Installing and
Configuring Asterisk in Debian
What is Asterisk ?
Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux, BSD
and MacOSX and provides all of the features you would expect
from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in many
protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based
telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.
Asterisk Features
Asterisk provides Voicemail services with Directory, Call
Conferencing, Interactive Voice Response and Call Queuing. It
has support for three-way calling, caller ID services, ADSI, SIP
and H.323 (as both client and gateway). Check the Features
section for a more complete list.
Asterisk Supported Hardware
Asterisk needs no additional hardware for Voice over IP. For
interconnection with digital and analog telephony equipment,
Asterisk supports a number of hardware devices, most notably all
of the hardware manufactured by Asterisk's sponsors, Digium™.
Digium has single and quad span T1 and E1 interfaces for
interconnection to PRI lines and channel banks as well as a
single port FXO card and a one to four-port modular FXS and FXO
card.
Also supported are the Internet Line Jack and Internet Phone
Jack products from Quicknet.
Asterisk Platform Support
Asterisk is primarily developed on GNU/Linux for x/86. It is
known to compile and run on GNU/Linux for PPC along with OpenBSD,
FreeBSD, and Mac OS X Jaguar. Other platforms and
standards-based UNIX-like operating systems should be reasonably
easy to port for anyone with the time and requisite skill to do
so.
Download Asterisk
http://www.asterisk.org/download
Download Asterisk-Addons
http://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/
Download
Asterisk-Sounds
http://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/
Asterisk
Documentation
http://www.digium.com/en/supportcenter/documentation/
Asterisk FAQ
http://kb.digium.com/
Asterisk Debian
Source list
deb http://rapid.dotsrc.org/ experimental/
deb http://debian.peen.net asterisk/
Default debian source list also install the debian packages
Required Packages
Note that your system MUST meet these requirements:
You must have openssl and the respective development package.
You must be running Linux 2.4.x (or 2.6.x)
You must have the Linux Kernel Sources package installed on your
system.(or Kernel Headers)
Alternatively, use the command: apt-get build-dep asterisk
Note that Debian tends to break packages into smaller pieces
than other distributions, so there are more 'required' packages
here than with RedHat or others.
Some package names are also tied to particular versions of the
software, especially libraries. This allows you to install
multiple versions of the same libraries, and to have different
packages use their prefferred verision. That said 'apt-cache
search' is your friend.
Required
kernel-headers-`uname -r`
bison
openssl
libssl0.9.7: (Note that version may change - do: apt-cache
search libssl)
libssl-dev
(libreadline4 - not required anymore, asterisk brings "editline"
along)
(libreadline4-dev - not required anymore, see above)
libeditline0
libeditline-dev
libedit-dev
libedit2
libncurses5
libncurses5-dev
zlib1g-dev (Note: needed for cvs head)
Recommended
cvs: To download the newest cvs source, or course...
minicom: to configure your channelbank via serial
festival: To speek text programatically
doxygen, graphviz: to build the html Asterisk API documentation
with 'make progdocs'
Note:- if you upgrade your kernel, copy the config file that
comes with the .deb file, (it gets placed in /boot) to /usr/src/linux
or /usr/src/linux-2.4 (cp /boot/config-2.4.25-1-686-smp /usr/src/linux/.config)
then do a "make oldconfig; make dep" zaptel will compile just
fine if everything else is ok.
kernel-headers Package
There is no need to install the complete
kernel-source package. Simply install the appropriate
kernel-headers package for your current kernel, and make sure
that /usr/src/linux links to them.
Zaptel unresolved symbols problems
While trying to install the zaptel module with 'make install' I
have gotten error messages of the form
Unresolved symbols...
To solve this problem, do not download the kernel-source as
suggested above, instead download the correct kernel-headers
package (type uname -a to find out which one) and create a
softlink with
ln -s /usr/src/kernel-headers-... /usr/src/linux (e.g. ln -s /usr/src/kernel-headers-2.4.27-2-686
/usr/src/linux)
Now compile the zaptel driver and 'make install' to install it.
Some tips for working with Asterisk on
Debian 3.1/Sarge with Kernel 2.6
Check that your TDM400 is not sharing any IRQs - use cat
/proc/interrupts to check (you'll need to have the wctdm driver
loaded).
