Cisco 7900 / 8800 series (CallManager firmware)

Cisco's enterprise desk phones — 7941G, 7942G, 7945G, 7961G, 7962G, 7965G, 7975G and 8841, 8851, 8861, 8865 — are not the Cisco SPA sets AiPBX supports alongside Yealink and the rest. They ship with CallManager (CUCM) firmware, they speak a Cisco-flavoured SIP, and they are configured by one big XML file called SEP<MAC>.cnf.xml.

They work with Asterisk, and the community project usecallmanager.nz documents how: it publishes the Asterisk patch that adds what Cisco's firmware expects (BLF, call-forward and DND synchronisation, pickup, parking), a sample tftpboot folder with the shared files these phones ask for, and a full reference for every element of SEP<MAC>.cnf.xml.

AiPBX writes the per-phone file for you (Phones → +, model Cisco 79xx/88xx), from the same extension, password, codec and key data it uses for every other vendor. Everything around it — the firmware, the Asterisk patch and the shared files — is a one-time setup on your own server, described below.

What you need before a phone works

Licences. The Asterisk patch is GPL-2.0 and the sample tftpboot files are CC BY 4.0 (attribution). Cisco's firmware is Cisco's: download it from Cisco and do not redistribute it. AiPBX ships none of these files — that is why the shared files are yours to copy in once (step 3).

1. Put the shared files where the phones look for them

Phones → settings → Also write the phones' files into the TFTP/FTP folder does two things: it keeps every assigned phone's SEP<MAC>.cnf.xml current in the TFTP/FTP folder, and it makes AiPBX reference the shared files below by name (it only references files that are actually there).

Copy the sample folder's contents into the same directory:

# The folder on PBX → Network services → TFTP/FTP (default /var/lib/aipbx/tftp)
sudo cp -a /path/to/tftpboot/. /var/lib/aipbx/tftp/
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/aipbx/tftp

The two files the per-phone configuration points at, when present, are Softkeys.xml (the soft-key definitions) and DialTemplate.xml (dial-plan timeouts). Ringtones and wallpapers are picked by the phone from the same folder; the firmware files go here too.

The folder is a secret. SEP<MAC>.cnf.xml contains the extension's SIP password, and TFTP has no authentication at all. AiPBX's TFTP/FTP services answer only the allowed networks you set in Network settings — keep that list to your phone network, and never point a public interface at it.

2. Tell the phones where the server is

Cisco phones take their configuration server from DHCP — option 150 (the Cisco convention) or option 66:

Then pick the model per phone: Phones → +, MAC address and model (Cisco 7942G, Cisco 8861, …). If the phone already asked for its file, it is on the same page under Waiting phones or Discovered on the network — one click either way. The file a phone asks for is SEP<MAC>.cnf.xml; every other file name is refused, so one phone can never collect another's configuration.

Firmware loads are set in Phones → settings:

• Firmware load per model — one model=load line per model, e.g. cisco-cm-7962g=SIP42.9-4-2SR3-1S. This is the list the automatic switch uses (section 3).
• Firmware load for Cisco 7900/8800 series — a single fallback written to every Cisco CallManager-series phone that has no line of its own in the list above. Leave it empty and the element is left out of the file: the phone keeps the load it is already running, which is the safe choice when you have a mixed fleet of firmware versions. A wrong load name is the one way to take these phones off the network, which is why the automatic switch ignores this field and only acts on a model that names its own load.

3. Switching a phone that is still on SCCP

A 7900-series phone that came from a CallManager (or from a box) is usually running the SCCP firmware it left the factory with, and it is useless to AiPBX until it runs Cisco's SIP load. AiPBX does that switch as part of provisioning:

1. Fill in Phones → settings → Firmware load per model with the SIP load for each 7900 model you own (cisco-cm-7941g, cisco-cm-7942g, cisco-cm-7945g, cisco-cm-7961g, cisco-cm-7962g, cisco-cm-7965g, cisco-cm-7975g).
2. Copy that release's whole firmware package into the TFTP/FTP folder — the .loads file and every .sbn it names. Do not rename them.
3. Provision the phone as usual (the + form on Phones, the Approve button on Waiting phones, or a CSV import). The load is written into its SEP<MAC>.cnf.xml as <loadInformation>.
4. Restart the phone once. That is the one step no server can do: a phone sitting on SCCP only reads its configuration file at boot. Power cycle it, or bounce its PoE port.

