Music On Hold via LINE IN on Sound Card

Has anyone been able to get MOH from a sound card line in to work with 1.2.3? If so how did you do it?

Updated 2-24-07

Ok I beleive I got it figured out, If anyone would like to try this (on your non production boxes) let me know what resutls you get.

1. use your favorite editor, or config edit and open up the musiconhold.conf
You will mostlikley already have a [default] cateogry. Rename [default] to [default2]

then Add the following into musiconhold.conf:

[default]
mode=custom
directory=/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3
application=/var/lib/tb-playlinein

2. Check and make sure In /var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3 there should be at least one mp3 file. (by default there should be songs here unless they have been removed manually) :

cd /var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3
ls

Check and make sure there are at least one music file

3. Now we need to create a simple script for MOH to run when called. Create a script file /var/lib/tb-playlinein by using nano:

nano -w /var/lib/tb-playlinein

copy following 2 lines of code and paste it in nano:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/arecord -q -c 1 -r 8000 --buffer-size=2048 -f S16_LE -t raw

now save your changes (control x) confirm by pushing y and enter to save and quit.

now set ownsship and make it executable but make sure you are in the appropriate directory:

cd /var/lib
chown asterisk:asterisk tb-playlinein
chmod 777 tb-playlinein

4. now we need to allow asterisk to have access to the sound device/files. We will need to create a group called audio and give root and asterisk access to it.

groupadd -g 525 audio
usermod -G audio root
usermod -G audio asterisk

5. In order for asterisk to use the card we will need to add a couple of lines in the amportal startup script. When your TB boots up it will set the appropriate permissions allowing MOH to access the card and play the line in souce. Use nano and add 2 lines of code to accomplish this:

nano -w /usr/sbin/amportal

Depending on your version of TB and settings look for the following line "chown asterisk /dev/tty9" (mine was on line 51) Add the following two lines after but make sure NOT to delete any existing commands above or below:

chown -R root:audio /dev/snd
chmod -R a+rwX /dev/snd

Your finished result should look simular to this plus code on top and bottom :

chown asterisk /dev/tty9
chown -R root:audio /dev/snd
chmod -R a+rwX /dev/snd

now save your changes (control x) , confirm by pushing y, and enter to save and quit.

6. just for the heck of it reboot your pc. This will load the startup script and set the right permissions to access your sound card for the MOH line-in

7. You can then plug into the line-in port or the mic port your FM-tuner or external audio player. Then you need to configure your mixer to turn on any line in and capturing or any mic or mic capture. to do this launch the following command:

alsamixer

Play with the adjustments to find the appropriate level. Push the M key to unmute any mic line line-in and capture channels and space key to activate!. NOTE: I created a new que (with no agents) and set the wait/hold music to the newly created MOH group called "default". while listening to the music on hold and voice promps I was able to adjust the music volume in accordance to the prompts(not too loud or too quiet) I also found that on my soundcard I could not get the line in to work untill I pushed the space key on the caputre. I also moved the line to the mic in and both worked - very loud sound blaring at first in the phone. Make sure your music source is set right (not blaring or you will get a bad distortion)

and that should be it.

Since my linux skills are based on my google university degree I would ask those who are fluent with linux to correct any errors or proceedures I have listed.

hope this helps

crees

Update: It looks like only one proccess is used when multiple calls are made. Can anyone test this and verify it. Using TOP only one arecord process is listed(the prccess that MOH Line in uses)

OLD POST:
Thats a good question. I do know that the MOH with line in launches the arecord command. according to the logs each time the MOH is initialized it shows MOH started..... asuming that this too spawns a new instance.

I will look into it further. However it does sound better then having the music start all over again.

Hi ja133

See if the steps I outlined above will work and let me know

Right now it works on my test box.

crees

You will probably need to amportal stop start the system. you may even need to restart the box. It seems that I had this same problem untill it restarted and loaded the new config. Also make sure the name of the MOH is the same as your freepblx settings (defualt is what I kept mine at)
crees

post your musiconhold add conf file and any other files. run asterisk in verbose mode asterisk -vvvvvr and copy and paste the part when it initialzes the MOH.

crees

Promising news!!!

Can someone confirm this for me?

I have used TOP command to monitor this proccess (tb-playlinein uses arecord in TOP) Only one instance of arecord was being used for multiple hold calls with on average of 1.0% CPU usage and %0.4 memory. I did not see any multiple instances.

crees

hi
thanks. i did your changes, and it still plays the music already uploaded.
my soundcard is detected in the mixer
im using trixbox 2.0

here are my config files:

musiconhold.conf:
;
; Music on hold class definitions
; This is using the new 1.2 config file format, and will not work with 1.0
; based Asterisk systems
;
;[classes]
;default => quietmp3:/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3/stream,http://10.10.173.80:9000/stream.mp3
;#include musiconhold_custom.conf
#include musiconhold_additional.conf
;slimp3 => custom:/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3-dummy,/usr/bin/mpg123 -q -s --mono -r 8000 -f 8192 -b 0 http://scfire-chi0l-2.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1038

[default2]
mode=custom
directory=/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3
application=/var/lib/tb-playlinein

musiconhold_additional.conf:

[default]
mode=files
directory=/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3/
random=yes
;[stream]
;mode=files
;directory=/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3/stream/

musiconhold_custom.conf:

;application=/usr/local/bin/mpg123 -q -s --mono -r 8000 -f 8192 -b 0 http://64.236.34.97:80/stream/1074

heres the MOH part on asterisk -r....

