Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) batch upgrades

I had the need to upgrade multiple pcs with Ubuntu 9.04 without downloading for every single instance all the files needed for the upgrade process to work.
You will just need to download the “alternate” Ubuntu iso (that you can find here).

Then as next step you have 2 choices, burn the cd or mount the iso file locally as below:

sudo mount -o loop ubuntu-9.10-alternate-i386.iso /media/cdrom0

Then we can run the executable “cdromupgrade” inside the root of the cdrom:

sudo /cdrom/cdromupgrade &

and then follow the normal upgrade process through the interface.

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Integration between SugarCRM and Perl using SOAP

I’ve been developing SugarCRM solutions for a while now at InsightfulCRM (Fonality Pty Ltd) and I never really got into interacting through SOAP with languages other than PHP until today.

SugarCRM

There are some tutorials and documentation on SugarCRM Wiki website about it, but not really for Perl, that is the programming language I’ve chosen today.

I’m not a “rockstar” with Perl but let’s figure this out :)

First of all why Perl?
The main reason is: you get Perl with your Linux box, without mucking around too much, in any Linux distribution and doesn’t really need too much software around it. It is multi platform and it has his own package manager (CPAN) to install other components.
This is all that’s needed to get started!

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Asterisk FastAGI with PHP

Lately I’ve been involved in some work projects related to Asterisk.
I had the opportunity to play with the Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI) to see what can be done with it.

In a few words, it allows you to execute scripts on an action (eg: a user calling an extension), that will interact with other systems (eg: retrieve information from a database and store other input data) and trigger other actions.

First of all, given that I’m more familiar with PHP than Perl, I looked around for libraries that can interact with my loved PHP.
You can get a lot of useful information at http://voip-info.org, being more specific at: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+AGI
This will help you understand what can and cannot be done…

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