SAIL FAQs

Introduction

As of Feb 2013, SAIL v3.1.1 is considered stable and v4.0.0 is in development.
SAIL v3.2.0 has been discontinued and users can either downgrade to v3.1.1 Stable or upgrade to v4.0.0 Testing.
All appliance configuration resides in a single file - a SQLite v3.0 database - /opt/sark/db/sark.db - use the FireFox Addon SQLite Manager to manipulate it directly and with care.
Upstream version changes and updates to CentOS 5, SME8, Asterisk 1.8 and Digium 1.8 and feature enhancements and maintenance to SAIL are sought to be listed in this FAQ article so as to benefit the building of generic white box SAIL appliances.
This FAQ will in most part apply to all versions of Asterisk / DAHDI but has been tested and specific to Asterisk v1.8.
sark.db table and field names in particular as and when they are introduced / changed are explained here
AsteriskNOW v2.0.0 rpm is used in SAIL for the MySQL cdr and reporting scripts.
Base versions taken are v3.1.1-22 and v4.0.0-43.

smesailenv* should be installed first before SAIL or along with it rpm -Uvh sail... smesailenv...
Doing a yum update will upgrade the kernel and may upgrade the CentOS minor build, breaking the DAHDI drivers which must then be compiled and installed again. Installing / Reverting to some kernel for which DAHDI compiled drivers exist in the Digium - Current repo may be an option.
SAIL uses SayUnixTime inside the sarkhpe binary which has the language hardcoded as GB in it. Set the mode=new in line 6 of /etc/asterisk/say.conf to make it work and test it by dialling feature code *55* and having the current date and time read out.
Asterisk 1.8 now uses ulaw instead of alaw by default. The current default SAIL installs have only the alaw sounds installed. Install the ulaw sounds with:

yum --enablerepo=asterisk-current install \
   asterisk-sounds-core-en-ulaw  \
   asterisk-sounds-moh-opsound-ulaw

Undocumented web service is running on Port 7601 as seen in /opt/sark/scripts/srkhelper.pl possibly for internal use.
SME8/SAIL v3.1.1 URL: https://server.ip.address/sail

SAIL v4.0.0 runs on SME 8 and there are no current plans to make it run on a vanilla CentOS.
SAIL v4.0.0 Access URL: https://server.ip.address:8443
smesailenvast18 rpm is available only in the ISO. All it does is set the asterisk delimiter in globals to a comma, Digium changed the delimiter from pipe (|) to comma(,) in 1.8. You can use it, if you are running 1.8, or set the value manually, doesn't matter which. It's in the ISO repo because we know ahead of time which asterisk we are running. V3/V4 will also run with 1.4 so the variable has to be changeable. Don't run with Asterisk 1.6 because it's nasty.
httpd.conf and other service files have been moved from smesailenv_4.0.0-10 rpm to sail_v4.0.0-34 rpm as the same files were used across many hardware / OS builds. The appropriate rpm/deb now moves it to where it should be in the target appliance. It now resides in /opt/sark/service in the sail_v4.0.0-* rpms. In generic SME8 appliance, the httpd.conf file will now get moved to /opt/sark/etc/httpd folder. The coressponding old files in /opt/sark/httpd will no longer be used and can be safely removed.
smesailenv_4.0.0-11 rpm upgrade must first be installed before upgrading sail_v4.0.0-* rpm.