New (to me) Avaya CM Troubles

[horuden]

So I hope it is ok to post this here, and inb4 "Call your BP" this is just one of my (admittedly pretty weird) hobbies. I do work for a small MSP and we manage a couple of IP Offices which I have become fairly proficient at, I know absolutely nothing compared to my boss or any of you guys, but I love telephony so I am just happy to be able bang my way around in the dark.

Long story short we decommed an older Avaya CM (I think it is running CM 6-ish) at a client location about a year ago. I never really got the chance to learn much about it other than some very, very basics (changing a couple little things for a station), but it grabbed my attention my first week on the job. We finally got around to removing it from the closet and I was lucky enough to be able to take it with me. This is a dream come true for me, a dream that turned into a nightmare (much like my AS/400).

I have a G450 cabinet with an S8300C processor, a PRI card, and a couple analog cards. I also have a G250 with an S8300C processor that (I am fairly certain) acts as an SRG, not sure if I have the terminology correct, but it will pick up call processing if the main unit ends up MIA.

I figured since I knew the IP subnet and had at least the dadmin password it would be pretty easy to get it running again, but you know what they say about assuming. So I get it home and get it makeshift set up in my living room and things seem to be going ok, until I try to connect to the S8300. The chassis boots up no problems, I can ping the chassis controller, and after some fiddling with an old windows xp laptop, and an ancient version of Java, I can even get to the Avaya Device Management console for the G450.

That, however, is where the fun times end. Once connected to the ADM I can see all of the cards, except for the S8300. The PRI card has the alarm light lit up, which is to be expected as I am not wealthy enough to have a whole PRI coming into my house. The S8300 also has the alarm light lit, on both of the chassis.

Some of the things I have tried so far are:
- Re-seating the S8300 card
- Connecting directly to the Services port on the S8300 (I don't even get a link light)
- Continually pinging the Services port as I reboot the chassis (Still not even a link light)
- Resetting the chassis from ADM (I get a "Failed to reset the device! SNMP Error: Timeout" error.

I feel like I have stopped just short of sacrificing a chicken to the Avaya Gods, but I am sure I have missed quite a few things to try. After the first boot failed I pulled the drive out of the S8300 and got a dd image of it at the advice of a friend that works with PBXs for his day job (admittedly not CM hardware, he does have the VM variety of Aura running though). I am willing to provide any further information that would help in diagnosing my issues, but I may need pointed to the appropriate Avaya manuals. If there is anyone that would be willing to throw some suggestions at me I can't tell you how much I would appreciate it.

This is my telephony holy grail, and I am hoping that I don't have a very pretty (and giant) paperweight. But I feel like it probably takes more than unplugging and moving locations to kill a CM. I am dying to try getting my Merlin Legend set up in Behind Switch mode just to see how that all works, and I am sure my IPO V8 wouldn't mind having a newer Avaya buddy to talk to either.

Sorry for the wall of text, but thank you in advance for any pointer you may be able to provide.

--
Holden

 

[horuden]

So, I am not going to lie, I am beyond shocked that this actually worked... But popping the hard disk and compact flash out of the old S8300 and just popping it in the new one worked, first try. I really didn't think there was going to be a hardware issue that wasn't the drive. BUT I got logged into CM and everything, I wasn't able to log in as dadmin as I didn't know the pin, but that was given to me today, so I will have to give that a go this evening.

Now that I am in the system, I have realized (again) that I have no idea what I am doing. This is going to be a fun adventure, I've already grabbed the CM 5.2 documentation set from Avaya's site, and started looking through some PDFs at lunch today. This thing is crazy, and I feel like I have acquired a tiny little central office. The only thing I am not excited about is the new set of acronyms, between the day job, and the IBM hobby, I am pretty sure I am just about at my limit of acronyms that I am able to remember.

I think I have figured out how to get it on the right network (mostly) but I do not have the password for WebLM, and something in there is unhappy I think. All the info I can find for resetting it is for CM6 and newer, but I'm sure I'll stumble across something that will help me out there.

