1. Introduction

This guide will allow you to install a voip server running …

We will be using the default install of Debian and installing Asterisk from source and compiling. Freepbx will be downloaded from the website and installed.

Debian is the operating system, Asterisk is the PBX and Freepbx is the configuration tool for Asterisk. We have chosen to use these three tools because …

Debian in my opinion is the best Linux distribution, Asterisk is the best PBX available to us and Freepbx is the best config tool. I have used all these things in the past and find them a great combination as do many others.

Note
 This document written under Ubuntu Linux from the command line using midnight commander as an editor and then it was processed using the asciidoc tool. nice eh?

We really need to appreciate all the people who give us this great software free of charge, they are truely generous.

Consider that if you use a setup like this in a business with 5 or more phones, you can save thousands of dollars a year in call costs. Think about donating a portion of that money to some of the companies in this doco so they can keep developing great apps like these.

2. Disclaimer

I think this is a pretty good doc however I am sure something is missing and it may not work for everyone. I have reinstalled using this doc from scratch about 5 times just to iron out all the bugs. I am not responsible for anything that goes wrong, so dont blame me. This is a complete install. Following this doco on an existing OS probably will give you strange issues, with those, you are on your own. If you follow all the instructions, you are going to wipe everything on your hard disk. Be aware of that and dont use your family photo's hard disk.

3. Prerequisites

3.1. You will need …

Some will disagree on the CPU requirements here and I am not going to argue about that. What I will say is that for a 100 person call center, this pc is not going to cut it. In all cases, monitor the cpu and memory usage on your machine under different call loads. The easiest way to do that is to login to the console and run "top")

3.2. Timeline

This howto was written from a bare metal install and took many days to research, install and document. It should take you considerably less time to get running. Somewhere around the 3 hour mark you should be able to dial a couple of extentions. Following this, the configuration fun is endless.

3.3. What will I end up with?

This howto is not a magic bullet. Finishing this howto will ensure you have a working VOIP server that you can add extentions and communicate between them. There are no hardware components required (other than the machine itself) You will also be able to add conference rooms and communicate with the outside world. Heading over to someone like Nerd Vittles will remind you how much more can be done with Asterisk and other open source gems.

3.4. Can I use this for a company or business?

Yes, this is a solid and stable build suitable for deployment in an office environment. Be aware there is no security in its basic form. Things such as firewalls and usernames and passwords should be added to protect the box from bad things. That is a whole other document.

4. Getting Started

4.1. Installing Debian

You need to get a Debian ISO from the website (try to use Bittorrent links if you can), this way we are giving back to the community in a small way by easing the burden on the download servers.

Burn the ISO to a cd and pop it in the cd draw and begin the installation.

You will be presented with a boot screen
Press enter
Choose your language
english
Choose your country
Australia
Choose your keymap
American english

Debian should now be detecting your hardware and for DHCP on the network

Enter a hostname for the machine
voipserver
Enter a domain name
local

Debian should now be scanning the disks

Partioning
Choose guided partitioning mode (Use entire hard disk)
Partition master hard disk (hda)
All files in one partition (easiest way to do it)
checking partitions

this is the last chance to back out, (all previous data on the disk will be destroyed if you go ahead now.)

Finish partitioning and write changes to disk?
yes

The system should now be formatting for a while …

select your timezone
Melbourne
set passwords
create a root password
confirm the root password
Create a new (nonadmin) user
password for that user
confirm password for that user

At this point Debain will be installing a few things so just wait some more …

configure package manager
Use network mirror (yes)
(requires internet connection obviously)
choose closest country to you
Australia
select archive mirror
pacific.net.au
proxy on your network?
most of us can say no here.

Debian will scan the mirror now and see what apps are there ;) this usually takes a while even on a fast connection

Popularity contest?
yes
Note
 Always select this as it will allow the guys & girls to ensure a better Debian product in the future by (anonomously) monitoring packages people are installing
Debian should now be asking you what packages you want installed
choose base system only
(desktop will probably be ticked, you need to un-tick that)
Note
 Selecting the desktop will install mountains of stuff you dont need on a server. Later we will install a minimal GUI that will give us more control and less bloat than the desktop selection of software.

