Installation Troubleshooting

Elastix FAQ - Installation Troubleshooting

It may also be that the BIOS settings tell your PC to boot up from the hard drive! Edit your boot settings such that the CD-ROM is set as first boot device. Another option - if your motherboard supports it is to override the standard boot seeting py pressing some key early in the boor process. In my motherboard (MSI) I may press F11 to choose my boot device! One should check these things first, before burning a new ISO or replacing the drive!

My machine won't boot with the Elastix ISO image

The first step is to check that your machine is actually booting off a bootable disk. For many, especially their first test Elastix system,

My machine does boot from a known boot disk, but it still won't boot from the Elastix ISO

Grab the CDROM and drop it into another workstation and boot from it. If it boots up ok (comes up with the first Elastix screen with logo, just turn the workstation straight off, so you don't accidentally start an installation. We have just confirmed that you have burnt the CD correctly, and it is readable.

Try it again in your Elastix machine. If it fails, then there is a possibility that the CDROM condition is not optimum. However before you run out to find another CDROM, reburn your ISO image again on a fresh CD (even grabbing a different brand of CD media may help) but this time, using the CD Writing software, reburn at a much slower speed say like 2x or 4x. It will be mush slower to burn but you may find that your older or “flaky” CDROM drive may read these disks with more success.

If it still doesn't boot, then replace the CD Drive and see how you go

My machine boots with the CD ok, but it hangs for longer than a couple of minutes with a blank blue screen and does not proceed any further

This is the critical phase for many users, where it detects the hard disk subsystem and configures. Many different chipsets and different BIOS setups, which utilise different aspects/configurations of the chipsets…..Then comes the various kernel versions and what support for these and newer chipsets. One of the main areas that causes an issue is SATA support, and how it is implemented in BIOS. If you have a look at the area dealing with the hard disks in the BIOS, you may find that it has various modes e.g. SATA Enhanced, Sata Combined, etc….try changing these to see if this is your issue.

If your hardware is too new and has a major change in the way that they handle the SATA interface, you may find that the Kernel version that Elastix has in its current ISO, may not include some of these drivers. The O/S that Elastix uses is Centos, so if you want to see if it is just that the drivers for your system are not in the current Elastix ISO, download the latest CENTOS ISO images and try installing Centos on your system. If this still does not work, then it is possible that your system is so new, that Centos has not included drivers for your disk subsystem yet and in that case, the Elastix ISO image generally will not include them either. Remember, the Elastix ISO image does not always keep pace with the Centos latest version. With each kernel release, the Elastix system needs to be tested, so to release a stable Elastix release, usually a couple of months of testing is done via Alpha and Beta testing before the ISO is released.

As an example, Elastix 1.6 included new drivers for the Intel ICH Raid chipsets which resolved quite a few issues. Also Elastix 1.6 had the drivers for the Realtek 8111 network card, which up until then was a problem as many new systems are including this card built onto the motherboard.

Everything installed correctly, except when I login, it doesnt show an IP address in the opening login message telling me to use my browse and go to this address.

Don't panic just yet, you may not have had a network cable plugged in when you did the install or you did not get a DHCP address. Go to the console and type ifconfig and see if it shows an “eth0” connection with an ip address. This is your IP address.

If it does not show an eth0 adaptor, and only a “lo” (local) connection, then it sounds like it did not detect your Ethernet card correctly or you do not have a functioning DHCP server on your network. Perform an lspci command at the console and check what card you have installed. Post this and your Elastix version on the forums and see if others can confirm whether the card is compatible or you may have to load a new driver, if the system does not recognise your card, grab a generic card like the Realtek 8139 series (usually the cheapest card sold by most corner computer stores at sub $20) and install this. It will save you a lot of time….

If you have no DHCP server on your network, there is a fair chance that you just need to configure the interface statically, currently Elastix does not support this function, as a work around you can try:

ifconfig eth0 <allowable_unused_IP_address_in_your_network> netmask <netmask_of_your_network> # this will give your interface an address and a netmask

route add default gw <address_of_your_router> eth0 # this will add a necessary route for your outbound traffic

echo “nameserver 4.2.2.1” » /etc/resolv.conf # this will add a DNS resolution server to your network setup

ping -c 5 www.yahoo.com # this will ping www.yahoo.com 5 times to ensure the above worked.

yum -y install system-config-network-tui # this will install the missing from Elastix network setup bit when you next run:

setup