[Freeswitch-users] Domains and profiles

[Lawrence Conroy]

Hi Folks,
 I've started a new thread as it's not quite the same issue, and domains & profiles have confused the heck out of me every time I have developed a new setup for fS.
I have sometimes had to hack/hard-doce the dialstring to make multiple domains in one profile work, had hours of fun with presence, db and force register settings, and have still had some odd gotchas that have required extensive meditation.
[... and yes, I have read the 1.0.6 bridge book; I'm trying to abstract these elements ]

Coming at this from standards/specs and rolling my own SIP stacks, sofia/fS seems to use the term "domain" differently from sipdomain, and alias seems to be tied to the directory (and thus to the profile listed in a directory file), but I'm not sure. 
so ...
Before I capture to the sofia conf xml wiki page, I have a couple of questions on the sip-profile XML setup;

Q: Is there a particular reason why there's a parameter called alias and an (entirely different) setting also called alias?
 The sofia conf xml wiki's comment on the setting "alias" shows I'm not alone.
 I agree that's what it appears to be doing, but can we nail this down please (and what happens if an external client uses this connection to register and call)?

In the current sofia conf xml wiki page, the domain setting is not exactly well documented :).
The current internal.xml vanilla example from git (as of time of writing) has the following lines:
-------------------------
...
<!-- http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Sofia_Configuration_Files -->
 <!--aliases are other names that will work as a valid profile name for this profile-->
 <aliases>
   <!--
        <alias name="default"/>
    -->
 </aliases>
 <!-- Outbound Registrations -->
 <gateways>
   <X-PRE-PROCESS cmd="include" data="internal/*.xml"/>
 </gateways>
 
 <domains>
   <!-- indicator to parse the directory for domains with parse="true" to get gateways-->
   <!--<domain name="$${domain}" parse="true"/>-->
   <!-- indicator to parse the directory for domains with parse="true" to get gateways and alias every domain to this profile -->
   <!--<domain name="all" alias="true" parse="true"/>-->
   <domain name="all" alias="true" parse="false"/>
 </domains>
...
-------------------------

This stuff is entirely missing from the sofia.conf.xml wiki page, and it IS really important.


Q: what's the default value for the alias parameter in the domain element? -- it is missing from the first example.
Q: if there is more than one profile, what's the impact of setting parse = true in one (or all) of the profiles' XML files?
   (or parse = false, or missing the parameter altogether)?
AFAICT, the gateways get pulled in via the pre-process directive just fine, regardless of the value of the parse parameter -- it works for me, at least.

Q: if there is more than one profile, what's the impact of putting domain name="all" into one (or all) of the profiles' XML files?

Ideally, having more than one sipdomain tied to one profile "would be good", but aliases doesn't do that -- as the git file says, these are aliases for the profile name.

Before I start scribbling, Answers on a postcard to this ML, please.

all the best,
  Lawrence