Time for a quick coffee

Install should now be complete

install Grub bootloader
yes

4.2. Post install and testing

Now the install has completed, the first reboot should be done and you can login as root using password from above. A few tools I always like to use are listed below, install them now.

mc file manager
aptitude install mc

test the file manager by typing mc at the prompt

mc (should get a nice file manager)
ssh remote console
aptitude install ssh

4.3. Setup the base Gnome gui

Setup Gnome so we can have much fun in a comfortable environment.

Install the Gnome gui
aptitude install xserver-xorg
aptitude install gnome-core
aptitude install gdm (if you want a GUI login screen)
aptitude install firefox
Start GUI (every time you reboot unless GDM is installed)
startx

Install tomboy notes for a place to put all that info you pick up on the way.

Install Tomboy notes
aptitude install tomboy
add tomboy notes to the panel if you like
right click panel
choose add to panel
choose tomboy notes
click ok

Install ntp to set the PC clock accurately and that of the phones you connect later

Install NTP
aptitude install ntp

5. Installing Asterisk

After doing the above, we need to get Asterisk from the Digium svn website. We use the source and compile it ourselves.

install subversion
aptitude install subversion

5.1. Downloading the source files

At this point we are going to get the source files so make sure you are logged in as root and change to the linux src directory

cd /usr/src
Note
 To get Asterisk from the SVN repository, we need to know which version to download. Goto the asterisk web page (www.asterisk.org/downloads) and check what version is currently released as stable. (currently 1.4.11) Then we get that version from the svn site. Use this method to get the up to date versions of addons, zaptel, libpri as well. Use the same path in each of the examples, only changing the last few digits according to the currently released version.
Get Asterisk
svn co http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/branches/1.4 asterisk-1.4.11
Get libpri
svn co http://svn.digium.com/svn/libpri/branches/1.4 libpri-1.4.1
Get Zaptel
svn co http://svn.digium.com/svn/zaptel/branches/1.4 zaptel-1.4.5.1
Get Addons
svn co http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk-addons/branches/1.4 addons-1.4.2

5.2. Setup the build environment

Because we are installing from source, they (the source files) will rely on other components of the operating system. The build environment sets up those other components so there wont be errors during the building of the source.

Build environment
aptitude install linux-source
aptitude install kernel-package
aptitude install g++
aptitude install libncurses5-dev
aptitude install linux-kernel-headers
aptitude install sqlite
aptitude install libnewt-dev
aptitude install libusb-dev
aptitude install zlib1g-dev
aptitude install libmysqlclient-dev
aptitude install libsqlite0-dev

at this point, we need to configure the linux-source that we just downloaded, the other apps will be fine.

configure source
cd /usr/src
tar xzf linux-source-(version)
ln -s /usr/src/linux-source-(version) /usr/src/linux
cd /usr/src/linux
make oldconfig
make prepare
make prepare scripts

5.3. Compiling the applications

The order we compile the applications is important. Compiling them out of order would mean that some of the dependancies of an application might not be fulfilled and things wont work as expected. You will need to be inside the actual directory of the source you are trying to install. eg cd zaptel compile cd libpri compile

Compiling Zaptel
./configure
make menuconfig  <-- this step is not compulsory
make install
Compiling libpri
make install
Compiling Asterisk
./configure
make menuconfig <-- this step is not compulsory
make install
Compiling Addons
./configure
make install
Note
 If you make a mistake and stop halfway through compiling, no problem but you will need to run make clean then ./configure and make install again.
Modules

Under your /lib/modules dir, you may end up with an extra directory put there by Asterisk. Create a link from the Asterisk modules dir into the original modules directory (asterisk wont find the new modules otherwise).

ln -s /lib/modules/2.6.18 /lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/asterisk
make dep or could be depmod
Loading ztdummy at boot time
add a line in /etc/modules like below
ztdummy

5.4. Free PBX

Freepbx is a web based GUI for control of the Asterisk server. It does all the hard work for you so no hand editing of config files. As with Asterisk, check the latest version from the webpage and use that version instead of the one here.