AvayaTier3

>> s8300 CM software version?
I don't know the exact version, but it is CM 5.2

>> modem connected to s8300C usb port?
No the modem is not connected to the server

>> backup CD/DVD version?
No back up CD that I am aware of, I did get my hands on a back up of the system off of the old management PC

>> g450 serial number?
08IS04164360

Wanebo,

Yeah, I was mostly just making a joke at Avaya's expense, no one ever said I was good at jokes haha

Thanks again guys for all your input, I seriously would not have gotten this far without you, and I can't put into words how grateful I am!

 

[horuden]

NewNic,

I have the LSP chasis still, and zero need for an LSP. I thought about getting an S8300D and trying something newer on it, just to see what it is like. I probably will at some point, but this baby is already licensed, and honestly I kind of like the challenge. Also I plan on this replacing my IPO as my home phone system at some point, so I don't want to have to re-install every 30 days haha

 

[AvayaTier3]

With cm5.2 you would not have WebLM

You can access CM SAT with dadmin/pin and Web pages with dadmin/pw

You appear to have a licensed g450 main s8300 server and it's fully functional. Good job on swapping the hard disk and getting it
to load. You can create your own backups of the security/xln/os for your system. This would include logins/pw and licensing and
system configs. Most likely you also have embedded Audix voicemail built into this same s8300.



A great teacher, does not provide answers, but methods to teach others "How and where to find the answers"

bsh

45 years Bell, AT&T, Lucent, Avaya
Tier 3 for 35 years and counting
[URL unfurl="true"]http://bshtele.com[/url]

 

[kyle555]

Good job!

To get it on the right network, you'd need to change the IP of the gateway and the S8300. That's why you have the services port at 192.11.13.5 and .6 on both.

 

[horuden]

Wow... I can't believe that it has been a whole month and a half! Sorry for the crazy delayed response, life has been real this last little while.

BUT... I did get it all working (well, kinda), and on the right network. I have spent a lot of time just removing the old configs (after getting a decent back up just in case), and I can even receive calls on my regular old landline. For some reason it was stripping the 1 off of all my calls so I couldn’t quite dial out, but I figured it out (took WAY longer than I care to admit, but I knew I was in for a ride when I got this thing). Next up… figuring out a SIP trunk, or at least connecting it to Asterisk so I can send calls out there. I have heard H323 trunks are easier than SIP trunks in this version of CM.

I do have the integrated messaging, but it seems like something there is broken, at least for the web interface. Most of the pages work fine but at the very least the "Messaging Server Admin" page will not load, I just get an "Internal Server Error". I ran the "Software Verification" under "Software Management" in the web interface, and a few of them say the verification was successful, some of the sections say there are missing files, and many of the section have a list of files with an odd... something... in front of the files, one of the smaller lists:
[pre]

Performing verification of package VM-dfltdb ...

.....U.. /ldap/sdata
.M...UG. /vm/tmp
[/pre]

I am pretty sure I need to reinstall it, which is sad as I don't have any installation media, but maybe I will run across some on eBay someday.

I think the WebLM server SES is complaining about may have been in the AES server that was attached, but that is just an uneducated shot in the dark. But I also found an AES server running on the S8300, and I can log into it with the default Avaya account, but that doesn’t seem to helpful as all I can do is add/modify/remove users that can only add/modify/remove users, I don’t seem to be able to actually administer AES. There doesn’t seem to be much information online about the Virtual_Server AES installation, but I haven’t really had the time to dig in to it.

Anywhoo, I just wanted to reach out and thank every one of you for the help, I would have never gotten this far without your assistance, and it has been very much appreciated! You all are serious rock stars, and I am fairly certain that you guys haven’t heard the last of my troubles, but since I have the basics working I figured I would delve into some more manuals before I just ask “strangers on the internet” do my homework for me!

I hope you guys have had a fantastic month, and that you all are doing well!

