Asterisk g729 codec for the OpenWRT.

Today OpenWRT telephony maintainers committed codec_g729 to the feed. I am already using this package on my home router and it works pretty well. Binary packages should be available soon.

Digium, WTF?

Today i visited Asterisk community forums and got this:

Information
You have been permanently banned from this board.
Please contact the Board Administrator for more information.
A ban has been issued on your username.

My last post was a answer in thread were someone was asking for g.729 codec for the ARM platform. I proposed to test my patch for the bcg729 codec and was permanently banned with all my posts deleted :)

Just in case:

1. I am not implementing g.729 functionality and using open-source GPLv2 project bcg729 available in the net.
2. You might have to pay royalty fees to the G.729 patent holders for using their algorithm.
3. The G.729 codec from Digium is supported for use only on Linux x86 and x86_64 environments.

I already wrote mail to the board administrator, but i think they are just banning everyone with non-blob g.729 implementation. I would recommend them to spend some time for porting their solution to more platforms instead :)

Using g.729 codec with Asterisk on Raspberry Pi (or other ARM device)

I decided to build home PBX based on Asterisk VoIP server running on my Raspberry Pi device. One of the reasons for this was ability to build cheap GSM gate for home use using chan_dongle. But one of the problems i have found was lack of g.729 codec for the Asterisk on ARM.

On Intel platform it is possible to use codecs from asterisk.hosting.lv or to buy commercial codec from Digium. Unfortunately its not the case for the ARM. So i decided to see if it possible to port some existing g.729 codec.

Project asterisk-g72x is only Open Source g.729 for Asterisk implementation i am aware of. Internally it is using 2 libraries:

• IPP from Intel
• Or ITU based reference code.

It is not possible to compile recent IPP versions on ARM and a lot of ASM code making porting of it problematic. ITU g.729 code is on a plain C, but is painfully slow. It compiles on ARM, but performance is terrible. Asterisk eating 100% of CPU on recoding and drops frames. So it was not an option. So i decided to find alternative codec. In the net i found 2 Open Source projects with g.729 implementation suitable for ARM

1. Experimental version of G.729 codec for ARM device. It seems to be ITU source code with ARM assembler code for some operations.This code also using many global variables so is not ready for multi-thread software like asterisk without additional changes. Also there are issues open from 2011 without any reaction from developers.
2. Bcg729. It is a software G729A encoder and decoder library written in C, developed by Belledonne Communications, the company supporting the Linphone project. It was written from scratch and is NOT a derivative work of ITU reference source code in any kind.

BCG 729 also supports concurrent channel encoding/decoding for multi-call applications such as Asterisk. I was able to adopt bcg729 for use with asterisk-g72x project, instead of slow ITU code. If you want to test it – use my BitBucker fork. I will post benchmarks later, but now i see about 15-20% CPU load on g.729 encoding with Asterisk, so it should be able to support 4-5 concurrent channels in time.

JVPN 0.7.0 released

JVPN is a Perl script to connect to the Juniper VPN with Host Checker enabled.
New version (0.7.0) adds host checker support, as well as some other features and bug fixes:

+ Added experimental code to run host checker from jvpn
+ Include LWP traffic dump in the debug output
+ Added sample script to restore original DNS settings after connect
+ Added experimental grid cards support
# fixed processing of last line w/o \n character in configuration file

Download location could be found in JVPN post.

Percona XtraBackup FreeBSD port updated to the version 2.1.3

Version 2.1.3 adds some new functionality (including encryption) and also supports MySQL 5.6. Also, to support decompression of the compressed archives I decided to add qpress archiver to the ports tree. See http://www.freshports.org/databases/xtrabackup/ for the details. Please also make a note, that new versions support only MySQL 5.1 (with InnoDB plugin only), MySQL 5.5 and MySQL 5.6.

JVPN 0.6.1 released

JVPN is a Perl script to connect to the Juniper VPN with Host Checker enabled.
New version (0.6.1) adds ability to store password/token in configuration or to use external scripts to provide it. Also it adds ability to define custom URL and addressing issues with scripting support added in 0.6.0.
You can download it from JVPN post.

Using RSA soft token from Linux

I already discussed RSA hard tokens and ability to OCR them. This time i would like to discuss RSA Soft Tokens support in Linux. Despite the fact that there is no official Linux support i found that it works perfectly. There are at least 3 ways to use them:

I am currently using options 3 and 2 and keeping one as backup.

1. Using official Windows software in Wine. It installs and run just fine
2. Using Android/Iphone application on mobile phone, you will need to covert the key using RSA token converter.
3. Using non-official open-source Linux client – stoken. It has CLI and GUI (GTK2) versions, supports batch integration and works perfectly for me.

All tokens should show equal numbers. Below is a screenshot of native Windows client and stoken/stoken-gui.

I found that all options works perfectly for me, currently i am mostly using stoken CLI because it was easy to integrate it with JVPN tool. I will update jvpn nearest days to support external authenticators.

JVPN 0.6.0 – new feature and bug fix

Script to connect Juniper firewall updated. Most important change – bug with hanging after “sending disconnect packet” should be now fixed. Also added new feature – scripting support. It allows to run custom script on connect/disconnect events.
Script page is https://smallhacks.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/jvpn-perl-script-to-connect-to-the-juniper-vpn-with-host-checker-enabled/. Please test and let me know if it works for you.

Android Manager Agent protocol research

My mobile phone comes with Android Manager Agent. It is Android agent + Windows desktop application to manage phone, including managing contacts, SMS, media files, applications, etc. It is possible to use this software via WIFI or USB. Unfortunately desktop client is Windows only and i was not able to run it in Wine.

So i decided to reverse protocol using wire-shark and Java decompiler. It was found that communication is not encrypted, only protection is MD5 of the agent PIN (in WIFI mode). Every packet contains from “magic” header, command type, status field and (optionally) data field. My goal is to write utility to backup/restore contacts book and calendar (yes, i don`t want to store it on google) and, possibly to make a GUI for offline browsing/editing.

Right now client is in very early stage and only able to connect to device (WIFI) and request some information. Patches, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Prototype is hosted on github – https://github.com/samm-git/one_touch_993D_gsm/blob/master/android_manager_client.pl

JVPN 0.5.0 released

JVPN is a Perl script to connect to the Juniper VPN with Host Checker enabled. New version adds a lot of fixes + new experimental mode “ncui”. In this mode script trying to use libncui.so library instead of ncsvc directly. If you was able to get SSID but not able to connect in the previous version i am recommending to try ncui mode in version 0.5.0.