Get freepbx
cd /usr/src
wget  http://mirror.freepbx.org/freepbx-2.3.1.tar.gz

open mc and highlight the archive, press F2 and extract the freepbx archive into the /usr/src directory

Install freepbx dependancies
aptitude install apache-ssl
aptitude install php5 php5-cli
aptitude install mysql-server
aptitude install php-pear
aptitude install php5-mysql
aptitude install php-db
aptitude install libapache-mod-php5
aptitude install php5-gd
Note
 The info here is largely from the "install" document inside the freepbx archive with some adjustments on the command line related to Debian.
Setup freepbx related configs
mod the /etc/apache/php.ini
change upload_max_filesize = 2M change to 20M
add an asterisk user (ignore the directory ownership warning you get)
adduser asterisk --disabled-password --gecos "asterisk PBX" --home /var/lib/asterisk
Setup Mysql for call detail recording
mysql -u root -p (prompts for password)
create database asteriskcdrdb;
create database asterisk;
quit
mysql -u root -p asteriskcdrdb < /usr/src/freepbx-2.3.1/SQL/cdr_mysql_table.sql
mysql -u root -p asterisk < /usr/src/freepbx-2.3.1/SQL/new_install.sql
Grant access to databases
mysql -u root -p
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON asteriskcdrdb.* TO asteriskuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'amp109';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON asterisk.* TO asteriskuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'amp109';
mysql> quit

Need to modify /etc/asterisk.conf and look for the pid line which will look like …

 /var/run/
need to change it to
 /var/run/asterisk
Install freePBX
start asterisk first or freepbx will complain
asterisk
/usr/src/freepbx.xxx/freepbx_install.sh
Freepbx may complain that the version of Asterisk is weird so you might need to install like this
/usr/src/freepbx.xxx/freepbx_install.sh --my-svn-is-correct
Note
 you will now be asked a series of questions which are pretty easy so I am not going to walk you through them here. In most cases, the defaults will be fine. check /etc/amportal.conf if you need to change anything related to the freepbx install.

5.5. Debian, Asterisk, FreePBX weirdness

Music on hold

wont work unless we create a symlink from /moh to /mohmp3

ln -s /var/lib/asterisk/moh /var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3
asterisk permissions

need to add www-data to the asterisk group so it can read all the asterisk files and directories

adduser www-data asterisk
configure amportal to start at boot
edit /etc/rc.local
nano /etc/rc.local
insert above the "exit 0" line
/usr/sbin/amportal start
save and quit
Note
 you need to reboot the box now. Failure to do this will mean you spend the rest of your days resolving weird permissions problems because the asterisk user isnt loaded, apache hasnt been restarted etc etc.

5.6. Testing the system

Now the fun part, asterisk is built and the gui is installed. Goto the localhost address. We installed apache-ssl so although there is a webpage at 127.0.0.1, it is the one at https://127.0.0.1/html (if you left the freepx setup as the default) that we are interested in.

There should be a green frog image in the top left hand corner and 3 links.

First link is for voicmail management (users)

Click on the panel (2nd) link and you will be prompted to install flash player. - Here you can see the status of all the extentions.

Click on the 3rd link and you should get the administration panel for the PBX. Click around a few places and make sure there are no errors or issues.

Adding some extentions

Click on the link on the left hand side and add two extentions. You can download any number of softphones to use with asterisk or use standard VOIP phones which are a good investment.

I am not going to explain much else on this as there are more than enough howto's on the web to setup a PBX once you have the GUI running. Most people have stopped reading by now anyway.

5.7. Testing the VOIP services

After setting it all up and you have a working system, you may need to change some things and then do a round of testing to make sure nothing has broken as a result of your changes. Below is a list of things to check as a matter of course.

all phones are showing as registered on the panel(you cant dial from or to an unregistered phone
dial to and from random phones
dial an outside number
dial an internal number
log into a conference room
put a phone on hold and make sure the music is working
dial another IAX trunk
leave a voicemail and make sure you can retrieve it
check to make sure the IVR is working
dial internally from an external line

5.8. Helpful commands

You will need to stop and start asterisk from time to time.
amportal start
Or stop asterisk
amportal stop
Or restart asterisk
amportal restart

Thats it! Hope you enjoyed building your PBX. I tried to make this doc as easy as possible to follow, hope it has helped you. Feel free to distribute this as you like provided you dont remove my name from the document. Dont try to pass this off as your own work. Send me your feedback to the address at the top of the document. -Matt