Asterisk is one of the most popular free telephony solutions available as it is very simple to setup, has great community support and can be customized for any application. It also features easy to use GUI interface.

This hub will go through setting up asterisk from the packages instead of just downloading an already pre-made image of Asterisk like AsteriskNOW , Tribox or systems similar.Asterisk on ubuntu guide goes through version 1.4 I belive 1.6 recently came out aswell as the changes to the packages.

There are quite a few packages ubuntu will require in order to complete the installation of asterisk on ubuntu successfully, these include running kernel 2.6 of linux, and appropriate packages to execute C programs.

To install the required packages enter root mode using

Sudo su

Apt-get –y install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential

automake autoconf bison flex libtool libncurses5-dev libssl-dev

subversion svn-buildpackage

apt-get –y install cvs build-essential automake autoconf bison flex libtool libncurses5-dev libssl-dev libgsm1 libgsm1-dev

apt-get –y install sysvconfig **required to start services**

Note: if packages fail to install try separating the packages and installing them individually.

Goto Directory /usr/src/:

Cd /usr/src/

Downloading Packages through Ubuntu (type following in Ubuntu CLI)

wget http://downloads.digium.com/pub/zaptel/zaptel-1.4.12.1.tar.gz

wget http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/libpri/libpri-1.4.10.1.tar.gz

wget http://downloads.digium.com/pub/asterisk/releases/asterisk-1.4.20.tar.gz

wget http://downloads.digium.com/pub/asterisk/releases/asterisk-sounds-1.2.1.tar.gz

wget http://downloads.digium.com/pub/asterisk/releases/asterisk-addons-1.4.7.tar.gz

Extract Files – Configure each Package – Run Services

tar –xzf zaptel-1.4.12.1.tar.gz

tar –xzf libpri-1.4.10.1.tar.gz

tar -xzf asterisk-1.4.20.tar.gz

tar -xzf asterisk-sounds-1.2.1.tar.gz

tar -xzf asterisk-addons-1.4.7.tar.gz

• cd zaptel-1.4.12.1
• ./configure
• make
• make install
• make config
• service zaptel start
• cd ..
• cd libpri-1.4.10.1
• make
• make install
• cd ..
• cd asterisk-1.4.20
• ./configure
• make
• make install
• make samples
• make config
• cd ..
• cd asterisk-sounds
• make install
• cd ..
• cd asterisk-addons-1.4.7
• ./configure
• make
• make install
• service asterisk start

If asterisk fails to start try starting asterisk from directory /etc/asterisk
Asterisk start

Now that asterisk is installed its time to create some users so that we can register ourselves on the asterisk server with a soft phone and then start to make calls over the network.

Edit the file /etc/asterisk/sip.conf

Using “nano /etc/asterisk/sip.conf” or “vim /etc/asterisk/sip.conf”

Copy the following into your sip.conf, If you can’t copy and paste try connecting to your server with Putty once you have installed openssl

[common](!) ; this is template.

type=friend

context=internal

host=dynamic

disallow=all

allow=ulaw

allow=alaw

allow=g723

allow=g729

dtmfmode=rfc2833

;
[1000](common)

username=1000

secret=1000

;
[1001](common)

username=1001

secret=1001

Here we have setup two users with extensions 1000 and 1001 , you can now registry your softphone with the server using these two extensions and secrets.

Remember to reload your asterisk server when changes have been made. Enter the command line “asterisk –r” and type “reload”

We cannot make calls until we have setup the dialplan file which will specify how a particular number shall be interpreted and where the call should be sent.

Edit sip.conf to look like the following

[internal]

exten=> _XXXX,1,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN})

The above diaplan specifies anyone that dials 4 digits e.g 1001 , the number one priority will be to Dial, the Sip extension 1001.

X refers to any number from 0 – 9

That’s it for the basic’s in setting up your Asterisk PBX server on ubuntu, next time I will go through creating trunk’s to reach the PBX , setting up ENUM and a few other things.