Sincerely,
Holden

 

[AvayaTier3]

Here is example of installing messaging. Software should be on the s8300 hard disk.
CHIA is CHawkIntuityAudix

[root@server1 /]# find / -name autoinstall -print
/usr/CHIA/autoinstall
[root@server1 /]# /usr/CHIA/autoinstall


***********************************************************
* Start autoinstall: Sat Mar 25 21:59:20 EST 2017 *
***********************************************************


215941 The following packages will be installed:
audixcd websrv mom mtce vs maint prismlog machlog cdhstub swtts asp per
f cswebadm webvoice swinbase chiaweb TSM teladm chantran tscrtu h323 chia CHIAse
t swmgmt FastObjects-e7_9.0-OpenSSL FastObjects-e7_9.0-RuntimeSystem FastObjects
-e7_9.0-Tools VM-dfltdb VM-sw ldapolv3 emf-tts APPLset us-eng us-tdd syseval

215942 The Call Processing system is running.
Call Processing system must be stopped to install the software packages.
Is it OK to stop Call Processing system? (y or n)
(n is default) y

220006 Stopping Call Processing system......
shutdownproc accepted. Global shutdown is now in progress.
Call Processing system has been stopped

220024 - begin installing audixcd.
220026 - installation succeeded audixcd.

220026 - begin installing websrv.
220028 - installation succeeded websrv.

220028 - begin installing mom.
220029 - installation succeeded mom.

220029 - begin installing mtce.
220036 - installation succeeded mtce.

220036 - begin installing vs.
220044 - installation succeeded vs.

220044 - begin installing maint.
220046 - installation succeeded maint.

220047 - begin installing prismlog.
220052 - installation succeeded prismlog.

220052 - begin installing machlog.
220055 - installation succeeded machlog.

220055 - begin installing cdhstub.
220057 - installation succeeded cdhstub.

220057 - begin installing swtts.
220101 - installation succeeded swtts.

220101 - begin installing asp.
220104 - installation succeeded asp.

220104 - begin installing perf.
220105 - installation succeeded perf.

220105 - begin installing cswebadm.
220108 - installation succeeded cswebadm.

220108 - begin installing webvoice.
220109 - installation succeeded webvoice.

220110 - begin installing swinbase.
220111 - installation succeeded swinbase.

220111 - begin installing chiaweb.
220112 - installation succeeded chiaweb.

220112 - begin installing TSM.
220113 - installation succeeded TSM.

220114 - begin installing teladm.
220125 - installation succeeded teladm.

220125 - begin installing chantran.
220127 - installation succeeded chantran.

220128 - begin installing tscrtu.
220133 - installation succeeded tscrtu.

220133 - begin installing h323.
220135 - installation succeeded h323.

220135 - begin installing chia.
220137 - installation succeeded chia.

220137 - begin installing CHIAset.
220138 - installation succeeded CHIAset.

220138 - begin installing swmgmt.
220139 - installation succeeded swmgmt.

220139 - begin installing FastObjects-e7_9.0-OpenSSL.
220140 - installation succeeded FastObjects-e7_9.0-OpenSSL.

220140 - begin installing FastObjects-e7_9.0-RuntimeSystem.
220143 - installation succeeded FastObjects-e7_9.0-RuntimeSystem.

220143 - begin installing FastObjects-e7_9.0-Tools.
220144 - installation succeeded FastObjects-e7_9.0-Tools.

220144 - begin installing VM-dfltdb.
220153 - installation succeeded VM-dfltdb.

220153 - begin installing VM-sw.
220201 - installation succeeded VM-sw.

220201 - begin installing ldapolv3.
220240 - installation succeeded ldapolv3.

220240 - begin installing emf-tts.
220241 - installation succeeded emf-tts.

220241 - begin installing APPLset.
220241 - installation succeeded APPLset.

220242 - begin installing us-eng.
220358 - installation succeeded us-eng.

220358 - begin installing us-tdd.
220454 - installation succeeded us-tdd.

220454 - begin installing syseval.
220455 - installation succeeded syseval.

220455 Installation Complete


The following packages were successfully installed:
audixcd websrv mom mtce vs maint prismlog machlog cdhstub swtts asp per
f cswebadm webvoice swinbase chiaweb TSM teladm chantran tscrtu h323 chia CHIAse
t swmgmt FastObjects-e7_9.0-OpenSSL FastObjects-e7_9.0-RuntimeSystem FastObjects
-e7_9.0-Tools VM-dfltdb VM-sw ldapolv3 emf-tts APPLset us-eng us-tdd syseval

220456 Moving autoinstall logs to Software Management Logs
Moving logs in /var/log/autoinstall to /swmgmt/logs
[root@server1 /]# swversion
Operating system: Linux 2.4.20-AV14 i686 i686
Built: Jun 25 09:13 2004

Contains: 01.1.414.1
Reports as: R012x.01.1.414.1
Release String: S8300-012-02.1-01.1.414.1
UPDATES:

There are no updates on the system.

