A2Billing INSTALLATION GUIDE
- A2Billing INSTALLATION GUIDE
- Installation
- Step 1: Download and unpack source code
- Step 2: Prepare the Database
- Step 3: Edit the a2billing.conf configuration file
- Step 4: Fix permissions, files and folders
- Step 5: Install The AGI components
- Step 6: Install web-based Graphical interfaces
- Step 7: Create a dialplan for a2billing
- Step 8: Configure recurring services
- Step 9: Call back daemon (only for Call backs)
This document focuses on the installation of a2billing system for the Asterisk open source PBX. The document covers the installation and basic configuration of a2billing. A2billing is an open source implementation of a telecommunication billing and added value services platform.
A2billing is a LAMP (Linux Apache Mysql(Postgresql) PHP) application that interfaces with Asterisk using both the AMI and AGI interfaces.
This documentation has been tested using Debian etch, Debian etch and half, Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10 and a2billing.
Important note about distributions
This documentation assumes that you are using a .deb based distro that has used the folder /usr/share/asterisk during packaging. Other distributions use the alternate folder /var/lib/asterisk. If you compile from source the path by default is /var/lib/asterisk.
The basic assumptions of this documentation is that used pre-packaged software and:
- your apache2 default root folder is /var/www
- your asterisk sounds are under /usr/share/asterisk
- your asterisk AGI folder is expected under /usr/share/asterisk
- your apache2 runs as www-data (uid)
- you asterisk runs as asterisk (uid)
- those using subversion to check out the code, can use symbolic links instead of copying the files to the right directories
Default passwords and access info (READ THIS!)
These are the default passwords that you should know about
- mysql root password (in a newly installed distro it is normally <ENTER> :-) )
- a2billing default database is mya2billing, user is a2billinguser and password is a2billing
- asterisk manager default information is: [myasterisk] and secret=mycode
- a2billing admin default password is: user=root password=changepassword
Linux Requirements and a2billing
A2Billing includes the following third party software in the software bundle. Let us be thankful!
- phpagi 2.14 Copyright 2003, 2004, 2005 Matthew Asham and David Eder
- smarty 2.6.22 Copyright 2001-2005 New Digital Group, Inc
- jgraph 1.27 Copyright 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Johan Persson Aditus Consulting
- adodb 4.991 Copyright (c) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 John Lim
- famfamfam.com Icons from Mark James
- phpconfig (C) 2003 Dave Packham and Rob Birkinshaw
- PHP Quick Profiler : http://particletree.com/features/php-quick-profiler/
- PHPMailer V5.0.0 Copyright © 1999-2009, Worx International Inc : http://phpmailer.codeworxtech.com/
- phpSysInfo 2.5.3 - http://phpsysinfo.sourceforge.net/
Pre-required software packages
A2billing requires the packages of a LAMP (PHP5) installation. To install the necessary packages, run the following commands:
#apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 php5 php5-common
#apt-get install php5-cli php5-mysql mysql-server apache2 php5-gd
#apt-get install openssh-server subversion
A2Billing also requires MCrypt module for PHP5
#apt-get install php5-mcrypt
Asterisk is of course also needed.
#apt-get install asterisk
Installation
In a nutshell installing a2billing requires nine steps:
- Download and unpack source code
- Setup the database
- Edit a2billing.conf file. Setting up the database parameters
- Fix permissions and folders
- Installing the web based graphical user interfaces (Customer and Admin)
- Place the AGI files
- Prepare your dialplan
- Add your cronjobs
- Configure your callback daemon (only for callback)
To help you to understand what we are doing consider that:
- The mother of all components of a2billing is an AGI file (a2billing.php) that is called from asterisk dialplan (See Step: 6, 7)
- The overall goal of the installation is to make sure that the AGI file that is placed in the asterisk agi-bin folder and invoked from the dialplan can access a mysql database and connect to Asterisk manager to place and receive call related commands and information. (See Step: 2, 3, 4)
- A2billing is managed via three different user interfaces (admin, agent and customer) that needs to run via the apache2 web browser with the right permissions (See Step: 5)
- There are other components as cronjobs, callback daemon, etc that are needed for advance added value services (See Step: 8, 9)
Step 1: Download and unpack source code
Create a a2billing folder under /usr/local/src
#mkdir /usr/local/src/a2billing
Download the code
Download the latest code from the SVN repository run:
#svn co --username guest --password guest http://svn.a2billing.net/svn/asterisk2billing/tags/1.4-current/ /usr/local/src/a2billing/
At the end of this step you should have a a2billing tree structure that should look like:
/usr/local/src/a2billing/ |-- AGI |-- CHANGELOG |-- COPYING |-- CallBack |-- Cronjobs Recurrent services run via crontab |-- DataBase Database Schema / DB Installation |-- FEATURES_LIST |-- a2billing.conf Main Configuration file |-- addons Sounds and other addons |-- admin Admin UI |-- agent Agent UI |-- customer Customer UI |-- webservice
Step 2: Prepare the Database
We will now create a MySQL database (mya2billing) for the billing software. The file a2billing-createdb-user.sql includes a script that creates the database with the correct access control users and permissions.
