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Asterisk Installation on CentOS 5

Pre installation check:

Asterisk requires a set of dependencies during the building and installation process from its source code. The following dependencies should be installed or updated,

yum install bison
yum install bison-devel
yum install ncurses
yum install ncurses-devel
yum install zlib
yum install zlib-devel
yum install openssl
yum install openssl-devel
yum install gnutls-devel
yum install gcc
yum install gcc-c++

Download and Install Asterisk:

Download Asterisk-1.4.x from the following link and move the source tar ball to /usr/src/

http://www.asterisk.org/downloads

$ cp asterisk-1.4.x.tar.gz /usr/src/

$ cd /usr/src/

$ tar -zxf asterisk-1.4.x.tar.gz

$ cd asterisk-1.4.x

$ make clean

$ ./configure

$ make menuselect (refer the menuselect option)

$ make

$ make install

Download and Install Asterisk-addons:

Download asterisk-addons-1.4.9.tar.gz from the following link and copy it to /usr/src/

http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/

$ tar -zxf asterisk-1.4.x.tar.gz

$ cd asterisk-addons-1.4.9

$ make clean

$ make

$ make install

For starting, stopping the asterisk service execute the following command

$ service asterisk start

$ service asterisk stop

The ‘menuselect’ option:

The asterisk installation process contains a menuselect operation, where a list of installable modules and add on are available. To check with this execute the following command

$ make menuselect

If the asterisk installation is fresh, leave with the default modules and press ‘x’ to save and exit. Sometime Asterisk installation fails due to the slow or no internet connectivity as it downloads some of its sound files from the digium site during make install process. In this case deselect the following modules and make install.

---> 12. Core Sound Packages

13. Music on Hold File Packages

14. Extras Sound Packages

The sound file can download and install later from digium site http://www.asterisk.org/downloads

The menuselect option contains the all settings and modules necessary for asterisk to run and provide PBX services. During installation it is important to check the menuselect items properly and select the necessary modules and codec for installation. The left modules can be include by rebuilding asterisk from its source. Press ‘x’ to save and exit from the menuselect option.

Keep in mind that module proceeding with [xxx] option is not available with the source tar ball for installation or missing some dependency from the OS.

Troubleshooting the installation:

1. Execute the following command after the installation is complete to start the asterisk service and connect to the asterisk console,

$ service asterisk start

$ asterisk -r

If the above two command fails check /var/log/messages or /var/log/asterisk/messages for more detail on the errors.

Error: asterisk: unrecognized service

Copy the following file to /etc/init.d

$ cd /usr/src//contrib/init.d

$ cp rc.redhat.asterisk /etc/init.d/asterisk

Sometime the installation process may fail due to the lack of dependency on OS, for that need to run the following command before installation to check for the dependencies.

$ ./configure

To upgrade or update the OS execute the following command

$ yum upgrade

$ yum update