Asterisk is the world’s leading open source telephony engine and tool kit. Offering flexibility unheard of in the world of proprietary communications, Asterisk empowers developers and integrators to create advanced communication solutions…for free.

Asterisk® is released as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and it is available for download free of charge. Asterisk® is the most popular open source software available, with the Asterisk Community being the top influencer in VoIP.

Official site : www.asterisk.org

Let’s start installing it on the server now.

Login to your server as root.

I am using asterisk 1.4 (I have done this on 64 bit server – make sure to download the right tarball) – you can download asterisk by the command:

root# wget http://downloads.digium.com/pub/asterisk/releases/asterisk-1.4.23.tar.gz

Now, we will start the installation process. If you get any errors of dependencies you will have to install it. I have installed it using yum ( few were ncurses, gcc, gcc-c++, zaptel, subversion) – install ncurses before the installation starts this will make “make menuconfig” command work perfect.

root# tar zxvf asterisk-1.4.23.tar.gz
root# cd asterisk-1.4.23
root#./configure
root# make menuconfig    -- hit 'x' to save and exit with default setting
root# make
root# make install
root# make samples
root# asterisk

Now, open the ports in the firewall by the commands:

root# iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 8088 -j ACCEPT
root# iptables -I INPUT -p udp --dport 8088 -j ACCEPT
root# service iptables save
root# service iptables restart

root# iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 5308 -j ACCEPT
root# iptables -I INPUT -p udp --dport 5308 -j ACCEPT
root# service iptables save
root# service iptables restart

Asterisk is installed, now proceeding to installation of Asterisk-GUI

svn checkout http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk-gui/branches/2.0/ asterisk-gui

cd asterisk-gui/
./configure
make
make install

Edit /etc/asterisk/http.conf with your favourite editor and change the following lines:

enabled=yes
enablestatic=yes
bindaddr=123.123.123.123

Where 123.123.123.123 is your server IP.

This enables the HTTP server, enables it to serve static content (the GUI itself) and binds to the standard address, so that any browser from a remote machine can access it.

Now, configuring the manager access
Edit /etc/asterisk/manager.conf and change the following lines:

enabled = yes
webenabled = yes

Then add a new section at the end of the file

[admin]
secret = supportfacility
read = system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user,config
write = system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user,config

This will allow a user called admin to connect with the password supportfacility and do nearly everything on the system.

Now restart Asterisk by the command:

root# asterisk

Do one last check with the command

make checkconfig

If everything goes well, and you get a “Good Luck” connect with your browser to:

http://Server-IP:8088/asterisk/static/config/cfgbasic.html

Username: admin
Password: supportfacility

This will take sometime and then you will get the below URL.

http://Server-IP:8088/asterisk/static/config/index.html

Start configuring your Asterisk now.

Best of luck!

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