INSTALL ASTERISK 1.8 ON CENTOS 6

This guide explains step by step how to install Asterisk 1.8 on CentOS 6 x86_64 however you should be able to follow this guide for i686 & RHEL Linux, I have also included a video guide for those of you that prefer to watch a video rather than read.

Asterisk is an enterprise level telephone system that uses real desk phones capable of seamlessly calling normal phones, your users probably wont even realise they are using a VoIP phone system. Asterisk VoIP PBX can connect to existing ISDN30e / POTS telephone lines or over the Internet via a ITSP.

To start off with follow my guide on how to install CentOS 6, use the minimal server install as suggested. Do not install a GUI on Asterisk, this is a PBX it needs to be reliable do not waste resources on X Windows. I would also like to point out that this guide is for an Asterisk server with no bloat, this is not a guide for setting up Trixbox or Elastix I recommend straight Asterisk, this has caused me less issues over the years. It might be more complicated to configure bu that is what this guide is for 

Update the system & reboot:

yum update

Review the updates and accept, when they have completed reboot with:

init 6

Install wget to pull down Asterisk:

yum install wget

Download Asterisk 1.8 & DAHDI + Tools

wget http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/releases/asterisk-1.8.5.0.tar.gz && wget http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/dahdi-linux-complete/releases/dahdi-linux-complete-2.5.0+2.5.0.tar.gz

Asterisk & DAHDI Tools need extracting, to extract the tar.gz

tar -xvzf asterisk-1.8* && tar -xvzf dahdi-linux-complete-*

Install dependencies so we can compile Asterisk 1.8

yum install kernel-devel gcc make gcc-c++ libxml2-devel

This should look like:

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
 Package              Arch        Version                    Repository    Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 gcc                  x86_64      4.4.4-13.el6               base          10 M
 gcc-c++              x86_64      4.4.4-13.el6               base         4.7 M
 kernel-devel         x86_64      2.6.32-71.29.1.el6         updates      6.5 M
 libxml2-devel        x86_64      2.7.6-1.el6                base         1.1 M
 make                 x86_64      1:3.81-19.el6              base         389 k
Installing for dependencies:
 cloog-ppl            x86_64      0.15.7-1.2.el6             base          93 k
 cpp                  x86_64      4.4.4-13.el6               base         3.7 M
 glibc-devel          x86_64      2.12-1.7.el6_0.5           updates      961 k
 glibc-headers        x86_64      2.12-1.7.el6_0.5           updates      592 k
 kernel-headers       x86_64      2.6.32-71.29.1.el6         updates      991 k
 libgomp              x86_64      4.4.4-13.el6               base         108 k
 libstdc++-devel      x86_64      4.4.4-13.el6               base         1.5 M
 mpfr                 x86_64      2.4.1-6.el6                base         157 k
 pkgconfig            x86_64      1:0.23-9.1.el6             base          70 k
 ppl                  x86_64      0.10.2-11.el6              base         1.3 M
 zlib-devel           x86_64      1.2.3-25.el6               base          43 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install      16 Package(s)
Upgrade       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 32 M
Installed size: 90 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y

You also need to install Perl & ncurses-devel

yum install perl ncurses-devel

Build DAHDi, this needs to be built first so you can build Asterisk with support for conference rooms and anything else that requires DAHDi. MAKE SURE YOU DO THIS FIRST.

cd  dahdi-linux-complete*
make all
make install
make config

For this tutorial I am only going to be using SIP trunks, I have no hardware installed. If you have are using cards / hardware you might want to check out /etc/dahdi/system.conf and /etc/asterisk/chan_dahdi.conf.

Start DAHDi at Boot

chkconfig dahdi on
service dahdi start

Build Asterisk

cd asterisk-*
make clean
./configure

Configure your Asterisk Server options and install

make menuselect
make
make install

Install sample config files in /etc/asterisk and set Asterisk to start at boot.

make samples
make config
chkconfig asterisk on

Start Asterisk to test it runs!

asterisk -vvvvc

To stop asterisk

core stop now

If Asterisk does not run chances are you made a mistake, it happens. Check you have follow my guide exactly and start again if necessary.

Once you have tested Asterisk is working start the service

/etc/init.d/asterisk start