Inside the Mind of Sators

Just started playing around with LinuxMCE 710 and my first headache was trying to get my Cisco 7960 phone connected up to be happy. To achieve success took a combination of several blog/wiki pages, so I decided to condense it to one for my sake to look up for next time, and for your sake to hopefully save you the headache I just endured.

Add MAC Address Range to Cisco 7960 Device Template

In the Web Admin, go to Advanced > Configuration > Device Templates. Then, choose Cisco as the manufacturer and click the “Apply Filter” button. As the page refreshes, you’ll now see the Device Template list the 7960. Choose that and click “Pick device template”. As you scroll to the bottom of the page to the “Plug & Play” section, you’ll see that it already has a rand of MAC addresses listed in the From/To fields. I’m guessing if that range would have worked, you wouldn’t be looking at this post right now. Underneath that section is an “Add” button. Click that to add a new range.

Now the fun part. You will need to figure out what the range is here based on the MAC address of your phone. (This can be found on the device by going to Settings > Network Configuration). Because we’re creating a range, if your MAC address is 00:16:47:57:c8:74, our low range will be 00:16:47:00:00:00 and high is 00:16:47:FF:FF:FF. Run the following commands:

/usr/pluto/bin/convert_mac 00:16:47:00:00:00
/usr/pluto/bin/convert_mac 00:16:47:FF:FF:FF

Each command will return a number which is your converted MAC address as the low and high range to put into this device template page. Hit save.

Edit /tftpboot/SIPDefault.cfg

The SIPDefault.cfg file is a configuration file that Cisco phones look for when they boot up to load up all the necessary configuration settings. Without this manual step, LinuxMCE will find your phone and configure it with its extension and everything, but when you reboot the phone, it won’t connect to Asterisk. Run this command:

sudo nano /tftpboot/SIPDefault.cfg

At the very bottom of the page, add:

nat_enable: 1

Note while also here you could customize the phone_label field which is the banner across the top of your phone. “Pluto” just didn’t do it for me. Save the file and exit by pressing Ctl – X. Now, reboot your Cisco phone by pressing the * + 6 + all at the same time.

Fingers crossed – it works! After booting up the first time, it may take LinuxMCE 2 minutes or so to “discover” the device, but once it has, reboot the router and your phone and you should be connected. You can make a test call by dialing 200 which is your initial media center location.