-- Started music on hold, class 'default', on SIP/3092-091bb598
-- Started music on hold, class 'default', on SIP/3092-091bb598

thanks for all your help in advance

i tried that, and i tried many other possible ways
the furthest i got on asterisk -rvvvvv is where it told me music on hold is starting and than it says music on hold stopped. and under that it tells me /var...../tb-playlinein dump.
any other possibile ways?

thanks a lot

Hmmm not sure why the tb-playlinein would be dumping. The original problem was that it would start and then quickly stop with not errors. This was all to do with file rights and permissions.

Another thing to make sure works is the sound card without the MOH. You can plug your speakers in the soundcard and then plug in your line in. play with the mixer (alsamixer) untill you get sound. If you get any errors then there may be a soundcard driver issue. If the mixer is able to adjust your volume from your line in then alsa and the rest of its components should work.

The tb-playlinein is just a exucutable that uses arecord (part of alsa). with arecord and its arguments tells it to record from the linein/mic capture port and then manipulate the stream to be Asterisk MOH compliant. You may need to troubleshoot this specific part and make sure that arecord can run.

crees

Going in a completely different direction, since a lot of radio stations stream on the internet you may want consider using that. I saw a procedure on the Asterisk wiki that looked simple enough. No static at all.......FM...no static at all da dadada...da! 8-)

Streaming from the Internet is nice. But I was holding an in house event and wanted others to be able to dial in to a conference and listen to presenters throughout the day. This weekend I had a small event and tested with a few people and it worked really well. In the up coming months I plan to do a few more of these.

I am in the process of writing a little app that will allow me to control/see the conference. I know the MeetMe web app is there but I want something where I can see/manage all the conferences at once.

I am now wondering if it would be possible to have multiple MOH sources. And have different conferences hear different MOH.

I followed the instructions and when I place a caller on hold I get a overrun!!! message on the console and there is no audio.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Thanks I will look for your link. It would be great if Digium did something like this for those of us who cant make Spring 2007 Von.

hi
i have done what i can and unmuted line-in.
the furthest i got was here:

asterisk1*CLI> /var/lib/tb-playlinein: line 2: 5413 Segmentation fault (core dumped) /usr/bin/arecord -q -c 1 -r 8000 --buffer-size=2048 -f S16_LE -t raw
-- Started music on hold, class 'default', on channel 'SIP/205-09100080'
-- Started music on hold, class 'default', on channel 'SIP/205-09100080'
-- Stopped music on hold on SIP/205-09100080
-- Stopped music on hold on SIP/205-09100080

heres my current music on hold conf files:

musiconhold.conf:

;
; Music on hold class definitions
; This is using the new 1.2 config file format, and will not work with 1.0
; based Asterisk systems
;
#include musiconhold_custom.conf
#include musiconhold_additional.conf

[default2]
[default]
mode=custom
directory=/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3
application=/var/lib/tb-playlinein

musiconhold_additional.conf:

[default]
;mode=files
;directory=/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3/
;random=yes
mode=custom
directory=/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3
application=/var/lib/tb-playlinein

musiconhold_custom.conf:
(empty)

can you please tell me what i can do?
thanks so much in advance for all your help

>Ok I beleive I got it figured out, If anyone would like to try this (on your non production >boxes) let me know what resutls you get.

Worked perfect first time. Thanks.
(on a junk p3 - 450 no less)
Bill

Anyone know how to get this to work on the new FreePBX (2.3.0beta) since the amportal file it refers to has changed. Thanks

i have the beta
just add the three lines to the end amportal.conf

dont worry

then do an amportal restart

and make sure you reput the config on the musiconhold conf files and comment out whatever is there already because a lot of conf files get back to default
let me know how it goes

i am running this on a production environment
what interruptions are you talking about? everything works great for me and i also have multiple servers serving different ranges of extensions

i am not using an integrated sound card
is that what you mean by saying this? am i on the "safe" side?

yes it looks fixed to me because there are times where i use top to check the CPU usage and it does not get high

anyone know how to get this working with trixbox 2.3.0.2
it wont work for me and it worked in previous versions

