D.8. cdr.conf

The cdr.conf file is used to enable call detail record logging to a database. Storing call records is useful for all sorts of purposes, including billing, fraud prevention, QoS evaluations, and more. cdr.conf contains some general parameters that are not specific to any particular database, but rather indicate how Asterisk should handle the passing of information to the database. All options are under the [general] heading of the cdr.conf file:

batch

Accepts the arguments yes and no. Allows Asterisk to write data to a buffer instead of writing to the database at the end of every call, to reduce load on the system.

Note that if the system dies unexpectedly when this option is set to yes, data loss may occur.

enable

Accepts the arguments yes and no. Specifies whether or not to use CDR logging. If set to no, this will override any CDR module explicitly loaded. The default is yes.

safeshutdown

Accepts the arguments yes and no. Setting safeshutdown to yes will prevent Asterisk from shutting down completely until the buffer is flushed and all information is written to the database. If this parameter is set to no and you shut down Asterisk with information still residing in the buffers, that information will likely be lost.

scheduleronly

Accepts the arguments yes and no. If you are generating a massive volume of CDRs on a system that is pushing them to a remote database, setting scheduleronly to yes may be of benefit. Since the scheduler cannot start a new task until the current one is finished, slow CDR writes may adversely affect other processes needing the scheduler. This setting will instruct Asterisk to handle CDR writes in a new thread, essentially assigning a dedicated scheduler to this function. In normal operation, this would yield very little benefit.

size

Accepts an integer as its argument. Defines the number of CDRs to accumulate in the buffer before writing to the database. The default is 100.

time

Accepts an integer (in seconds) as its argument. Sets the number of seconds before Asterisk flushes the buffer and writes the CDRs to the database, regardless of the number of records in the buffer (as defined by size). The default is 300 seconds (5 minutes).