#cd /usr/local/src/a2billing
#mysql -u root -p < DataBase/mysql/Mysql-5.x/a2billing-createdb-user.sql
The script with create a database, username and password with the following default values
Database name is: mya2billing Database user is: a2billinguser User password is: a2billing
After creating the database structure, we will create a set of tables and insert some initial basic configuration data
#mysql -u root -p mya2billing < DataBase/mysql/Mysql-5.x/a2billing-schema-v1.7.0.sql
Checkpoint 1: Check that the database (my2billing) and that (90) tables have been created.
#mysql -u root -p mya2billing
mysql>show tables
mysql>exit
Step 3: Edit the a2billing.conf configuration file
The A2Billing configuration file (a2billing.conf) contains the basic information to connect to the a2billing database. Copy or make a symbolic link from /usr/local/src/a2billing/a2billing.conf to /etc/a2billing.conf
a2billing.conf -> /usr/local/src/asterisk2billing/a2billing.conf
Option 1
#cp /usr/local/src/a2billing/a2billing.conf /etc/
Option 2
#ln -s /usr/local/src/asterisk2billing/a2billing.conf /etc/a2billing.conf
Open the file with your favorite text editor (vi is used in this example). If you are new to Linux, we recommend you to use the text editor Gedit.
#vi /etc/a2billing.conf
The only parameters that you need to change here is the database connection information, an example follows:
[database] hostname = localhost port = 3306 user = a2billinguser password = a2billing dbname = mya2billing dbtype = mysql
Step 4: Fix permissions, files and folders
In this step, we will tweak the file permissions of Asterisk to fit the A2Billing software. We will also create a number of additional files and folders that A2Billing needs, which does not come with the default installation.
SIP and IAX
First we will set a few file permissions (chmod, chown) and create (touch) the SIP and IAX configuration files for Asterisk.
chmod 777 /etc/asterisk
touch /etc/asterisk/additional_a2billing_iax.conf
touch /etc/asterisk/additional_a2billing_sip.conf
echo \#include additional_a2billing_sip.conf >> /etc/asterisk/sip.conf
echo \#include additional_a2billing_iax.conf >> /etc/asterisk/iax.conf
chown -Rf www-data /etc/asterisk/additional_a2billing_iax.conf
chown -Rf www-data /etc/asterisk/additional_a2billing_sip.conf
Sound files
Run the sounds installation script available in the addons folder (IMPORTANT: the script assumes that asterisk sounds are under /usr/share/asterisk/sounds/)
#/usr/local/src/a2billing/addons/install_a2b_sounds_deb.sh
#chown -R asterisk:asterisk /usr/share/asterisk/sounds/
Configure Asterisk Manager
Configure the Asterisk Manager by editing the manager.conf file.
#vi /etc/asterisk/manager.conf
Notice that we are using the default values (myasterisk, mycode) in this section. The configuration should look like this
[general] enabled = yes port = 5038 bindaddr = 0.0.0.0 [myasterisk] secret=mycode read=system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user write=system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user
Step 5: Install The AGI components
Copy or create a symbolic link of the entire content of the AGI directory into asterisk agi-bin directory.
#mkdir /usr/share/asterisk/agi-bin
#chown asterisk:asterisk /usr/share/asterisk/agi-bin
Option 1
#cd /usr/local/src/a2billing/AGI
#cp a2billing.php /usr/share/asterisk/agi-bin/
#cp -Rf lib /usr/share/asterisk/agi-bin/
Option 2
#ln -s /usr/local/src/a2billing/AGI/a2billing.php /usr/share/asterisk/agi-bin/a2billing.php
#ln -s /usr/local/src/a2billing/AGI/lib /usr/share/asterisk/agi-bin/lib
Make sure the script is executable
#chmod +x /usr/share/asterisk/agi-bin/a2billing.php
Step 6: Install web-based Graphical interfaces
In this step, we will install the three graphical interfaces of A2Billing: the Administration (admin), Agent (agent) and Customer (customer) interface. As in previous steps you can copy the folders of make symbolic links.
Place the directories "admin" and "customer" into your webserver document root.