On that boot the phone asks for its file, sees a load that differs from the one in flash, downloads it from the TFTP server, programs it and reboots onto SIP. The row on Phones then shows SIP firmware taken, and the phone registers.

What AiPBX checks, and what it will not do:

• The file set is checked before the load is written (CiscoFirmware): AiPBX reads the load's .loads manifest and verifies that every file it names is in the TFTP folder. A phone pointed at a load it cannot download does not fail politely — it sits at Upgrading — so a missing file is reported instead.
• A missing file is not a reason to skip the load. The phone's row reads SIP firmware not on this server with the missing names in the tooltip. Copy the rest of the package in; the file the phone gets is already right.
• Only the 7900 series is switched. The 8800 series (8841/8851/8861/8865) has no SCCP enterprise firmware to leave: its enterprise firmware is SIP already.
• Enterprise ↔ Multiplatform (MPP) is not automated. Converting an 8800 to MPP firmware is a licensed Cisco migration with its own image and licence, not a load name — do it by Cisco's procedure or not at all.
• No NOTIFY is sent. A phone on SCCP is not registered with Asterisk, so there is nothing to send it a check-sync; that is why the restart is yours. Once it runs SIP, ↻ re-provisions it as usual.

A fleet that was provisioned before you filled in the list is armed with one command:

sudo -u www-data php /var/www/aipbx/web/bin/aipbx_cisco_firmware.php

It prints each model's load, whether its files are on this server, what each phone's switch state is, and which phones to restart. --dir=/path checks another folder, for a server whose phones fetch their firmware from somewhere else. A manifest that cannot be read is reported as unreadable rather than passed as fine.

4. Keys, BLF and the rest

The key layout on Phones → Phone keys (or ⊞ on Extensions) is written as Cisco line keys:

Two limits worth knowing:

• Expansion modules (KEMs) are not written. The 8800 KEMs need a <deviceType> per part number (CP-8800-Audio, CP-8800-Video, BEKEM) and a wrong one is rejected by the phone. Until that can be tested on real hardware, the keys on a KEM stay unconfigured.
• The phone's own display language is English (US). The file sets the built-in English_United_States locale; other languages need the locale files from the tftpboot folder, which AiPBX does not reference.

Re-provisioning (↻ on the phone's row) sends the Cisco check-sync NOTIFY: the phone fetches SEP<MAC>.cnf.xml again and applies it. There is no Reboot button for these models — they have no NOTIFY that reboots them, and they restart by themselves when the new configuration needs it.

5. What AiPBX writes, and what you do on the phone

The generated file sets the server and SIP port (UDP 5060, or TLS 5061 from the transport setting), the extension with its SIP password as name/authName/authPassword, the display name, remotePartyID (so a connected line update works), NTP, the time zone for the phone's own time zone list, the messages key (*97) so the voicemail lamp works, G.722 on or off, and the key layout above.

The web admin password AiPBX generates per phone is not written to these models: Cisco only accepts adminPassword from the file on the 8821, so a 79xx/88xx keeps its own. Change it on the phone itself (Settings → Administration → Password) if the factory default is unacceptable.

SIP-TLS on these phones also needs a certificate the phone trusts (the ITL/LSC dance in the usecallmanager.nz secure-provisioning chapter). The transport setting is written, but treat TLS as untested here: UDP is the path that works out of the box.

Troubleshooting

Tested against: AiPBX 1.50.x, generated files verified structurally; not yet on physical 7900/8800 hardware — see the desk phones page for the rest of the provisioning system.