editor -> type in sig_bottom and change all values to false if you want your signature to be at the top. Now restart thunderbird.
6. Be certain you have the right smtp gmail server for each account so your sending credentials are accurate. I manage more than one account and found the server assignments for multiple identities to all be set to the default smtp server so every identity must be properly set. To check, go to Tools -> options -> advanced -> config editor -> type in smtpserver and look at the assignments. You can validate this secondarily by looking at mail.identity.idx iterating the numbers for the proper assignments.
7. Tools -> Account Settings -> Junk Settings -> Uncheck the enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account as google should handle this for you.

Important NOTE: After ANY changes to identities you must go back to Tools -> options -> advanced -> config editor -> type in sig_bottom and change all values to false if you want your signature to be at the top. This is a bug the Thunderbird people deny exists and frustrates our admins because any time a change is written to an identity this flag is reset to true regardless of the state chosen in the gui menu.

Here are some more references:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/internet/setting-up-gmail-imap-support-in-thunderbird-2x/
http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/turn-thunderbird-into-the-ultimate-gmail-imap-client-314574.php
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78892
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/6381
EDIT:

Here are some additional nice notes for gmail with thunderbird ( http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78892# ):
From the Tools menu, select Account Settings and highlight your Gmail address.

1. On the Server Settings tab:

Check for new messages at startup > checked
Check for new messages every 10 minutes > checked
[EDITOR NOTE] I recommend 15 minutes and I move our trash to the trash folder as setup in the first part of this post
When I delete a message > Mark it as deleted
Clean up (”Expunge”) Inbox on Exit > do NOT check
Empty Trash on Exit > do NOT check

2. On the Copies & Folders tab in the When sending messages, automatically section:

Place a copy in > do NOT check

3. On the Copies & Folders tab in the Drafts and Templates section:

Keep message drafts in > Other
Other > [Your Gmail address] > [Gmail] > Drafts

4. On the Junk Settings tab

Enable adaptive junk mail controls > do NOT check

5. Click OK to save and close your account settings.

If you’d like to to further enhance your IMAP experience, please carefully follow these additional steps:

In the ‘Tools’ menu, open Options.
On the ‘Advanced’ tab, open the General section.
Click the Config Editor button.
In the ‘Filter’ box, type ‘browser.cache.memory.capacity’
Double-click on the browser.cache.memory.capacity entry to edit its value.
Change the value to ‘30720′ and click OK.
Delete the text in the ‘Filter’ box and type ‘mail.server.default.fetch_by_chunks’
Double-click on the mail.server.default.fetch_by_chunks entry to set its value to false.
[EDITOR NOTE] I recommend searching for ‘fetch_by_chunks’ and changing all servers to false
Close the ‘about:config’ window and then close ‘Options’ by clicking OK.

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james January 6th, 2009

I have been meaning to put up a full review of our Allworx 6x Phone system and 9212 phones but seem to lack the time consistently. It has some very good features and some powerful negatives but I will get into that in a review later.

For the moment, I want to point out a few issues.
1. This unit will not longer update it’s firmware when we request it (this feature stopped working with firmware version 6.9.3.3 in June, 2008). Previously we just clicked a button and it downloaded from a remote FTP and upgraded the firmware. I suspect this is a bug but it is a problem for us as the new firmware versions have fixes and new features.
2. When calling one of our remote phones (an allworx 9212 phone at a remote site), the voice on the allworx 6x side periodically does not receive sound from the remote side. We just have to keep trying to call that remote employee until it works (usually works on the 2nd try). We have opened all ports and even tried the boxes at the heads of the networks to no avail.
3. This is by far the most important and problematic issue. Apparently Allworx has set the ptime value on call sessions using the G711 codec to 20. Bandwidth.com has several carriers who keep defaulting back to a max ptime of 10. This causes a jackhammer and static sound as the codec fails while the carrier keeps trying and failing again due to a max ptime error. When this happens, bandwidth.com is flooded with Allworx issues and ONLY Allworx customers are affected out of their large number of customers. Simply put, this issue is specific to Allworx and is a MAJOR problem as we run into this jackhammer max ptime error every few months. Lots of Allworx customers and Bandwidth.com have supposedly contacted Allworx to ask them to alter this ptime variable to a value of 10 or less with no change. I hope that posting here will help and I will also contact Allworx and try to get our firmware updated (perhaps this has changed since June, 2008).

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