Speech Server 2007 marries FreeSwitch - Part 3 - Installation
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series of blog posts, I outlined www.VerbalBusiness.com, the application I have created, what it does and its needs for telephone lines. In this 3rd installment, we are actually going to install FreeSwitch and get it running on our box.
Please note that I will be setting up FreeSwitch on the same box that Speech Server 2007 is running on. You could of course install them on separate boxes, but since I only have 1 box at the hosting provider I will be installing everything on the same machine.
Installing FreeSwitch
In Part 2, I outlined where you can get the latest Windows install package for FreeSwitch, so I will assume you have downloaded the installer. To launch the installation process, simply double click on the exe file that you downloaded.
This is a pretty simple straight forward install. I have shown the screens below. For each step, I just chose the default values. Also, I have placed notes along the way that show questions that I had as I did the install.
I wasn’t sure about this next step….there are 3 choices in the drop down, why I need one of the 2 PBXs listed is beyond me and I don’t know if I needed the sound files, but I just left the defaults and moved on.
The installation process now begins and the following screen show progress as things move along
When the installation process nears completion, you will get a few DOS boxes popping up over the progress dialog as shown below
I am assuming the next screen is used for sending mail if you are writing extensions to the FreeSwitch program, but I am not sure…again I just chose the default values and moved on
And then things finished up with the following screen
Now again I suppose that the WAMP Server (includes Apache 2, PHP 5 and MySQL ) is for development work geared toward extending FreeSwitch and since we will not be doing any of that, we will not be starting the WAMP Server.
After FreeSwitch has been installed you will have the following folders setup on your machine
Most of these folders are not used for basic customization, in fact, the only files I have ever touched are under the FreeSwitch\conf folder as shown below. I will say more about these folders in future editions of this series.
Starting FreeSwitch
You can now start FreeSwitch by double clicking on the desktop icon or by going to Start->Programs->FreeSwitch and clicking on the FreeSwitch icon
You will see a DOS box open up…lots of stuff will be going on, and after sometime you will be left with something like this…
FreeSwitch is now running on your computer. When FreeSwitch answers a call or you place a call you will see all kinds of activity going on in this window, which will disect in a later blog posting.
Account FreeSwitch Runs Under
At this point FreeSwitch runs under the account of the person who installed it. For this example, I am logged into my computer as Administrator, so FreeSwitch runs under the local Administrator account.
Now this may or may not be acceptable for your situation. For me it was not.
I am installing FreeSwitch on a Dedicated Host that is located in another city. When I access the machine via Remote Desktop, I log in as Administrator, start FreeSwitch which runs under the local Administrator account…all is well until I log off…at that point FreeSwitch shuts down…obviouly this is not good. Also, I want FreeSwitch to automatically start should the need arise for the Dedicated Host to be re-booted.
Installing as a Windows Service should probably be what I needed to do.
Installing FreeSwitch As A Windows Service
Turns out that there is just one more step that is needed to get FreeSwitch to startup as a Windows Service. You need to open a DOS box at the directory where you installed FreeSwitch and type
FreeSwitch –install
As shown below…
This installs FreeSwitch as a Windows Service which you can see by going into Start->Programs->AdministrativeTools->Services as shown below
Now for my situation, when I installed FreeSwitch as a Windows Service, it got setup to run under the Local System account. I have read postings from other people who ran into problems because FreeSwitch was setup to run under the Network Service account. These people were complaining about the fact that the FreeSwitch Service would start and then immediately shut down. The solution was to either give the NetWork Service account rights to the FreeSwitch folder or change the account that the FreeSwitch Service ran under to the Local System account.
Un-Installing FreeSwitch As A Windows Service
To Uninstall FreeSwitch as a Windows Service, you need to open a DOS box at the directory where you installed FreeSwitch and type
FreeSwitch –uninstall
As shown below….
Now if you see the following error when you try to install FreeSwitch as a Service…
This means that it is already installed a a Service. So you can just leave it at this point, or uninstall and then reinstall as outlined above.
At any rate, you should now have FreeSwitch running as a Service. You will need to start it manually the first time or restart your computer.
Getting the FreeSwitch Service to ReStart after Machine ReBoot
If you want the FreeSwitch Service to restart each time the host machine is rebooted then make sure the Startup type is set to Automatic. To do this right click on the Service and select Properties. Then set the StartUp Type to Automatic as shown below
Final Thoughts
Before I wrap up Part 3 of this series, I wanted to mention a couple of things
First of all, as I mentioned earlier, when you start FreeSwitch you are presented with a DOS box that provides all kinds of feedback when calls are received or placed. This feedback can be very helpful when you are just setting up and learning FreeSwitch. If you install as a Service, this DOS box is no longer shown. So for the rest of this series, I will not install as a service so that we can discuss the messages that FreeSwitch sends us.
And lastly, I cant stress this point enough....if you are running FreeSwitch And Speech Server 2007 on the same box…
FreeSwitch must be started before Speech Server 2007 !!!
I would be embarrased to tell you how long I spent on this issue !!!
One of the initial problems that I encoutered was the fact that FreeSwitch would allways give me an ‘Invalid Profile’ error. Turns out the problem is that FreeSwitch needs to be started first beofe Speech Server 2007. Not sure why, but the problem is consistant and starting FreeSwitch first resolves the issue.
This really comes into play when you are setting up and constantly making changes to the FreeSwitch environment and needing to start and stop FreeSwitch.
So the process needs to be...
This does not seem to be an issue if you install FreeSwitch as a Service. I can reboot my server and everything is ok.
So thats about it for Part 3. The next instalment will be called "Speech Server 2007 marries FreeSwitch - Part 4 – Receiving Calls", and will describe in detail the setup and receiving of calls from an ITSP and forwarding them off to Speech Server 2007.
Thanks for reading