A couple of months ago I got Asterisk/FreePBX set up on a virtual machine, and it's been functioning fine but I haven't really made the most of it (lack of time). I look at it now and find it has various errors (files it can't write to etc) from the original install, it seems to work OK but I don't really feel it's set up correctly and I don't know what to do about it.[*]
The problem I have with Asterisk that it's way too complex and made more so by the fact that I learn nothing about it in playing with the web interfaces. I am quite happy at the command prompt or editing text files so I am considering a default "apt-get install asterisk" on an Ubuntu box and adding the trunks and extensions manually. Before I do this, is this a crazy stupid idea that's doomed to failure?
I don't want anything complex (a couple of trunks, a couple of extensions which will be Android phones with a SIP or IAX client, a bit of routing between them and voicemail).
Alternatively: I have been looking at the Raspberry Pi Asterisk distros, and wondering whether I should run one of those at home (where I have a 100M Virgin line) with port forwarding to allow the Android phones to reach it (might have fun with routing when they're on the WLAN at home). Give up on learning anything about Asterisk but have something which (hopefully) will just work.
[*] I set up two new VMs last night and tried different fresh CentOS+Asterisk installs following instructions to the letter and still got errors left right and centre. I don't want to install from source (maintenance headache), I just want distro packages that work (otherwise why are they there?)
Hi Mark,
I have an Ubuntu box with the package manager version of Asterisk installed, sitting in a data centre connected to the Internet and it works fine.
I have a couple of SIP hand sets, android handets and I have have a SIP trunk to an upstream provider so I can call the rest of the world, not just my private extensions. I most using it for testing not actually voice communications.
Just editing the files by hand isn't difficult but you need to get your head around some of the terminology and the operating model of Asterisk, that confused me a bit at first.
This is an example of how to create a SIP trunk between two Asterisk boxes, creating the SIP peers on each side and adding the dial plan entries (in extensions.conf): http://null.53bits.co.uk/index.php?page=basic-sip-trunk
These are a few basic debugging commands: http://null.53bits.co.uk/index.php?page=cli-examples
Best of luck and have fun!
James.
On 24 February 2015 at 11:48, James Bensley jwbensley@gmail.com wrote:
I have an Ubuntu box with the package manager version of Asterisk installed, sitting in a data centre connected to the Internet and it works fine.
Since I asked the question I too have one set up, and I have to say it was a *lot* easier to get the basics set up than it ever was with any of the GUI based alternatives I tried simply because the initial install just worked. That said it was helpful having a working IncrediblePBX setup to compare settings with.
I am concerned about getting security right but for my usage (all clients IAX2 based) I've been able to firewall the server so that only IAX2 and SSH are enabled, which is comforting. At present I have incoming calls from my SIP "trunks" working fine but haven't set up outbound calls via them, which suits me anyway as I really only tend to use them for inbound (and it limits the possibilities for someone else spending my credit!)
This is an example of how to create a SIP trunk between two Asterisk boxes, creating the SIP peers on each side and adding the dial plan entries (in extensions.conf): http://null.53bits.co.uk/index.php?page=basic-sip-trunk
Thanks, docs like this are pretty useful for getting some general understanding.
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James Bensley -
Mark Rogers