Getting Started with Asterisk – the Voip News Guide

Getting Started With Asterisk – the VoIP News Guide

How to install and configure Asterisk the right way first time.

Copyright 2007, VoIP News, All Rights Reserved 1 While Asterisk is the most widely used open source PBX solution, it hasn’t been easy for the average user to take advantage of it. A good, basic knowledge of Linux is a fundamental requirement, as is the ability and nerve to handle the telephony hardware and Asterisk configurations.

Broad support is available through Web-based developer forums for those who take this do-it-yourself approach, but even Bill Miller, vice president of product management and marketing for Digium Inc., Asterisk’s main developer, describes this as the “techie” route for potential Asterisk users.

But relief is coming for the average user. Release 1.0 of Digium’s free AsteriskNOW -- which comes with a customized rPath Linux (a derivative of Red Hat Linux) distribution of Asterisk and that users download and configure using a GUI interface -- will be available in April.

Even in beta release it’s proven hugely popular. According to Miller, AsteriskNOW has been downloaded an average 2,000 times a day almost since it was first released last year, compared to 1,000 downloads each day of the techie version.

The following gives some idea of what’s needed to install and configure each version.

Before downloading the Asterisk source code, the installation requires users to already have a Linux operating system with kernel version 2.4 or higher, and the bison, ncurses, zlib and openssl libraries with their associated developer packages.

The Asterisk code and other packages needed to install Asterisk can be downloaded in several ways.

- As tar formatted files (tarballs) from ftp.digium.com

- From Digium’s CVS server (password anoncvs) using the commands:

# cd /usr/src # mkdir asterisk # export CVSROOT=:pserver:[email protected]:/usr/cvsroot # cvs login

- From Digium’s SVN server (once an SVN package has been installed) using commands such as:

# svn checkout http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/branches/1.2asterisk-1.2

If Digium’s own hardware is being used with the installation then both the zaptel and libpri filed should be downloaded along with the Asterisk files.

Installing Asterisk for most Linux distributions is relatively straightforward. Once in the folder in which the source codes are kept issue the following commands:

If the full installation with both zaptel and libpri is needed, those should be installed in order as:

# cd../libpri # make clean; make install

# cd../zaptel # make clean; make install

# cd../asterisk # make clean; make install

A comprehensive list of tutorials, configuration tips and troubleshooting suggestions for how to deal with Asterisk are available at sites such as Asterisk Guru (http://www.asteriskguru.com/tutorials) the VoIP Wiki (www.voip-info-org), and at the official Asterisk site (www.asterisk.org/support).

Digium touts AsteriskNOW as the “Asterisk in minutes” version of the open source PBX. it was driven by customers asking Digium for a single Linux distribution of Asterisk it could support, Miller said.

Along with that came the idea of a framework GUI that could be used by the average user, with no technical knowledge of either Linux or Asterisk itself, who could quickly get up and running with the software.

“We kept it simple in concept and simple to use because we wanted to focus on business productivity and mobility rather than the technology itself,” Miller said.

Once Asterisk is installed, the GUI can also be used to configure the network and get a real phone system up and running.

All the software, including the rPath Linux distribution, can be downloaded from the AsteriskNOW site (www.asterisknow.com). The company cautions that “all normal precautions” should be taken as with any installation of a new distribution of Linux, since existing operating system will be removed in the process.

AsteriskNOW is downloaded as an ISO file (other download options include VM Player image, Xen universal guest image and LiveCD), from which a user creates a CD image. That new AsteriskNOW CD is then inserted into the CD-ROM drive of the PC.

Assuming graphical mode is chosen, pressing enter sends the process into a series of windows that leads the user through the installation process. Depending on the amount of control users wants over the installation, they have a number of choices:

Copyright 2007, VoIP News, All Rights Reserved 6 Both the custom and expert installations assumes a degree of knowledge on the part of the user in terms of special needs they want from the system. Assuming, in this case, that the user wants to be operational as quickly as possible and clicks on Express Installation, the installer automatically collects all of the packages needed for the process.

The next step is partitioning of the system, and allows a fairly extensive control of what the user wants to remove and keep on the hard drive. Digium recommends selecting the “remove all Linux partitions on this system” to erase all existing Liinux data on the hard disk.

Other partitions including those for operating systems such as Windows can also be removed, but this will also remove any data associated with those partitions.

This will be a user’s last chance to review the installation process before continuing. Pressing “yes” will wipe the partitions and all accompanying data, and the process cannot be reversed.

Once the partitions have been created and the new system set up, the process moves on to network configuration:

Copyright 2007, VoIP News, All Rights Reserved 8 This assumes at least a passing knowledge of what the organization’s network is, what devices are attached, domain names and so on. If anyone is unsure of any of this Digium recommends them pausing the process here until they can bring someone in who definitely does know since a mistake here will prove very costly.

Once past this phase, a few administrative concerns remain, such as setting the time zone for the system and choosing an administrator password:

Copyright 2007, VoIP News, All Rights Reserved 9 Enter a user-defined password and don’t forget it.. The default system username is admin, and both that default username and user password will be needed to login to the Asterisk GUI and Manager Interface after the installation process is completed.

Once that step is completed the process will complete the installation, and the system will prompt the user to reboot. After that, a window will appear that enables access to the Web-based administrative GUI:

Copyright 2007, VoIP News, All Rights Reserved 10 The system is now ready to configure. Pressing OK takes the user to the first page of the administrative GUI where the username and the password created during installation are entered:

Copyright 2007, VoIP News, All Rights Reserved 11 The configuration process, which is separate from the system installation, has menus that allows the user to set details of the phone network, including specifics for individual users, conferencing policies, outgoing and incoming call rules, service provider details and so on.

It also includes a one-click button that allows the user to contact a phone supplier directly:

if a user doesn’t want even that level of detail, AsteriskNOW also includes a simpler, seven-step setup GUI that provides for automatic detection and setup of a many of the details provided through the management interface: