TIPS Upgrading from iPBX 2027-R-20 to latest on Debian 12 - SIP guide

[BeDazzler]

Hello Incredible People,

We've been running Incredible PBX 2027 R 20 on Rocky Linux 8 and I'm trying to create a template for Debian to migrate these hosts and get them up to date.

First I created a template using Ubuntu 24 which turned into a nightmare with too many things broken so I pivoted to Debian after reading a post in this forum.

The template is all good, the forum recommended Incredible PBX 2025 so I went with that. Installation all good.

I then restored a 2027 R 20 configuration from backup which worked fine, however everything we have is SIP which is no longer supported.

After spending hours reconfiguring extensions and finally getting them to work, I am now stuck on trunks.

Converted to pjSIP, using UDP, they sometimes register, but then they timeout and become unresponsive.

I'm currently looking through debugger to find some clues but it's just so painful.

My question - is there a guide to migrating from SIP to pjSIP, specifically what do I need to consider/look out for in my configurations?

Whilst this is our test environment, I ended up rebooting the previous Rocky 8 + iPBX 2027 R 20 installation to get phones all working again.

Happy to hear from others more experienced than I.

Many thanks

BeDazzler.

 

[kenn10]

Chan_pjsip is just another SIP stack. Moving from chan_sip to chan_pjsip seems daunting at first but FreePBX does most of the heavy lifting for you when your restore the backup from an old system to a new. You are correct that Debian-12 is the most stable OS to use since Ubuntu 24.X OS versions have introduced some challenges.

If you use the FreePBX backup on the old system and restore it to the new system, the conversion from SIP to PJSIP is done for you during the restore process. You might have to tweak your trunks but the extensions and trunks are converted during the restore process. Depending on what provider you are using for your trunks, there is probably some information on this forum already if you use the search function. Using IP authentication with a provider is usually the easiest but sometimes registration is required by the vendor.

Once you restore the backup on the new system, be sure to check the port numbers on the Settings > Asterisk SIP Settings > SIP Settings (chan_pjsip) tab. And on the General Settings tab, be sure to detect network settings.

One last reminder is that if you change port numbers for SIP/PJSIP, you must reboot the system for those changes to take effect.

IncrediblePBX-2025 uses PHP 8.2 so some older things like the OSS Endpoint Manager and Advantfax do not work with it.

Also, IncrediblePBX-2025 does not support the older "Go Public" script for roving users. SIP softphone solutions from ClearyIP work well or you can utilize OpenVPN and have your remote users connect over the VPN.

 

[Samot]

One last reminder is that if you change port numbers for SIP/PJSIP, you must reboot the system for those changes to take effect.

No. You just need to restart Asterisk. No reboot required.

 

[BeDazzler]

Chan_pjsip is just another SIP stack. Moving from chan_sip to chan_pjsip seems daunting at first but FreePBX does most of the heavy lifting for you when your restore the backup from an old system to a new. You are correct that Debian-12 is the most stable OS to use since Ubuntu 24.X OS versions have introduced some challenges.

If you use the FreePBX backup on the old system and restore it to the new system, the conversion from SIP to PJSIP is done for you during the restore process. You might have to tweak your trunks but the extensions and trunks are converted during the restore process. Depending on what provider you are using for your trunks, there is probably some information on this forum already if you use the search function. Using IP authentication with a provider is usually the easiest but sometimes registration is required by the vendor.

Once you restore the backup on the new system, be sure to check the port numbers on the Settings > Asterisk SIP Settings > SIP Settings (chan_pjsip) tab. And on the General Settings tab, be sure to detect network settings.

One last reminder is that if you change port numbers for SIP/PJSIP, you must reboot the system for those changes to take effect.

IncrediblePBX-2025 uses PHP 8.2 so some older things like the OSS Endpoint Manager and Advantfax do not work with it.

Also, IncrediblePBX-2025 does not support the older "Go Public" script for roving users. SIP softphone solutions from ClearyIP work well or you can utilize OpenVPN and have your remote users connect over the VPN.

Thank you for the reply and information.

Yes, Ubuntu was a nightmare and not worth the hassle or the risk of it breaking again.

I have been rebooting the entire VM after restore, I also restart Asterisk if I remove/create a new trunk just in case there is old session information still lingering.

I have been checking the port settings, etc, and they all seem fine. To make sure they are correct I removed the trunks and re-create them. For the Detect Network Settings, the IP shows correct in there so I didn't do that, however I will do that now as an extra step.

I had another go at this today and was able to get the trunks working.

The issue was two fold:
1. The secret/password field in iPBX was doing strange things. I would paste the password from the SIP Trunk provider, but the old password would remain in the field. Even select-all and delete did not work. I had to backspace/delete to remove the old password. This is on Firefox. Something to do with the obfuscation?

2. Once the credentials were changed, it took some time for Asterisk to properly authenticate and enable the SIP Trunk for inbound calls. To accelerate this I restarted the VM.

Now the SIP Trunks are registering and calls are working.
Extensions are also working fine.

I'll do some additional testing and deploy a few smaller production PBXs.

Thanks again for your help.

BeDazzler.

 

[kenn10]

If you are using IP Authentication on trunks, be sure to enter all the provider's IP addresses or DNS in the trunk's "Match" field. If the trunks are working, I assume you already used the /root/add-ip command to update the firewall for relevant provider IP's in the firewall.

Sounds like you're doing pretty well.

 

[BeDazzler]

If you are using IP Authentication on trunks, be sure to enter all the provider's IP addresses or DNS in the trunk's "Match" field. If the trunks are working, I assume you already used the /root/add-ip command to update the firewall for relevant provider IP's in the firewall.

Sounds like you're doing pretty well.

Yes, I have a standard iptables rules.pbx config which I copy/overwrite rules.v4 and apply,
Then, in fail2ban jail.conf I have a standard list of ignore IPs.

All running, will do some testing over a few days on my personal PBX before deploying in production.

B.