Asterisk 1.4 Installation

There are several things we need to prepare before we can start with the installation:

A computer (real server machine recommended) running Debian Etch...

We are going to install all software packages to ensure everything is available at configuration time:

apt-get update
apt-get install \
asterisk1.4 \
zaptel1.4-modules-2.6.18-6-686 \
libtiff-tools \
mysql-server \
phpmyadmin \
php5-cli \
postfix \
mailx

During installation of the packages you will be asked for the type, postfix is to be configured. Please select "Internet Site" there and choose a suitable mail name (this is the part right to the @-sign of the sender's email address, when local users send mails from this machine without specifying an email address).

By default, the MySQL server on a Debian Etch system is configured to use binary logs for replication and has innodb enabled. We should disable both as we will not use them. Inside the MySQL server's configuration file /etc/mysql/my.cnf ensure the following parameters are commented out or in:

...
#log_bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log
...
#expire_logs_days = 10
#max_binlog_size = 100M
...
skip-innodb
...

As MySQL uses another character set than UTF-8 by default, we want to change this too. Add the following lines to section [mysqld] in the MySQL server's configuration file /etc/mysql/my.cnf:

...
[mysqld]
...
default-character-set = utf8
default-collation = utf8_general_ci
...

Finally we restart to MySQL server and delete the existing binary logs with the following commands called from the command line:

# /etc/init.d/mysql restart
# rm -f /var/log/mysql/*

After installation of the MySQL server, MySQL's root user has an empty password. You should really change this with the following command:

# mysqladmin -u root password 'astrongpasswordyoucanremember'

Now let's check, if there are other users without password. We can do this by using the mysql command line client:

# mysql -u root -p
mysql> use mysql;
Database changed
mysql> select user, host, password from user;
+------------------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+
| user             | host      | password                                  |
+------------------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+
| root             | localhost | *0F553A6A044AB8DE698F1AFA6707C1120AE3667C |
| debian-sys-maint | localhost | *C6C5978FF3658BFA7B56D8223497716FFA4BB973 |
| root             | debian   |                                           |
+------------------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

we can see there is a root user without a password, which we are going to delete now (the host will display the hostname of your machine without the domainname):

mysql> delete from user where user='root' and host='debian' limit 1;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> exit;

The next thing we are going to do is to create a database with all the tables needed and a user for asterisk. There is an SQL file and a simple shell script located in /usr/share/asterisk that does all the work for us:

# cd /usr/share/asterisk
# ./create_db.sh

When asked for a password, specify the password for MySQL's root user you just set.

We are going to use postfix for sending out mails with faxes and voicemail files and we do not want it to listen to other interfaces than localhost. Therefor adjust the file /etc/postfix/main.cf to the following settings (replace the value of myhostname with the fully qualified hostname of your machine):

smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Debian/GNU)
biff = no
append_dot_mydomain = no
myhostname = debian.domain.com
alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases
alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases
myorigin = /etc/mailname
mydestination = localhost
relayhost = 
mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8
mailbox_size_limit = 0
recipient_delimiter = +
inet_interfaces = 127.0.0.1

Finally, restart postfix:

# /etc/init.d/postfix restart

If you use telephony hardware with Asterisk, ensure that in case this is PCI based hardware, the PCI slot it is inserted in does not use shared interrupts. Refer to your motherboard's manual. Just one hint: on most of Asus and MSI desktop motherboards the PCI slot next to the graphics card slot shares it's interrupt with the graphics card.