Translation Saved: Mar 25 22:00

License Installed: Unknown

Messaging: --N1.3-5.0--------------
[root@server1 /]#


A great teacher, does not provide answers, but methods to teach others "How and where to find the answers"

bsh

45 years Bell, AT&T, Lucent, Avaya
Tier 3 for 35 years and counting
[URL unfurl="true"]http://bshtele.com[/url]

 

[AvayaTier3]

CHIA cm5.2.1

/msg/CHIA:
total 70580
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 5533 Oct 13 2009 swver.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 98233 Oct 13 2009 mom.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 33168 Oct 13 2009 migration-IA51-IALX.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 1706724 Oct 13 2009 maint.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 1441573 Oct 13 2009 machlog.rpm
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root root 1323 Oct 13 2009 langlist
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 1936695 Oct 13 2009 h323.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 1053609 Oct 13 2009 cswebadm.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 18026 Oct 13 2009 chiaweb.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 363969 Oct 13 2009 chia.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 251666 Oct 13 2009 chantran.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 71177 Oct 13 2009 cdhstub.rpm
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root root 39217 Oct 13 2009 autoinstall
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 142591 Oct 13 2009 TSM.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 25687 Oct 13 2009 CHIAset.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 57237 Oct 13 2009 tscrtu.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 579016 Oct 13 2009 teladm.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 5397116 Oct 13 2009 swtts.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 138339 Oct 13 2009 swmgmt.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 383458 Oct 13 2009 swinbase.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 1046061 Oct 13 2009 prismlog.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 28033 Oct 13 2009 perf.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 1646933 Oct 13 2009 mtce.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 104873 Oct 13 2009 webvoice.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 212168 Oct 13 2009 websrv.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 3680319 Oct 13 2009 vs.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 137864 Oct 13 2009 VM-dfltdb.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 344231 Oct 13 2009 MessagingLocale.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 261800 Oct 13 2009 FastObjects-t7_9.5-Tools.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2819741 Oct 13 2009 FastObjects-t7_9.5-RuntimeSystem.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 548500 Oct 13 2009 FastObjects-t7_9.5-OpenSSL.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 8760 Oct 13 2009 APPLset.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 18055 Oct 13 2009 field.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 11558 Oct 13 2009 emf-tts.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 552661 Oct 13 2009 ela.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 6006754 Oct 13 2009 VM-sw.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 43146 Oct 13 2009 syseval.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 78532 Oct 13 2009 perldap.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 1144415 Oct 13 2009 ldapolv3.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 8716136 Oct 13 2009 iim.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29711620 Oct 13 2009 us-eng.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1138398 Oct 13 2009 us-tdd.rpm
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 29 2010 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Jan 29 2010 ..


A great teacher, does not provide answers, but methods to teach others "How and where to find the answers"

bsh

45 years Bell, AT&T, Lucent, Avaya
Tier 3 for 35 years and counting
[URL unfurl="true"]http://bshtele.com[/url]

 

[horuden]

Well that was quite the rabbit hole I fell down last night. You are very much correct the installer is located in /msg/CHIAset, there also seems to be an installer in /usr/CHIA. However, my attempts to fix my messaging installation where a massive failure, but I'm not to sad about that as over the course of a few hours I have learned WAY more about Avaya's RedHat setup than I ever figured I would. It is kind of irritating attempting to work in bash without root access, but that also led me to learn quite a bit about the setup.

I found the super command, which is very useful! I also really quite like the statapp command. I wish there was more documentation on the user profiles though, I would like to know what exactly prof0 and prof1 can do that the others can not, and why the init user seems to be so special. But it does drive me a little crazy that I can't 'sudo su', and the lack of vim is killing me haha.

Back to messaging though, when I just ran the autoinstall script it simply stated that everything was already installed, and there were no tasks to perform. So I decided to throw caution to the wind and run it with the -o flag and just reinstall everything, what could go wrong?!

Well turns out many things can go wrong, looking back I probably should have just reinstalled the websrv package to see if that solved my issue, but hindsight is 20/20 right? Also, I wouldn't have had all this fun with RedHat, so I guess you take the good with the bad right?

