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pythonc++raspberry-pisipheadless

Installing the "ring.cx SIP client" on a Raspberry PI

The Situation

I would like to get terminal-based (headless) SIP calls working on my Raspberry Pi and I already tried this using linphone:

RaspberryPI: Making SIP outbound calls using linphonec or an alternative SIP soft phone

Since I am currently stuck there I wanted to try another option which was SFLPhone. They pointed me towards the ring software project which offers a daemon dring which allows making SIP calls using a scripting interface:

Indeed, the daemon can run standalone and be controlled using the DBus API.

Note the project have been renamed to "Ring" (version is bumped to 2.x). Experimental packages are available at http://ring.cx/en/documentation/linux-installation A major feature of Ring 2.x is the optional "DHT" account type allowing to make calls without any SIP server. There are many other enhancements such as ICE support, UPnP support, stability improvements etc. (note clients are being re-written (GTK3, Qt5) and there is a new OS X client, they are not yet feature complete and in heavy development.)

The new daemon dring source Git repo URI is : https://gerrit-ring.savoirfairelinux.com/ring . The DBus API is mostly the same as before. In the tools/dringctrl directory you will find an example python client that we use for testing (uses python3-dbus).

We are willing to fix any bugs you may find, the daemon bugtracker is here : https://projects.savoirfairelinux.com/projects/ring-daemon/issues Also look at https://projects.savoirfairelinux.com/projects/ring/wiki for build instruction etc.

Regards and good luck for your embedded project, A. B.

Compiling the dependencies

I tried to compile the dependencies for the project like stated in the README:

git clone https://gerrit-ring.savoirfairelinux.com/ring
cd ring

Compile the dependencies first

cd ../contrib/
rm -fr native/ && mkdir native
cd native
../bootstrap
make

I got this error:

libvpx.webm-4640a0c4804b/third_party/googletest/src/include/gtest/gtest.h
mv libvpx-4640a0c4804b49f1870d5a2d17df0c7d0a77af2f libvpx && touch libvpx
cd libvpx && CROSS= ./configure --target=armv7-linux-gcc \
    --as=yasm --disable-docs --disable-examples --disable-unit-tests --disable-install-bins --disable-install-docs --enable-realtime-only --enable-error-concealment --disable-runtime-cpu-detect --disable-webm-io --enable-pic --prefix=/home/pi/ring/contrib/arm-linux-gnueabihf
  disabling docs
  disabling examples
  disabling unit_tests
  disabling install_bins
  disabling install_docs
  enabling realtime_only
  enabling error_concealment
  disabling runtime_cpu_detect
  disabling webm_io
  enabling pic
Configuring selected codecs
  enabling vp8_encoder
  enabling vp8_decoder
  enabling vp9_encoder
  enabling vp9_decoder
Configuring for target 'armv7-linux-gcc'
  enabling armv7
  enabling neon
  enabling neon_asm
  enabling media
Unable to invoke compiler: arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc  -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64

Configuration failed. This could reflect a misconfiguration of your
toolchains, improper options selected, or another problem. If you
don't see any useful error messages above, the next step is to look
at the configure error log file (config.log) to determine what
configure was trying to do when it died.
../../contrib/src/vpx/rules.mak:105: recipe for target '.vpx' failed
make: *** [.vpx] Error 1

Compiling ring

Despite compiling the dependencies failed I did attempt to compile ring:

git clone https://gerrit-ring.savoirfairelinux.com/ring
cd ring
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
make install

This caused the following error:

checking for PJPROJECT... no
configure: error: Missing pjproject files
pi@phone ~/ring $     make
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.
pi@phone ~/ring $     make install
make: *** No rule to make target 'install'.  Stop.

So currently I am stuck and I fear that I will not be able to go beyond the current state of my project (🎥):

the-phone

Edit: Now without the video codecs (like aberaud suggested) I run into the following error:

/bin/bash ../libtool  --tag=CXX   --mode=compile g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I..  -I../include/opendht -I/home/pi/sip-desaster/ring/contrib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/include -fPIC -I/home/pi/sip-desaster/ring/contrib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/include  -g -fPIC -O3 -std=c++0x -I/home/pi/sip-desaster/ring/contrib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/include  -g -fPIC -O3 -std=c++0x -c -o libopendht_la-dht.lo `test -f 'dht.cpp' || echo './'`dht.cpp
libtool: compile:  g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I.. -I../include/opendht -I/home/pi/sip-desaster/ring/contrib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/include -fPIC -I/home/pi/sip-desaster/ring/contrib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/include -g -fPIC -O3 -std=c++0x -I/home/pi/sip-desaster/ring/contrib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/include -g -fPIC -O3 -std=c++0x -c dht.cpp  -fPIC -DPIC -o libopendht_la-dht.o
In file included from ../include/opendht/dht.h:29:0,
                 from dht.cpp:27:
../include/opendht/infohash.h:58:22: error: expected initializer before ‘:’ token
dht.cpp:3105:1: error: expected ‘}’ at end of input
Makefile:386: recipe for target 'libopendht_la-dht.lo' failed
make[2]: *** [libopendht_la-dht.lo] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/sip-desaster/ring/contrib/native/opendht/src'
Makefile:395: recipe for target 'install-recursive' failed
make[1]: *** [install-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/sip-desaster/ring/contrib/native/opendht'
../../contrib/src/opendht/rules.mak:28: recipe for target '.opendht' failed
make: *** [.opendht] Error 2
Solution

  • Contrib

    The "contrib" part of the Ring build is about building dependencies that are not available on the target system, mostly used to build full working packages when cross-compiling or for systems without proper dependency management (basically all OSs except Linux distros).

    When in the contrib/native directory, you can run make list to see the list of packages to be built. Since you are cross-compiling you will need to build almost everything.

    If you somehow mess up the contrib build you can safely delete the contrib/native and contrib/{target_tuple} (if any) directories and start again.

    libvpx

    The libvpx library is used by libav to provide the vp8 and vp9 video codecs. It's not an hard dependency and since your project doesn't use video you can safely disable it. We also encountered issues when cross compiling vpx.

    In contrib/src/libav/rules.mak line 70, DEPS_libav defines the list of dependencies for libav. You can remove vpx, x264 and $(DEPS_vpx) from the list since you don't use video. You may also add speex and opus audio codecs to the list (they should be in the list but aren't, see this patch as an example).

    After cleaning contrib as described above and boostraping again, when running make list, vpx and x264 shouldn't show up in the list of "To-be-built packages". Then try to build contrib by running make.

    If after trying this you encounter the same issue for other packages you may have some sort of cross compilation build path issue (I would then need more logs/details).

    As a very last resort, compiling on the Pi itself (with Raspbian) is horribly slow but has the advantage to use local distro-provided dependencies and remove the hassles of cross compilation.

    Good luck