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I've been asked to develop a script that can via H.323 dial a voicemail system that needs better monitoring. (The device dies in mysterious ways and offers very little over snmp). The idea is to call a number, and see if it the line gets answered. The Voice Mail system will ring busy or not answer if there's a problem.

My problem lies in the fact that I know nothing about H.323 or the available libraries. (Perl is the language of choice at my company, but for something this specific I could probably get away with python or a the use of some binary programs.)

I've found a dark rabbit hole of dispare when searching for H.323. I don't know C or want to run a pbx as a client, I've found open source libaries but there is no such thing as a "call()" function. I don't have the cycles to learn every in and out.

(If this wasn't for work I'd hook up a few lines of python and use Twilio to do all the heavy lifting.)

I think I need some guidance on how to solve the problem.

Thanks

John Sheehan
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reconbot
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2 Answers2

3

To place test H.323 calls, you can't beat ohphone:

(sleep 30; echo q) | ohphone -s Default -n -u from_user to_user@gateway > /tmp/output.$$

You can typically find ohphone as a package in your linux distribution:

apt-get install ohphone

The source can be found on voxgratia While older, it still works splendidly.

Processing the output is a tad tricky with ohphone, but you can use something like a perl script to process it into an errno value.

Here's a quick and dirty example does just that:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

$delay=$ARGV[0];
if(! $delay) { $delay = 10; }

$from=$ARGV[1];
if(! $from) { $from = "default_from_user"; }

$to=$ARGV[2];
if(! $to) { $to = "default_to_user"; }

$gateway=$ARGV[3];
if(! $gateway) { $gateway = "127.0.0.1"; }

print "Running: (sleep $delay; echo q ) | (ohphone -s Default -n -u $from $to\@$gateway)|\n";
open(IN,"(sleep $delay; echo q ) | (ohphone -s Default -n -u $from $to\@$gateway)|");

my $call_started=false;
my $call_completed=false;

my @results;

my $skip=1;
while($line=<IN>) {
 if($line=~/Listening interfaces/) {
  $skip=0;
  next;
 }
 if($skip) {
  next;
 }
 if($line=~/^Could not open sound device/) {
  next;
 }
 chomp($line);
 push(@results,$line);
 if($line=~/was busy$/) {
  print "$to: Called party busy\n";
  exit 1;
 }
 if($line=~/^Call with .* completed, duration (.*)$/) {
  print "$to: Completed duration $1 call.\n";
  exit 0;
 }
 if($line=~/has cleared the call, duration (.*)$/) {
  print "$to: Completed duration $1 call.\n";
  exit 0;
 }
 if($line=~/^Call with .* completed$/) {
  print "$to: No call duration.\n";
  exit 2;
 }
}

close(IN);

$result=join("\n",@results);
print "$ARGV[0]: Unknown results:\n$result\n";
exit 255;

This script is a quite a few years old, but it has worked well for us during that time.

IanBlenke
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1

There are SIP Testing tools that allow you to generate SIP Traffic. I have used SIPp in the past as part of a university project maybe this is of help to you

**EDIT:**

A quick search gives Yate Seagull I have not used them but maybe they solve your issues. If you find something do post it definitely.

anijhaw
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