How to Install Asterisk 11 in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint ~ Tutorial Opensource and Linux

How to Install Asterisk 11 in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint

Asterisk is an Open Source software PBX (Private Branch Exchange), developed by Mark Specer of Digium. It allows you to make calls to one another which may have connected to other PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Asterisk runs on Linux, BSD, MacOSX and others. Having built-in features like voicemail, conferencing, IVR, queuing etc.

In this article, we are going to see a basic installation and working of Asterisk 11 in RHEL 6.4/6.3/6.2/6.1/6.0, CentOS 6.4/6.3/6.2/6.1/6.0, Fedora 18,17,16, Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10, Linux Mint 14/13 and Debian Linux Operating Systems.

1. Preparation for Installation

First, you make sure that your system is up-to-date, if not try to update the system and then install dependencies packages using “yum command” and “apt-get command“, before installing Asterisk on your system.

On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora

# yum -y update
# yum install -y make wget openssl-devel ncurses-devel newt-devel libxml2-devel kernel-devel gcc gcc-c++ sqlite-devel

Turn Off SELinux by changing the line “enforcing” to “disabled” in /etc/selinux/config file.

SELINUX=disabled

Once you disabled SELinux, you need to reboot the system.

reboot

On Ubuntu / Linux Mint / Debian

# su root
# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y && reboot
# apt-get install build-essential wget libssl-dev libncurses5-dev libnewt-dev libxml2-dev linux-headers-$ (uname -r) libsqlite3-dev

2. Downloading DAHDI, LibPRI and Asterisk Tarballs

Download the source tarballs, these following commands will download current release of DAHDI 2.6, LibPRI 1.4 and Asterisk 11.

# cd /usr/src/
# wget http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/libpri/libpri-1.4-current.tar.gz
# wget http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/dahdi-linux-complete/dahdi-linux-complete-current.tar.gz
# wget http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/asterisk-11-current.tar.gz

Next, extract the files from source tarballs using “tar command” as shown below.

# tar zxvf dahdi-linux-complete-current.tar.gz
# tar zxvf libpri-1.4-current.tar.gz
# tar zxvf asterisk-11-current.tar.gz

3. Configuring, Compiling And Installing

Go to the each directory from where you have downloaded and extracted the packages and start running the following commands to install DAHDI, LibPRI and Asterisk.

Installing DAHDI.

# cd /usr/src/dahdi-linux-complete-2.6.2+2.6.2/
# make && make install && make config

Installing LibPRI

# cd /usr/src/libpri-1.4.14/
# make && make install

Installing Asterisk

Next, run the “configure” script will vary depending upon whether your system is 32-bit or 64-bit. In the middle, when “menuselect” command executes, select your desired options and then hit “Save and Exit” option and the installation will continuous.

Run this command if you’re installing Asterisk on a 32-bit OS.

# cd /usr/src/asterisk-11.3.0/
# ./configure && make menuselect && make && make install && make samples && make config

Run this command if you’re installing Asterisk on a 64-bit OS.

# cd /usr/src/asterisk-11.3.0/
# ./configure --libdir=/usr/lib64 && make menuselect && make && make install && make samples && make config

Following are the some Asterisk configuration files and their locations.

/etc/asterisk/ – configuration files.

/var/lib/asterisk/ – contains images, firmware, keys, sounds sample files.

/usr/lib/asterisk/modules/ – contains all loadable modules.

4. Starting DAHDI and Asterisk Services

Enable the DAHDI and Asterisk services at system boot time.

# chkconfig dahdi on
# chkconfig asterisk on

Start the DAHDI and Asterisk.

# service dahdi start
# service asterisk start

5. Connecting to Asterisk CLI

Run the following command to connect to the Asterisk CLI.

# asterisk -rvvvvv

Asterisk 11.3.0, Copyright (C) 1999 - 2012 Digium, Inc. and others.
Created by Mark Spencer <markster@digium.com>
Asterisk comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; type 'core show warranty' for details.
This is free software, with components licensed under the GNU General Public
License version 2 and other licenses; you are welcome to redistribute it under
certain conditions. Type 'core show license' for details.
=========================================================================
Connected to Asterisk 11.3.0 currently running on tecmint (pid = 1820)
tecmint*CLI>

6. Asterisk Console Commands

It’s similar to IOS. From Asterisk terminal anytime you can use ‘Tab key‘ or type ‘?‘ for help or command auto complete.

tecmint*CLI>
! acl ael agent agi aoc 
calendar cc
cdr cel channel cli confbridge config 
console core
data database devstate dialplan dnsmgr dundi 
event fax
features file group hangup help http 
iax2 indication
local logger manager mgcp minivm mixmonitor 
module moh
no originate parkedcalls phoneprov presencestate pri 
queue realtime
reload rtcp rtp say sip skinny 
stun timing
udptl ulimit unistim voicemail

7. Useful Commands from Asterisk CLI

restart gracefully – Restart Asterisk gracefully.

restart now – Restart immediately.

restart when convenient – Restart Asterisk when call is empty.

reload – Configuration reload.

stop gracefully – Gracefully Asterisk shutdown.

stop now – Shutdown immediately.

stop when convenient – Shutdown Asterisk when call is empty.

8. Command Line Parameters

Following are the available command line parameters of Asterisk.

-h : Help. Run '/sbin/asterisk -h' to get a list of the available command line parameters.
-C <configfile>: Starts Asterisk with a different configuration file than the default /etc/asterisk/asterisk.conf.
-f : Foreground. Starts Asterisk but does not fork as a background daemon.
-c : Enables console mode. Starts Asterisk in the foreground (implies -f), with a console command line interface (CLI) that can be used to issue commands and view the state of the system.
-r : Remote console. Starts a CLI console which connects to an instance of Asterisk already running on this machine as a background daemon.
-R : Remote console. Starts a CLI console which connects to an instance of Asterisk already running on this machine as a background daemon and attempts to reconnect if disconnected.
-t : Record soundfiles in /var/tmp and move them where they belong after they are done.
-T : Display the time in "Mmm dd hh:mm:ss" format for each line of output to the CLI.
-n : Disable console colorization (for use with -c or -r)
-i: Prompt for cryptographic initialization passcodes at startup.
-p : Run as pseudo-realtime thread. Run with a real-time priority. (Whatever that means.)
-q : Quiet mode (supress output)
-v : Increase verbosity (multiple v's = more verbose)
-V : Display version number and exit.
-d : Enable extra debugging across all modules.
-g : Makes Asterisk dump core in the case of a segmentation violation.
-G <group> : Run as a group other than the caller.
-U <user> : Run as a user other than the caller
-x <cmd> : Execute command <cmd> (only valid with -r)

9. Reference Link

http://www.asterisk.org/