Someone get a mop!
Digging through the FC8 available package list, what do I see but a long list of Asterisk components and features! This is fantastic news for both Asterisk and the Fedora Project. This will vastly simplify things for anyone interested in giving Asterisk a try as it’s no more than a few clicks away requiring no compiling and related complexities.
Was all this in FC7 and I didn’t notice??!
I couldn’t wait. I jumped ahead and installed some of the basic Asterisk packages:
- Asterisk
- Asterisk-voicemail
- Asterisk-conference
- Asterisk-voicemail-plain
- Asterisk-curl
This is my first taste of Asterisk 1.4 so I’m going to keep this really simple. I’m going to setup this Asterisk install as a SIP peer to my existing 1.2 installation. For the most part, default installation files will be used on the FC8 side of things.
For starters, here’s the proposed setup:
In my current Asterisk 1.2 configuration, I will add a SIP entry as well as an extension entry for 300. This will be FC8’s extension on my current Asterisk install. All calls to extension 300, will be “routed” to the FC8 installation of Asterisk. Think of it this way, I am pretending to be my own SIP provider for this example, the FC8 Asterisk install would be my client.
Add in sip.conf on the “Provider” (existing 1.2):
- [300]
type=friend
host=dynamic
context=test
secret=abc123
callerid=300
dtmfmode=rfc2833
nat=yes
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
In sip.conf on our Asterisk 1.4, the “Customer” side on FC8. (this by no means is a working “production” setup, it’s simply a test of the very basics!)
Right under the [general] section
[general]
register=>300:abc123@10.10.50.123:5060
and at the very end of the file
- [300]
type=friend
host=dynamic
context=test
secret=abc123
callerid=300
dtmfmode=rfc2833
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
Again, and the ease of simplicity, the Firewall was disabled on the FC8 VM install.
Before we restart Asterisk, we need to do 2 more things:
- Find and install some default English sounds.
- Configure Extension 300 to do something on both the new Asterisk 1.4. and my existing 1.2 host.
After a cursory search of the FC8 Package Manager nothing really stood out as being “asterisk-sounds-en” so I turned to Google for a better answer. As usual, Google delivers: http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/sounds/ .
The English ULAW pack can be obtained here.
I will probably save some of you a lot of searching with this next bit… Asterisk, or whoever packaged FC8 packages wants/has specified that the sounds be installed in /usr/share/asterisk/sounds/ . I’ve not played much with Asterisk 1.4, so this could very well be the default location for sounds.
Finally, the tweak to extensions.conf to handle a call to extension 300 on the FC8, “Customer” system.
Right under the [demo] section enter:
exten => 300,1,Goto(s,restart)
and on the “Provider”
exten => 300,1,Dial(SIP/300@10.10.50.124,30,r)
Dialling 300 from any of the handsets in the house will now cause my existing Asterisk configuration to bridge the call between it and the FC8 Asterisk 1.4 install. The call to 300 on the FC8 side will be answered and entered into the as-shipped Digium demo.
Don’t forget to restart or reload the Asterisk configuration on both machines!
That done, I picked up my handset and dialled 300 while keeping an eye on both Asterisk consoles.
The call was answered by my 1.2 install, and another SIP channel created to the FC8 installation. Once negotiated, the call was bridged and I was greeted by the Digium demo lady informing me that Asterisk had been successfully installed. (Ironically I had downloaded the “es” Spanish version of the sounds and was mildly befuddled as to what had occurred. I had a moment of realization shortly after and corrected the problem.) . This configuration is far from complete, but satisfied my curiosity regarding the viability of the FC8 Asterisk packages, and to that… Thumbs Up!
So yeah, out of the box, Asterisk ships with Fedora Core 8. You need to get appropriate sound files but other than that it’s a fully working installation! I’m going to need a bit more spare time to fully sink my teeth into Asterisk 1.4; looking in from the outside and from a configuration perspective it doesn’t seem all that different… so far.
The next obvious post in this area should discuss upgrading a 1.2 to a 1.4 install… Stay tuned, from the sounds of it I should have upgraded long ago!
- Paul
April 7th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
[…] http://paulskinner.ca/index.php/2008/04/06/fedora-core-8-asterisk-14-available/Once negotiated, the call was bridged and I was greeted by the Digium demo lady informing me that Asterisk had been successfully installed. (Ironically I had downloaded the “es” Spanish version of the sounds and was mildly befuddled as … […]