Timesaver: PHP and SSH2 (libssh2) - Installing or Upgrading

To install or upgrade PHP (5.x) with recent versions of libssh2 (now 1.1) from source (rather than through PECL):

• Make sure you have OpenSSL (0.9.8g or more recent) installed
• Download libssh2 from http://sourceforge.net/projects/libssh2/
• Extract and run ./configure with your choice of arguments: examples: --with-libssl-prefix=/usr/local/ssl --with-openssl
• Make and install libssh2
• Download the libssh2 language bindings (now 0.11.0 )for PHP from http://pecl.php.net/package/ssh2
• Extract. In the root directory of the extracted folder, type phpize (or full path if you have more than one php install)
• Then the familiar: ./configure && make
• Copy the modules/ssh2.so file to your PHP extensions directory
  

Timesaver: [ configure: error: Cannot use an external APR with the bundled APR-util ]

If you are upgrading Apache to a version 2.2.x (from 2.2.3 up), you might run into this error early on:

configure: error: Cannot use an external APR with the bundled APR-util

Solution:

Add --with-included-apr as a parameter to ./configure

Faxing with Asterisk 1.6.1 (Receiving Faxes) - Timesaver

If you're trying to get Asterisk 1.6.1 to receive faxes these steps might be all you need for a simple setup:

• Make sure you have udptl.conf in place, and make sure you're aware of the ports configured there
  
• Make sure your firewall will accept udp connections on the ranges you set in udptl.conf
• sip.conf: In the [general] context: t38pt_udptl = yes
• sip.conf: In the [general] context: t38pt_rtp=no
• sip.conf: In the [general] context: t38pt_tcp=no
• sip.conf: In the peer configuration: t38pt_udptl=yes
  
• sip.conf: In the peer configuration: you might need to set canreinvite=yes , especially if you're sure there is no NAT involved. If NAT is involved or might be involved, try nat=yes and canreinvite=no (or canreinvite=nonat)
• In your dialplan use the ReceiveFAX application instead of rxfax
  

If these settings look contradictory or confusing, take page from the book of working with actively developed software: Sometimes it just works.

Asterisk 1.6.1 + OpenSSL: Save your hair! Timesaver

While compiling Asterisk 1.6.1 from source, if you come across a "no such File or directory" compile error (through chan_sip.c and tcptls.h) try using the ASTCFLAGS instead of or in addition to CFLAGS.

This error is most likely to show up if:

• ./configure runs fine, even with --with-ssl=/usr/local/ssl (or your path)
• openssl is installed in a non-standard path (common when compiled from source)
• you know that ssl.h and err.h exist on your system -- asterisk's build simply doesn't find it during make (arguably not asterisk's job)
  

If ssl.h and err.h are under /usr/local/ssl/include/ssl.h and /usr/local/ssl/include/err.h, respectively, this might get Asterisk compiling when other methods don't:

ASTCFLAGS="-I/usr/local/ssl/include" CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/ssl/include" /usr/local/bin/make