3CX on Intel NUC8I5BEK

[heathdale]

Hi,

I've been wanting a small demo box for 3CX for a while. I like the Intel NUCs, but the supported ones are old, and out of stock. So, I went for a current one - the NUC8I5BEK. I've configured mine with 2 x 4GB SODIMMs and a 500GB Samsung 970 Evo M.2 SSD. Windows works out of the box, as does any Linux distro with a 4.19 kernel (Ubuntu 18, Debian Buster,...).

However I wanted to use Debian 9 as 3CX is supported on that. On trying to install it, it was very clear that the I219-V ethernet interface in the NUC is not supported by the 4.9 kernel. I got round that by running the ISO up in a VM, downloading the latest drivers from Intel and building the e1000e.ko module in the VM. I transferred the module to the install media and when the install failed, I copied over the new module to the right place under /lib/modules and then the installer found it and proceeded.

After the install, the original module is in place, so you have to repeat the copy over again. I did a depmod -a and then a modprobe e1000e and it was off.

After that, it was a case of following the instructions from 3CX on installing on Debian 9 (plus a detour to get the correct libcurl3 installed) and 3CX installed.

I'm sure there are other ways of doing this, but I'd thought I'd share what I did. I have the compiled kernel module and a script of the installation steps for the 3CX dependancies if anyone wants them. For now, I can prepare for an upcoming demo using my new system, which happily dual boots Windows 10 and Debian 9.

Hope someone finds this useful.

Regards.
Gary

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Hello @heathdale and welcome to the community. Thank you for sharing your solution as i believe many users will find this useful.

 

[heathdale]

An update on this. So, after I got this working, my errant USB 3 gigabit ethernet adapter showed up. If anyone cares, it is this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00AQM8586/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Anyhow, I tried it with Debian 9 - the installer sees it no problem. Thus, another approach would be to boot and configure the system using the USB ethernet. Then, add stretch-backports to the apt config and use that to install kernel 4.19, which supports the onboard ethernet. Job done.

Now, it just remains to look at the graphics stack, which isn't an issue for 3CX, but would be nice to sort!

 

[revilo951]

For a small demo box, is v16 on a Raspberry Pi a workable solution?

 

[pitrickzul]

Yes i have a few installs on these NUCs. USB ethernet adapter was the easiest way to add the backports to download the supported kernel for the NUC's nic.