Create a2billing folder in your web root folder
#mkdir /var/www/a2billing
#chown www-data:www-data /var/www/a2billing
Option 1
#cp -rf /usr/local/src/a2billing/admin /var/www/a2billing
#cp -rf /usr/local/src/a2billing/agent /var/www/a2billing
#cp -rf /usr/local/src/a2billing/customer /var/www/a2billing
#cp -rf /usr/local/src/a2billing/common /var/www/a2billing
Option 2
#ln -s /usr/local/src/a2billing/admin /var/www/a2billing/admin
#ln -s /usr/local/src/a2billing/agent /var/www/a2billing/agent
#ln -s /usr/local/src/a2billing/customer /var/www/a2billing/customer
#ln -s /usr/local/src/a2billing/common /var/www/a2billing/common
Fix the permissions of the templates_c folder in each of the UI
#chmod 755 /usr/local/src/a2billing/admin/templates_c
#chmod 755 /usr/local/src/a2billing/customer/templates_c
#chmod 755 /usr/local/src/a2billing/agent/templates_c
#chown -Rf www-data:www-data /usr/local/src/a2billing/admin/templates_c
#chown -Rf www-data:www-data /usr/local/src/a2billing/customer/templates_c
#chown -Rf www-data:www-data /usr/local/src/a2billing/agent/templates_c
Checkpoint 2: Direct a browser to the administrative web interface (http://<ip-addr>/a2billing/admin) and login as administrator. Default passwords are:
user: root pass: changepassword
Step 7: Create a dialplan for a2billing
The extensions.conf is the Asterisk dialplan. Calls that interact with the billing software need to be handled inside of one or many a2billing related contexts.
The calls that reach the context are processed using the a2billing.php AGI script. The a2billing.php script can be invoked in many different modes (standard, did, voucher, callback, etc). In the example, we create two different contexts, the first context [a2billing] handles all the calls from our VoIP clients. When a call arrives, any extension number _X. (2 digits or more) reaches the script a2billing.php
The second context [did], will be used to route inward calls back to the users. Calls to the clients (DID) are handled inside of the [did] context. The script a2billing.php in did mode is responsible of routing the call back to one of our users.
Edit extension.conf
#vi /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf
and add the following contexts
[a2billing] ; CallingCard application exten => _X.,1,Answer exten => _X.,2,Wait,2 exten => _X.,3,DeadAGI,a2billing.php exten => _X.,4,Wait,2 exten => _X.,5,Hangup [did] ; CallingCard application exten => _X.,1,DeadAGI(a2billing.php|1|did)
Step 8: Configure recurring services
Recurring services are handled via the /etc/crontab
You can add the following cron jobs to your /etc/crontab or create a file with the jobs in /var/spool/cron/a2billing
# update the currency table 0 6 * * * php /usr/local/src/a2billing/Cronjobs/currencies_update_yahoo.php # manage the monthly services subscription 0 6 1 * * php /usr/local/src/a2billing/Cronjobs/a2billing_subscription_fee.php # To check account of each Users and send an email if the balance is less than the user have choice. 0 * * * * php /usr/local/src/a2billing/Cronjobs/a2billing_notify_account.php # this script will browse all the DID that are reserve and check if the customer need to pay for it # bill them or warn them per email to know if they want to pay in order to keep their DIDs 0 2 * * * php /usr/local/src/a2billing/Cronjobs/a2billing_bill_diduse.php # This script will take care of the recurring service. 0 12 * * * php /usr/local/src/a2billing/Cronjobs/a2billing_batch_process.php # To generate invoices and for each user. 0 6 * * * php /usr/local/src/a2billing/Cronjobs/a2billing_batch_billing.php # to proceed the autodialer */5 * * * * php /usr/local/src/a2billing/Cronjobs/a2billing_batch_autodialer.php # manage alarms 0 * * * * php /usr/local/src/a2billing/Cronjobs/a2billing_alarm.php
Step 9: Call back daemon (only for Call backs)
The call back daemon is responsible of reading from the database the pool of calls stored for call back and trigger those calls periodically. The daemon is written in Python. Install the python-setuptools and use easy_install to install the callback_daemon
#apt-get install python-setuptools python-mysqldb python-psycopg2 python-sqlalchemy
#cd /usr/local/src/a2billing/CallBack
#easy_install callback-daemon-py/dist/callback_daemon-1.0.prod_r1527-py2.5.egg
Install the init.d startup script
#cd /usr/local/src/a2billing/CallBack/callback-daemon-py/callback_daemon/
#cp a2b-callback-daemon.debian /etc/init.d/a2b-callback-daemon
#chmod +x /etc/init.d/a2b-callback-daemon
Make sure the daemon starts
#update-rc.d a2b-callback-daemon defaults 40 60
If you need to remove the daemon in the future run
#update-rc.d -f a2b-callback-daemon remove