You'll need the zaptel-source package to compile the (wctdm,
wcfxo, wcfxs) drivers for your running kernel. As long as you're
running a stock Debian kernel, this should be quite easy. Hint:
you need the EXACT kernel-headers-* package to match your
current running kernel. If you get "wrong magic" errors when
trying to insmod the wctdm driver, then you're compiling with
the wrong kernel-headers directory symlinked to /usr/src/linux.
If you run 'make linux26' (as instructed for those running 2.6
kernels) to build the zaptel drivers in /usr/src/modules/zaptel,
'make install', and then try to insmod them only to find that
Asterisk cannot open the zap channels anyway - try doing 'make'
instead (without the 'linux26' bit). I'm running
kernel-image-2.6.8-1-386 and for some reason a
dist-upgrade/kernel-upgrade/reboot the other day now makes my
zaptel modules useless if I do 'make linux26'. Odd. ( Note that
this shouldnt make any difference as the makefile will
automatically detect the kernel version and adapt )
Don't forget to insmod wcfxo and wcfxs. If you have only FXO
modules you'll need FXS signalling and hence the wcfxs module;
and vice versa. It's harmless to just do both even if you only
have one type of module installed on your card.
Don't forget to install the zaptel package for the userland
tools, which includes the ztcfg utility.
It seems that, there is an issue where Asterisk can't open the
zaptel channels when launched through the init.d scripts as the
asterisk user because the asterisk user doesnt have permission
to access the device... so make sure you add asterisk user to
the dialout group using 'adduser asterisk dialout'.
Don't forget to use signalling=fxs_ks in your zapata.conf so
that your FXO module can detect remote end hangup reliably.
Want to be able to pickup a line even if it isn't ringing?
Perhaps it's just me but I got confused thinking that the
zapbarge Asterisk command would be what I wanted. Of course, the
solution is much simpler.
Below are some lines out of my extensions.conf that allow anyone
on a SIP phone (or other) to pickup a PSTN line by dialing *X,
where X is the line number (1-3). This is useful for when you
still have analogue phones sharing the same lines that are going
into your TDM400 card, and you want to be able to pickup a line
that has already been answered with an analogue phone.
[zaplines]
exten =_ *1,1,Dial(Zap/1/)
exten =_ *2,1,Dial(Zap/2/)
exten =_ *3,1,Dial(Zap/3/)
Step by step TDM400P on Debian 3.1/Sarge
with Kernel 2.6
Install Debian 3.1/Sarge with Kernel 2.6
#apt-get install zaptel-source
#apt-get install kernel-headers-`uname -r`
#apt-get build-dep asterisk
#m-a a-i zaptel
you need to set an opermode if you live outside of the us so
edit /etc/modprobe.d/zaptel
install wcfxo /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install wcfxo opermode=AUSTRALIA
&& /sbin/ztcfg
install wcfxs /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install wcfxs opermode=AUSTRALIA
&& /sbin/ztcfg
and edit
/etc/zaptel.conf (Australia with Module 1-2 FXO and 3-4 FXS
used as example)
#modprobe zaptel
#modprobe wcfxs (to support the FXO modules)
#modprobe wcfxo (to support the FXS modules)
Note: If modprobe does not see your
new modules, claiming the are not found, run 'depmod'
and your done
IVR Audio problems (kind of robotic voice)
on TDM400P PSTN channels with Debian 3.1/Etch (testing) on Intel
P4 based cpu/s
Since kernel 2.6 uses an internal timer, this could be related
to the "wrong" kernel image for the CPU installed in the system.
The default Debian 3.1/Etch kernel image is
linux-image-2.6.12-1-386
So, if you are using P4 based cpu/s try to:
#apt-get update
#apt-get install linux-image-2.6.x-x-686
#apt-get install kernel-headers-2.6.x-x-686 (do this after the
image installation)
reboot. The new kernel will be automatically loaded (check if it
is present in the grub/lilo list anyway)
ignore the asterisk errors, if present
login to a secondary console (eg: alt+F2)
m-a a-i zaptel (which rebuilds the zaptel driver, not started
after the reboot)
reboot
If you are looking for asterisk web interface or frontend tools
click
here
