Setting up Cisco 7961 IP phones with asterisk
This blog post is just my notes on the installation process I followed. There is lots of documentation out there, but a lot of it is contradictory or incomplete. These notes are mostly about the configuration in my house, and might not work for you. Sorry about that.
The first step is that you need to be running your own DHCP server. Running a simple embedded one in something like your DSL modem wont cut it, as you need to hand out non-standard options in your responses in order for the Cisco firmware on the phone to find the TFTP server you'll set up in a bit. I'm not going to document installing DHCP here, as the Ubuntu packages are reasonable. In fact, the only annoying bit about the packages is that all the config et cetera is in a directory named
/etc/dhcp, but for some reason I can't explain the init script is
/etc/init.d/isc-dhcp-server. That throws me every time.
You also need to know the MAC address of the phone. This is probably on a sticker on the bottom, failing that it is on the screen during the phone boot process. Absolute worst case, it is in the DHCP logs once the phone starts to boot. The DHCP config for my phones looks like this:
option domain-name "home.stillhq.com";
option domain-search "home.stillhq.com", "stillhq.com";
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.14;
option routers 192.168.1.254;
option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
option ntp-servers 192.168.1.14;
option smtp-server 192.168.1.14;
option time-servers 192.168.1.14;
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
option cisco-etherboot-server code 150 = ip-address;
...
# IP Phones
group {
option tftp-server-name "192.168.1.14";
option cisco-etherboot-server 192.168.1.14;
option arp-cache-timeout 600;
host cisco-7961-1 {
hardware ethernet 00:1a:a1:ca:04:5b;
fixed-address 192.168.1.50;
option host-name "cisco-7961-1";
}
}
I also added the phone to DNS with a reverse entry, but I don't think that is actually required for the phone to work. Next I needed a TFTP server, which is something I haven't bothered to run for years. I used HPA's TFTP server, which again has reasonable-ish packages. One gotcha is that you need to install xinetd as well, and then disable the init script for the HPA TFTP server. As best as I could tell the default non-xinetd configuration simply didn't work, so I don't know why they package it like that.
Now for the really hard bit. You need to find the right firmware for the phone. I have my suspicions this is a lot easier for the modern Cisco phones, which have a web server by default and can be configured without TFTP. I say this as someone who doesn't actually have one of these phones, but who has read some stuff online about them. These older phones are really TFTP happy, and seem to be constantly chatting to the TFTP server, even if they're healthy. That might be an issue if you're deploying thousands of these phones -- you'd have to monitor TFTP server load and be aware of the extra IO during global phone firmware updates.
There are two ways to get the firmware for the phones. You can buy a support contract from Cisco for not very much money (around $20 a year), or you can find dodgy copies cached on the internet. If you choose to go the dodgy route, this
this Whirlpool thread has some useful advice.
Next we need to do a factory reset on the phone. This might not be needed in absolutely all cases, but its just safer. To reset the phone, hold down the # key and power cycle the phone. The lights at the side of the screen will start flashing in sequence after a while (nearly a minute). You now press 123456789*0# within 60 seconds of releasing the # key you were holding down. Note as well that the Cisco documentation for what lights flash is wrong, but it didn't seem to affect the outcome.
The phone is really slow to boot up (several minutes). Once it has booted, it grabs network configuration for DHCP as shown above, and then starts requesting files from the TFTP server. Here's a log of all the requests from my phone booting when its happy:
$ tail -f syslog | grep RRQ
Nov 11 06:24:53 molokai in.tftpd[8221]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename term61.default.loads
Nov 11 06:24:54 molokai in.tftpd[8222]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename Jar41sip.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:24:57 molokai in.tftpd[8223]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename cnu41.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:25:00 molokai in.tftpd[8224]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename apps41.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:25:11 molokai in.tftpd[8235]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename dsp41.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:25:15 molokai in.tftpd[8236]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename cvm41sip.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:26:33 molokai in.tftpd[8242]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename CTLSEP001AA1CA045B.tlv
Nov 11 06:26:33 molokai in.tftpd[8243]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename SEP001AA1CA045B.cnf.xml
Nov 11 06:26:41 molokai in.tftpd[8244]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename SIP41.8-3-1S.loads
Nov 11 06:26:42 molokai in.tftpd[8245]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename Jar41sip.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:26:44 molokai in.tftpd[8246]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename cnu41.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:26:47 molokai in.tftpd[8247]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename apps41.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:26:59 molokai in.tftpd[8249]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename dsp41.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:27:02 molokai in.tftpd[8253]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename cvm41sip.8-3-0-50.sbn
Nov 11 06:27:59 molokai in.tftpd[8256]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename CTLSEP001AA1CA045B.tlv
Nov 11 06:27:59 molokai in.tftpd[8257]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename SEP001AA1CA045B.cnf.xml
Nov 11 06:28:14 molokai in.tftpd[8261]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename /mk-sip.jar
Nov 11 06:28:15 molokai in.tftpd[8262]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename US/g3-tones.xml
Nov 11 06:28:18 molokai in.tftpd[8263]: RRQ from 192.168.1.50 filename dialplan.xml
No, I don't know why it requests those files at the start twice either, but it does it across multiple test factory resets. There are two files there which embed the MAC address of the phone into the filename, so you'll have different names for those files in your setup. Note that the file CTLSEP001AA1CA045B doesn't exist in my configuration, and that doesn't seem to have caused anything bad to have happened. Filenames are also case sensitive, so that might make things more exciting for you. Almost all of the other files are firmware.
I recall creating a file named XMLDefault.cnf.xml which has a bunch of stuff in it, but I can't see any evidence that it is used during the book process, so I think that might have been a dead end that I didn't need to go down.
The format for SEP001AA1CA045B.cnf.xml is well documented in the links below, so I will leave that as an exercise for the reader. Feel free to ask questions in the comments to this post, and I'll do my best to be helpful, bearing in mind that I am absolutely not an expert at this stuff.
Here's a list of the web pages I thought were most helpful during my adventure:
Tags for this post: blog asterisk voip sip cisco 7961 tftp dhcp system_adminRelated posts: Configuring Asterisk; Using an Intel PCI modem as a FXO card; Worst timing evar!; Building an answering machine using a $10 winmodem
CommentSyndicated 2011-11-10 23:36:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley (no blather posts)
