SBC support for Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspbian Buster

[dredd0606]

Hi,

Any idea when the SBC will support Raspbian Buster and the RPi 4? Currently, when attempting to install on Buster, there is a notification that says "invalid distribution, please use Raspbian Stretch" or something to that effect.

Thanks

 

[Saqqara]

Read - https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/new-sbc-performance-stats-with-v16-update-2-beta.66293/

3CX I would say have not even started testing PI4 and the new Debian Buster.

3CX will not give out any timescales, etc you will know when the info is posted on this forum

Have you tried running downgrading to Stretch ?

 

[dredd0606]

Read - https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/new-sbc-performance-stats-with-v16-update-2-beta.66293/

3CX I would say have not even started testing PI4 and the new Debian Buster.

3CX will not give out any timescales, etc you will know when the info is posted on this forum

Have you tried running downgrading to Stretch ?

Downgrading to Stretch is not easy, as this cannot be done from the command line easily (requires modifying the sources.list).

Unfortunately, Raspberry Pi must not have received the memo that 3CX wasn't ready to move forward, as all online Noobs installations are now installing Buster by default, with no option in Noobs to select which distro of Raspbian you are installing (other than Full or Lite).

Currently, for new SBC deployments, you will need to download the Raspian Stretch image and use etcher to burn it to an SD card. This is fine for more advanced users, but probably not great for basic users who are following the guide. Alternatively, you can try modifying the sources.list and change "Buster" to "Stretch", and then running "sudo apt dist-upgrade", but this may not work, and has been advised against by raspberrypi.org. YMMV.

 

[cobaltit]

You can still follow the guide, you just need to download the older stretch image. I don't see 3CX needed to be 'tested' on the Pi 4 as 3CX doesn't care about the hardware. As long as Rasbian Strech supports the underlying hardware (which it should) then there should be no problems running the SBC/3CX on the Pi 4.

http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

Downgrading to Stretch is not easy, as this cannot be done from the command line easily (requires modifying the sources.list).

Unfortunately, Raspberry Pi must not have received the memo that 3CX wasn't ready to move forward, as all online Noobs installations are now installing Buster by default, with no option in Noobs to select which distro of Raspbian you are installing (other than Full or Lite).

Currently, for new SBC deployments, you will need to download the Raspian Stretch image and use etcher to burn it to an SD card. This is fine for more advanced users, but probably not great for basic users who are following the guide. Alternatively, you can try modifying the sources.list and change "Buster" to "Stretch", and then running "sudo apt dist-upgrade", but this may not work, and has been advised against by raspberrypi.org. YMMV.

Please note that we are only able to order the new Raspberry Pi when the rest of the world could so we did not have a chance to properly test this yet. Also Debian Buster has not been officially released yet (release date is on July 7 if i remember correctly) and was only used in the new Raspberry Pi for the open source OpenGL video driver. So i am not sure it would be the best move to support an unreleased OS on an equipment we have not tested yet.
Once we have fully tested the new hardware and the new OS we will release an update that will support both.

 

[3CX_M]

I'm trying to install 3CXPBX on Raspbian Stretch (Pi 3B+) and the following error is popping up:

Following packages have unmet dependencies:
3cxpbx : Depends: libicu57 but it is not installable
Depends: libcurl3 (>= 7.52.1) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Any advice on how to proceed?

UPDATE: Actually I'm running Raspbian Buster. Will look for Raspbian Stretch and try again.

 

[dredd0606]

Please note that we are only able to order the new Raspberry Pi when the rest of the world could so we did not have a chance to properly test this yet. Also Debian Buster has not been officially released yet (release date is on July 7 if i remember correctly) and was only used in the new Raspberry Pi for the open source OpenGL video driver. So i am not sure it would be the best move to support an unreleased OS on an equipment we have not tested yet.
Once we have fully tested the new hardware and the new OS we will release an update that will support both.

Agreed, my point was only that all new Pi's having Raspian installed via noobs is going to be installing buster, and most users will not know how to downgrade to stretch.

 

[3CX_M]

@3cx, I would recommend that this is better notated in the installation notes. On your website:

https://www.3cx.com/docs/installing-pbx-raspberry-pi/

It links to download raspbian pi however the website only links to the latest version of raspbian pi which is Buster version which does not work.

Alternatively you can link to the previous versions of raspbian at:
http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/

And to use the Apr 9, 2019 version of raspbian pi which is Raspbian Stretch. After this date uses Raspbian Buster.

 

[cobaltit]

The testing would be about performance, not whether it works. How many phones can the SBC handle now with the new version, and new faster hardware? It's starting to look like a medium-business solution that could handle a couple hundred phones. I have one site with around 70 phones that was above the previous limit.

The only way to know is to test yourself. You could already do more than 50 a PC or VM-based SBC so this doesn't really change anything. And it's great if 3CX says this will support 100 and then it falls down at 70. The 3CX recommendations are just guidelines, as the configuration of the BLFs, will change. Long story short as @YiannisH_3CX mentioned buster was used for the video driver but I figure most are doing headless so Stretch should be fine.

Agreed, my point was only that all new Pi's having Raspian installed via noobs is going to be installing buster, and most users will not know how to downgrade to stretch.

It looks like the page was updated as it now links directly to the Stretch image, so problem solved!

https://www.3cx.com/docs/installing-pbx-raspberry-pi/

 

[3CX_M]

Question about the capabilities of running 3CX on Raspberry Pi. Excited that I got the pi up and running with 3CX, had to find an older version of Stretch and it is working after some tweaking with the firewall. I see that there are posts that the pi can handle 8 Sim Calls at once. How about web meetings, internet chat, internet video calls, call recordings, etc. Any testing on that front?

 

[Alex@One2Call]

The testing would be about performance, not whether it works. How many phones can the SBC handle now with the new version, and new faster hardware? It's starting to look like a medium-business solution that could handle a couple hundred phones. I have one site with around 70 phones that was above the previous limit.

Hi Carlos,

Can you keep us updated on here how your testing goes please?

If Pi4 SBC does up to 70 or so that would open up a lot of options for our customer base and a Pi in a nice case just feels like a more pro deployment to me for some reason!

 

[Alex@One2Call]

I will certainly post about it, but I have no timeframe right now on when we may take on this site. Could be a month.

Just a polite request - don't feel under pressure!

Thanks for even considering!