Update 2011-12-07 : SAM Reports 2 supports Trixbox/Fonality without any additional modules. Take a look at our new help files.

TrixBox (Fonality) issues

I would really like to make reading the reports from TrixBox (Fonality) a bit easier. Sam Reports generates Asterisk reports from log files that are present on every Asterisk box by default (master.csv and queue_log). TrixBox slices the log files into a bunch of small files and puts them in  date-named directories . Let me describe it in details:

Master.csv

It is originally just one cvs file located in /var/log/asterisk/cdr-csv/master.csv (I don’t care about the cdr-custom at the moment). On Fonality PBX, (I’m not sure that the situation is the same on all TrixBox SKUs), the master.csv data is placed in the same directory:  /var/log/asterisk/cdr-csv/09-10-01/,  but there are additional directories created there, on a weekly basis. So (the date – 09-10-01 – corresponds to YY-MM-DD). A new directory is created on Monday of each week , as stated in Fonality help files. I have copied all the files from Fonality PBX on my local PC, and below you can see a screenshot:

Fonality (TrixBox) master.csv

In each of these directories there are thousands of master.csv parts named: Master.csv.xxxxxxxxxx, where the xxxxxxxxxx is a UNIX time stamp (the number of seconds elapsed since Jan 1, 1970). One such file is created every 5 minutes, on a Fonality PBX. The file named just “master.csv“, that you see on the figure above, is the latest log that has not yet been stored in a directory and rotated.

Fonality-TrixBox master.csv parts

Queue_log

Originally queue_log file is located in /var/log/asterisk/queue_log.  On Fonality-TrixBox  it is also dissected  into many parts, in much the same way.

Fonality-TrixBox queue_log

The original “queue_log” file just holds the latest 5 minutes worth of information, and all other data is in files created by the same algorithm as CDR files.

Fonality-TrixBox queue_log parts

Merging the files

One of my beta testers wanted to try Sam Reports, but got only the 5 minutes worth of data. So I decided to make a little program to merge all the disjointed files into one, master.csv and queue_log respectively. If you ever have such need, you can download the file here: FonalityMerge.

• It requires that you have copied all the log files and directories from your Fonality box, somewhere on your local disk.
• Then you merge the files with FonalityMerge
• And you get your master.csv and queue_log

Now you can process the log files with Sam Reports and see your reports.

Further improvement

If I get enough inquiries for TrixBox/Fonality support I may opt to do one of the things:

• Make the transfer of directories from Fonality-TrixBox available with a click of a button. That would take into account just the diff between directories and files (the directories and files already present on the local disk would not be transferred any more)
• Or go for the database option and connect directly to the MySQL database with the logs. To do that I would need a working TrixBox with a database that contains meaningful data.  Meaningful means real data generated by using a system for 5-6 month, at least.

It would be great if someone could provide me with a virtual machine of a TrixBox PBX that has been operational for some time. I know it’s a long shot. I would be veeeery grateful.

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