DAHDI_SPAN_TYPES(8)

✨ DAHDI_SPAN_TYPES ✨

okay bestie, this is the dahdi_span_types page from section 8 of the manual — the whole thing about setting line modes on DAHDI spans before anybody assigns them a number. buckle up, it's actually so good 🎀

💖 NAME 💖

dahdi_span_types — set line modes of DAHDI spans before assignment

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

dahdi_span_types [options] <list|dumpconfig|compare|set> [devpath ...]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so here's the tea: the span type (that's the line mode — E1, T1 or J1) has to be set on a span before DAHDI assigns it a span number, because E1 spans use more channels. that's just how it is, no cap. and dahdi_span_types is literally the tool that applies your span type configuration to an un-assigned span. 💅

lowkey important: this only makes sense when the kernel module parameter dahdi.auto_assign_span is unset. if you did set it, DAHDI just automatically assigns span numbers during device registration and this whole vibe is pointless. 🙈

dahdi_span_types takes a command and an optional list of devices. if you don't give it any device, the command gets applied to all devices. main character energy, honestly.

the device is marked as a path in the SysFS tree. periodt.

---

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -h|--help — spits out the usage message and dips. that's it, that's the whole thing ✨
• -n|--dry-run — during the "set" operation, it only shows you what it would do, without actually changing anything. a little peek, no commitment 🫶
• -v|--verbose — during the "set" operation, it shows the actions that are being performed. narrating its own slay.
• --line-mode=<E1|T1|J1> — during the dumpconfig operation, this forces a special generation mode:
  • first, it generates a "wildcard" entry with the given line-mode. 👑
  • then it comments out all span entries. each of them may be manually un-commented to override the "wildcard". so iconic.

---

🌈 SUB-COMMANDS 🌈

• set — reads settings from span-types.conf and applies them to the device(s) specified in the command line (or all devices, if none specified). the classic.
• compare — compares the settings on the system to those in the configuration file. for each line that applies to a device on the system, it prints it if the value to be set and the active value on the system differ.
  • the exit status is 0 if there is no difference, and non-zero if a difference was detected. 💀
• list — lists line modes for all spans in the system which may be set with dahdi_span_types (that's the E1/T1/J1 spans, iykyk).
• dumpconfig — lists types for the spans in a format fit to be used in span-types.conf. use this to generate a configuration file after you have (perhaps manually) set all existing spans. so handy fr fr.
  • dahdi_genconf spantypes uses this command internally. 👀

---

🎀 CONFIGURATION 🎀

general structure 🧚

span-types.conf is a file with lines specifying line modes of spans.

empty lines, or lines beginning with '#', are ignored. (yes bestie, you can comment your config, live your truth.)

each line is in the format of:

ID        spanspec ...

the ID field specifies the DAHDI device, and the spanspecs define the line modes of its spans. a line may have multiple spanspecs in a single line (though dumpconfig generates a configuration with one per line).

span identifier 💜

a DAHDI device may be specified either by a hardware identifier (a software readable serial number or whatever) or the location in which it is installed on the system. the former makes it simpler to change connector / slot, whereas the latter makes it simpler to replace a unit.

the value in this field is matched (when the command set is used) to the following values:

• hwid
• @location
• devpath

see above for their descriptions. 👆

the value may include shell wildcards: *, ? and [], which are used in the match. the values to be matched are first cleaned up: '!' is replaced with '/' and any character not in "a-zA-Z0-9/:.-" is replaced by "_".

note that while span-types.conf allows an arbitrarily-complex combination of E1, J1 and T1 ports, it would normally have just a single wildcard line setting the line mode (the first line in the example below). keep it simple, babes.

span specification 🌟

each line should have one or more span specifications: this is the value used to set span type with DAHDI in the SysFS interface. a specification has two colon-separated fields:

rel_span_no:span_type

for instance, the following are four span specifications specify ports 1 and 2 as E1 and ports 3 and 4 as T1: [12]:E1 [34]:T1 .

• rel_span_no — the relative number of the span in the device. E.g.: port number. this field may contain shell wildcards (*, ? and []).
• span_type — E1/T1/J1

multiple matches 🔥

during the set operation, dahdi_span_types applies all matching settings to a span. this is done in the order of lines in the configuration files.

so if there are multiple matches to a span — the last match wins. all of them get applied to the kernel in order, and the last one in the file is applied last. the final girl always wins. 💅

example:

*             *:T1      # All spans on all devices will be T1
usb:X1234567  [34]:E1   # Except spans 3,4 on the device which will be E1

---

🌱 ENVIRONMENT 🌱

• DAHDICONFDIR — the directory in which span-types.conf resides. /etc/dahdi if not overridden from the environment.
• DAHDISPANTYPESCONF — the path to span-types.conf resides. /etc/dahdi/span-types.conf if not overridden from the environment.

---

🍓 FILES 🍓

• /etc/dahdi/span-types.conf — the default location for the configuration file.
• /sys/bus/dahdi_devices/devices/device — the SysFS node for the device. in this directory reside the following files, among others:
  • spantype — read/write file. reading from it returns the current configuration for spans of the device. span-specifications can be written to it to change line modes (but only for a span that is not assigned yet). ⚠️

---

💫 SEE ALSO 💫

dahdi_span_assignments(8), dahdi_genconf(8), dahdi_cfg(8)

---

🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

dahdi_span_types was written by Oron Peled. this manual page was written by Tzafrir Cohen. permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. 💖

---

and that's the whole page, bestie — this version of the manual is dated 23 Jan 2014 and it comes from DAHDI_SPAN_TYPES(8). go forth and set your line modes. slay. ✨👑💅