Installing Updates With Invalid Licensing

If you try to install an update on to CUCM without valid licences installed it will block it & display the error message "Upgrades are prohibited during the licensing grace period". When you're midway through doing physical to virtual migration & major upgrade this can be a pain as Cisco GLO can take up to 72 hours to respond to licence migration requests.
Fortunately there is a way round this to get the patches installed & then go back to Cisco for licence migration. You'll need to download a CentOS minimal install ISO & boot the CUCM server from it, then follow these steps:

1. Select rescue installed system, skip the media check & select the appropriate language, keyboard layout, etc.
2. Select local CD/DVD & don't start networking
3. Select continue to mount the file system & continue through the information messages. If in doubt about which partition is active, you can boot off the CUCM Recovery DVD & use it to list the partition layout
4. Start the shell

From the shell run the following commands:

chroot /mnt/sysimage
cp /usr/local/platform/conf/licexpiry.txt licexpiry.txt.bak
rm /usr/local/platform/conf/licexpiry.txt

Next you need to stop SELinux from choking on the changes made to the filesystem, so we need turn off enforcing. Run the following command to locate the grub.conf files:

find ./ -name "grub.conf"

Now use vi to edit the grub.conf files & add enforcing=0 to the end of the line which says kernel, for example:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-274.12.1.el5PAE ro root=LABEL=/partB clock=pmtmr divider=4 crashkernel=128M@16M enforcing=0

Now you can exit to reboot the server. Without licexpiry.txt present you can continue installing patches to get the desired version of CUCM.

QuesCom GSM Gateways

I've just completed my 2nd deployment of a QuesCom GSM gateway & they're painful to use, so here's a couple of tips for those of you with the misfortune to also have to deal with one these.

Firmware Updates
To update the firmware you'll need:

• A USB to serial adapter
• An Ethernet cable
• TFTPD
• PuTTY
• QuesCom firmware (getting this requires a support contract with QuesCom)

Now for the process:

1. Connect your PC's NIC to the QuesCom using the Ethernet cable, then using the serial cable that came with the QuesCom, connect to the console port on the QuesCom (this is the bottom serial port).
2. Run TFTPD, configure the DHCP server function on it & also enable PXE compatibility (otherwise you'll get errors), now restart TFTPD for the changes to take effect.
3. Run PuTTY & connect to the serial port using 19200bps, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit & no flow control.
4. Power on the QuesCom & interrupt booting by pressing CTRL + E, then type OK when it says to.
5. Select 1, wait for it to get a DHCP lease. Alternatively you can manually configure an IP address if DHCP fails.
6. Input the IP address of your PC running TFTPD, default gateway & file name of the firmware (this is case sensitive).
7. Wait for the firmware to finish downloading, then select 0 to boot with the new firmware.

Caller ID
The QuesCom GSM gateways default to restricting the caller ID on all outbound calls, regardless of what caller ID you present via H323 or SIP. This is undesirable as many people won't answer the phone to withheld numbers. Unfortunately you can't disable this behaviour from the web based GUI, you have to Telnet to the QuesCom and enter the following commands:

1. config
2. root gateway
3. cd isdn
4. cd Adapter.x (x=0,1 or 2; if you only have GSM cards in the slots, use 0)
5. set HideIdentification=0;0;0;0; (this assumes you have 4 SIM card model)
6. exit

Don't forget to save & reboot, otherwise the changes won't take effect.