So eventually I tried to just install the rpm files manually, I mean we are already here, may as go all the way. I learn best by breaking things anyway apparently. But I ran into the same issue I found in the logs, many of the packages complain that the user 'cron' does not exist when attempting to update the crontab, is this user supposed to exist in the system? If so, would there ever be a legit reason to remove the user?

A couple more questions from my misadventures came up.

1) At one point I was in the ftp directory, and attempted to install the license file, just to see what would happen, when I did it said something along the lines of 'the certificate file for the licenses is out of date, get new license files' (super para-phrased, but the gist of the message is there) is that caused by the license file itself, or the fact that the certificates on my CM are expired?

2) The super command allows me to run passwd as root, so I changed the root password, but am still unable to log in as root. It does not pop up with the ASG Guard response when attempting to log in as root, is enabling root login only something that Avaya has the magic incantation for?

Finally 3) IF the cron user is supposed to be available on the system, do you know if it is possible to add the user so my software install can proceed?

Thank you again for all your direction, this has been such a fun/frustrating experience, and I wouldn't have it any other way!

Sincerely,
Holden

P.S. I forgot, one more question... why 'CHawk' Intuity Audix, what is the chawk about?

 

[kyle555]

1. roll back the clock a few years and see what happens. It won't break anything

2. Yes. sroot, craft, and init are usually ASG challenged. Unless regular root - without the s - is enabled, you'll be hard pressed to get in. In newer releases, in /etc/ecs.conf there's a line for CustomerRootEnabled and it's Yes or No. If you have the disk copied and mounted elsewhere, you could check that.

3. The cron stuff probably isn't working because you're not running the scripts as root and as such are not allowed adding things to other users crontabs.

Profiles:

https://downloads.avaya.com/elmodoc...rison_of_administrator_account_management.pdf

As AvayaTier3 mentioned - you can run a system with a single s8300 and 1 gateway without a license. Not sure if that gets you voicemail...

CM's SIP support is limited and works better with something on top - like SES. If you're just looking at trunking to other stuff, H323 trunks off CM would be easier.

If you have a link to a dropbox anyone can upload to, I might have something for you.

 

[horuden]

kyle555,

1. Well now I feel a little stupid for not thinking of that on my own, but thank you for the fantastic suggestion! Also, that totally worked, thank you for the suggestion.

2. Well I found /etc/ecs.conf, but instead of no it was set to disabled. The LocalCraftLogin was set to enable so I tried that, but it doesn't seem to have worked. However, that gave me the idea of just modifying the sudoers file, and I gave my test user permission to run su as root and that worked for me.

3. I did run the autoinstall script using sudo and super, so I think those should run it as root, but regardless once I got root access I ran the scripts and it still complained about the missing cron user. So I used useradd to add the cron user, with a UID of 1000 (which I found was the group GID in the /etc/groups file) and that let me run the script without that error.

Still didn't fix anything, but after much mucking about with rpm I actually got it to the point that the autoinstall script was able to automatically install messaging again. So that is nice, but it has the exact same problem as before, I can't access the "Messaging Server Admin" page. But I have a couple of things I may try after some more investigating.

THANK YOU for that PDF! That was pretty much exactly what I needed. I wish it was in the 5.2 documentation library as it is super helpful.

At some point I am going to grab another S8300 on eBay and mess around with installing Aura without licenses on my extra media gateway, but that is a project for latter on down the road. I have confidence that one way or another I will get this one working again... eventually, and probably learn quite a bit in the process.

I have SES, but I also have a pretty nice Adtran Total Access 908e with 4 T1 ports. I have gotten a PRI link working between the CM and the TA, but there is something wrong with my SIP trunk config that I need to work through. However, I do want a trunk to my Asterisk box, and as that doesn't have a T1 card, and those PCI cards cost $texas, I think I will look into an H323 trunk between the two. Another fun learning experience.

I only have a free dropbox account, and they have apparently done away with public folders for the free accounts, but I will see what if I can come up with something!

Thanks for the reply, it is much appreciated!

Sincerely,
Holden

 

[horuden]

kyle555,

It looks like you can create a file request link that will allow someone to upload files to your dropbox. I have never used that feature before, but I created a link, we can see if that works.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/zCvqRbmqLyPOFmt4bURi

Thank you,
Holden