Bug Found in ss7boost_cli --ckt-block

A bug was found with the ss7boost CLI commands:

./ss7boost_cli --ckt-block --span X --chan all
./ss7boost_cli --ckt-unblock --span X --chan all

The logs for the unblock follow:

Jan 31 22:46:08 acc05 ss7boost[9831]: I:sb_mpc.c:sg_bsm_unblock_sending:MARK:0
Jan 31 22:46:08 acc05 ss7boost[9831]: I:sb_mpc.c:sg_bsm_wait_uba:MARK:0
Jan 31 22:46:08 acc05 ss7boost[9831]: W:sb_mpc.c:sg_bsm_wait_uba:SS7 event id not expected:event id follows:2

Using block and unblock with individual circuits works:

./ss7boost_cli --ckt-block --span X --chan Y
./ss7boost_cli --ckt-unblock --span X --chan Y

This problem will be fixed in next major revision of ss7boost because the entire circuit maintenance method has been redesigned as mentioned in the previous post on this website.

No fix will be made in the following revisions and below:

Xyganda Technology, Inc. ss7boost Revision 1.0.1-25 (and any 25 branch revs like 25.2+)
Xygnada Technology, Inc. ss7boost Command Line Interface, Version: 1.0.1-01

Circuit Maintenance Manager and Bug Fixes

The maintenance of voice circuits in ISUP in ss7boost is being overhauled. Currently, call processing and circuit maintenance initiate circuit resets and blocks directly without any coordination. As hardware blocking design evolved it became apparent that circuit maintenance needed centralized management. The central maintenance manager (CMM) controls the resetting and blocking of all ISUP voice circuits - 496 maximum presently - per node. Each circuit has a maintenance action request queue. The CMM is dormant until queues are loaded and a trigger is pulled. The CMM checks all queues processing N circuits every M seconds until all queues are empty. Then the CMM returns to its dormant state.

The CMM code is written to a point that initial unit testing has begun. The number of test cases needed to verify operation looks to be high so unit testing with the ss7boost unit tester is a huge time saver.

There are a number of upgrades and configuration changes on-going so support work is spiking this week, which slows down CMM testing. This is exactly what makes predicting when large features will be ready very difficult. It's the nature of the business.

Speaking of unit testers, sangoma_mgd now has its own unit tester apparatus. A number of bugs got stomped this past December as a result of using it.

We caught and killed bugs in sangoma_mgd and ss7boost last week. In sangoma_mgd there was a case where a call ended and was not propogated to ISUP. In ss7boost we found that some sigboost messages from sangoma_mgd to ss7boost were not being properly entered in to the ISUP CDR log. Also in ss7boost we found that the "SMGRev-" prefix was not attached to inbound RDNIS strings in Asterisk/Callweaver. A new SMG release is out today that delivers the fixes - ftp://ftp.sangoma.com/linux/smg/smginstall-2008-01-21.tgz

New Look for ss7box.com

ss7box.com has a slightly new look. It is designed for rapid maintenance and moving as a defense against web hosts that suddenly and unexpectedly terminate service. It is also designed for optimal use as a technical user manual since that is its primary purpose. The design is embedded in a cascading style sheet.

We are back on blogspot

The wiki experience was OK until the web host went out of business. All the material is written in tikiwiki format and stored in an SQL database. I know next to nothing about tikiwiki administration and SQL databases. I also found that not all web hosts provide tikiwiki.

So, I revert to web 1.0. I will use HTML and docbook. The nice thing about docbook is that the same source will produce HTML or PDF. Since many ss7box users are charged per minute for Internet access, the wiki has not been the best documentation option for them. They are better served by downloading a PDF document that they can refer to repeatedly at no extra charge. Docbook is also a good system for porting content from one web host to another as they seem to be a transient.