Let me start out by saying that you can install Asterisk pretty easily if you’re looking for something simple. However, with around 30 potentially large configuration files that need some form of special care, and add to it the hassle with compiling the appropriate packages and drivers to make your telephony hardware function, that walk through the park can quickly turn into a winding maze with strange growling noises from within. It’s not a pretty place to be, especially if you’re spending paid work hours to dedicate yourself to the task.

A Quick Start

First of all, let’s look at a few ways you can speed the process up:

•  AsteriskNow – (http://www.asterisknow.org/)
•  Trixbox – (http://www.trixbox.org)
•  Debian Linux – (http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Running+Asterisk+on+Debian)

The above approaches are perfectly fine for average scenarios, but nearly every company/person out there has some sort of special need. Typically it’s a feature available in the latest version of Asterisk, but not currently available in your drop-in product.

I won’t detail any of the major operating system debacles you may come to face. Seriously, that would just take way too much time. I also won’t be covering specifics on compilation. Again, there are too many paths for you to take and it’s unrealistic to think I could cover them all. I just want to try and help you find the quickest answers you need without wasting your time.

Important Resources

Here are some of the avenues I’ve used to get where I am today:

•  Google – (http://google.com) – This is nearly every tech’s best friend
•  Voip-Info – (http://voip-info.org) – A site dedicated to Voice Over IP with huge influence from Asterisk.
•  IRC – (http://java.freenode.net) – You’ll have to register a nickname here and confirm it via the email they send you. Then you can /join #asterisk.

In all honesty, these are the only three tools I ever needed in order to make my way in the Asterisk telephony world at first. Over time, however, I found that voip-info.org didn’t always specify which versions of Asterisk a certain feature was available in. The information there usually provided several different ways to do something, and while some may work in your version the others would crash Asterisk!

IRC is really one of the best places to get the answers you need when troubled with a problem in your Asterisk installation. Sadly, however, there only ever seemed to be a handful of folks who are able (or willing) to give suggestions without a full listing of every configuration file you possess. I certainly understand the argument; Asterisk is an immensely configurable piece of software that can produce widely varying results if you tweak a setting in the wrong way. Still, I despise having to post every single configuration file on the web just so I can wait an hour to find that they couldn’t figure it out either. This probably should go without saying, but I will say it anyway, that going into the IRC channel for help without having some semblance of a working Asterisk installation is a bad idea.

Check in with us next week, and we’ll discuss some better avenues of help for your Asterisk related endeavors.

Michael McNeil has been working with Voice Over IP technologies since February 2006 with Dalcon Communication Systems. He specializes in Asterisk: The Open Source PBX, Linux, and Perl development with a short background in Network Security.