Bump

thanks a lot

im surprised how nobody is interested in getting this working with trixbox 2.4

heres the CLI

Connected to Asterisk 1.4.16-1 RPM by vc-rpms@voipconsulting.nl currently running on sip (pid = 2451)
Verbosity is at least 3
-- Executing [*19@from-internal:1] NoOp("SIP/215-b7c052e8", "Running miscapp 1: z100") in new stack
-- Executing [*19@from-internal:2] Goto("SIP/215-b7c052e8", "app-blackhole|musiconhold|1") in new stack
-- Goto (app-blackhole,musiconhold,1)
-- Executing [musiconhold@app-blackhole:1] NoOp("SIP/215-b7c052e8", "Blackhole Dest: Put caller on hold forever") in new stack
-- Executing [musiconhold@app-blackhole:2] Answer("SIP/215-b7c052e8", "") in new stack
-- Executing [musiconhold@app-blackhole:3] MusicOnHold("SIP/215-b7c052e8", "") in new stack
-- Started music on hold, class 'default', on channel 'SIP/215-b7c052e8'
-- Stopped music on hold on SIP/215-b7c052e8
sip*CLI>

So does this actually work in a serious business production environment? Where is GSnover when I need him ;)

All of a sudden your clients aren't interested? How is that tied to Trixbox 2.4?

In general when it WAS working was it robust enough for a serious business production environment? In other words 24/7/365 uptime with at least 5-10 regularly used extensions and significant incoming call volume.

Hi,

I think I have figured out my permissions issue.

I found this file:
/etc/udev/permissions.d/50-udev.permissions

* N.b. The file may be named differently on your system. "man udev" for more details

Find the section entitled "# audio devices"
I changed this line:
snd/*:root:root:0660
to:
snd/*:root:audio:0777

I also added this line:
snd:root:audio:0777
But I don't think it is doing anything. Perhaps I should have put:
snd*:root:audio:0777

This is relying on creating the audio group as described by user crees, above.

I commented out the changes to the /usr/sbin/amportal script specified by crees' tutorial.

After rebooting the server (perhaps you only need to restart the udev daemon, if there is such a thing, but I am not smart enough fo that ;) my sound card line-in was immediately accessible for Music On Hold in Asterisk.

Just to reiterate, without editing the udev.permissions, Asterisk was outputting the following error when trying to access MOH from a handset/softphone to the console:
arecord: main:508: audio open error: Permission denied

I am running TrixBox 2.2.4.

I got the hint about udev from this link (greetz tobyl!):
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/udev-dev-and...

Well, now I can get to learning about the dialplan. Woot!

If this information is helpful to you, I would appreciate your comments.

Kim Groves

sorry for double posting but getting desperate
(also posted in http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/help/music-hold-soun...)

I had updated early this year to the newest freepbx/asterisk for trix 2.2.x

Previously i had line in music working but could not get the realtime paging to work nicely with chan_oss (really choppy sound)

after the update live paging work perfectly but no more in-line music on-hold

also if i capture my music on hold source (set alsamixer to monitor line in)
i hear the music on hold on the phone during the page.
(it's working in full duplex mode, when i only want half-duplex)

I need line in music on hold working

i need to be able to page out the sound card but NOT hear the music on the phone.

regardless of being able to hear the music i can NOT get line music on hold working

arecord seams to be capturing data (when run manually) but it *seams* that asterisk is not initiating the ast-playlinein script.

Anyone figured this out yet?

Maybe there's a way to pick up music on hold from another system? I don't mind installing trixbox 2.0 on an old machine nod mine

see what i want to achieve is basically this

have line in being recorded to a locally hosted streaming server
then tell asterisk to use a streaming source for moh

also required is the ability to use console paging.

any1 interested please find an easy to setup reliable streaming server :)

interested to find out if newer drivers from www.alsa-project.org
work better or if chan_alsa is any good.
spent a fair bit of time with chan_oss and got paging working ok
but line in on arecord gone freaky

think it's something to do with permissions
with arecord or /dev/snd /dev/..............
had one line in working but then couldn't page
and then vice versa

but spent too long on this and just coping with only being able to overhead page.

i find these versions of alsa so far have been most reliable and work nicely with
intel hd audio on the asus p5gc board :)
alsa-driver-1.0.12-RHEL4U4-4.05b.tar.bz2
alsa-lib-1.0.9.tar.bz2
alsa-utils-1.0.9a.tar.bz2
if u need just ask

anywayz just some ideas

I got music on hold using the above method to work perfectly fine on Trixbox 2.0 but I couldn't get it to on 2.2. Didnt work using Line in, but it worked using the Mic port.

Only thing thats making it hard for me right now is that now I have Music on Hold via Mic port working, but now paging via sound card isnt. before it was opposite.

K so ive now figured out where im getting teh main issues...

If I set permissions to use Line in for MOH, Paging doesn't work. if I change permissions to use paging, MOH via Line in doesn't work. Has anyone been able to get both MOH and paging via sound card to work, or should I possibly be using 2 sound cards for this? I need overhead paging, and want to use a local radio station for music on hold. can this be done?