Installing Asterisk NOW and Configuring Soft Phones

Test

AsteriskNOW

WIth the new AsteriskNOW its very simply to setup an Asterisk PBX (Private Branch Exchange) and make calls over your network for free. You can also link up Asterisk server to make calls over the PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network).

Its really a great way to communicate across a large network using the best way of communication using your voice. Best of all Asterisk is 100% free and very well documented making custom installations on all platforms and hardware equipment a lot smoother.

This hub is made up of two main sections

1. Installing Asterisk NOW

2. Creating User Accounts

3. Setting up sip softphone (using x-lite) registering user with the server
Installing AsteriskNOW

The installation of AsteriskNOW is very simply as it comes in ISO format which means you can simply burn the image to a cd and install it to a free partition. The AsteriskNOW image comes with all PBX software and a default copy of windows. It also comes with a nice graphical interface to esaily restart or shutdown your Asterisk server.

You can create new parition's on Linux using Gparted or any other common partitioning software.

Once you have burnt the AsteriskNOW image to a CD. Simply insert the CD into your cd/dvd drive and reboot your computer , and ensure that you boot up options are setup with the cd/dvd rom drive as first priority.

As your computer boots up it will try and boot off the CD and the asterisknow installation screen will appear
See all 5 photos
Now follow the instructions, and use suggested settings
AsteriskNOW

Once you have completed your installation Asterisk will load the console screen as shown below.

Here you can check the ip address of your Asterisk server, in this case 192.168.1.122

and as you can see you can access the Asterisk gui by typing that ip address into a web browser, I recommend using Mozilla firefox (version 2) as version 3 is currently unsupported.

Dont forget your password you setup from the installation as you will need that to log on to your Asterisk server and add registered users, voicemail and all that other stuff

www.oldversion.com/Mozilla-Firefox.html

AsteriskNOW console window
Registering a User on Asterisk

Its simple to add users on AsteriskNOW simply log on through your browser e.g http://192.168.1.122/

you can also setup users manually using the sip.conf & extensions.conf files, but I will go through them later on in another hub or may update this one at a later stage.

Once logged into AsteriskNOW follow the steps

- Click Users on the left hand side

- Now click New

- Add your new user's extension ( here i added 2000)

- You can also add a password, voicemail password, caller ID and a few other things but the main thing you need is the extension (4 digits)

Once you have done click SAVE

Now click the Activate Changes in the right hand corner to easily apply your settings, otherwise you can go into the asterisk CLI, and type dialplan reload or just reload the entire asterisk server

Setting up Sip Softphone

Nows it time to setup your sip softphone (not a real hardware phone same settings apply) with the registered user details setup previously.

For this task I used a popular sip softphone (x-lite FREE) available at http://www.counterpath.com/

Now with an asterisk user ready to be used, install and then open up x-lite

In X-lite

- Right click on the x-lite screen and click settings

- Now enter the Display name

- Username & Authorization name

- and point the Domain and proxy to the address of your server in this case 192.168.1.122

Apply the changes



Making the calls

Now once you pressed ok on X-lite it should initialize with the server and your user should be registered and ready to make calls to every other registered user on the network.

If you want to find out who else is logged on to the server and you are able to make calls to

type " show sip peers"

Now make calls to networked users to your hearts content, In the next hub i will go through adding hardware phones and putting in PSTN connectivity so you can call landlines and mobile phones. Also how to edit sip.conf and extensions.conf when your using a regular version of Asterisk and not AsteriskNOW.
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http://expectus.hubpages.com/hub/Installing-Asterisk-NOW-and-Configuring-Soft-Phones

Test

This guide provides a brief overview of installation, configuration, and maintenance of your system.

More information is available at http://wiki.centos.org/.

Please report any bugs at http://bugs.digium.com/.
Installation

Burn the AsteriskNOW image to disc. If you are unfamiliar with burning disc images, the Ubuntu community has a great Burning ISO Howto available at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto. Then boot from CD to begin the installation process. If you are unfamiliar with booting to CD, the Ubuntu community has a wonderful Boot From CD Howto available at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD. After booting from the AsteriskNOW CD, you will be immediately presented with text options for a more advanced install. Most users can simply press <ENTER> here, which will start the (mostly) automated graphical installation environment.



During the installation, you will be presented with 3 option screens.

1) Hard disk layout. It is recommended to select "Remove all partitions on selected drives and create default layout." and move to the next screen. This will *ERASE ALL DATA* on the system. Anything that is important should first be backed up to a different system.

2) Timezone settings. Select the location that is nearest to you and move to the next screen.

3) Root password. The 'root' user is the administrative account for Linux systems. Most system configuration requires 'root' access. If this password is lost, it is impossible to recover. It is recommended that your password contain a mix of lowercase and UPPERCASE letters, numbers, and/or symbols.

After the final option, installation will begin. This will take approximately 15-30 minutes. Once installation has completed, the system will reboot into your installation.
Configuration

(Note: Before making any system configuration changes, you must log in as the 'root' user.) By default, AsteriskNOW will attempt to use DHCP to setup networking. If you would like to change networking settings, you can run the command `system-config-network`. You can view the current IP address of the system by using `ifconfig`.
FreePBX (the default configuration interface for Asterisk)

To connect to FreePBX, point a web browser to http://<IP address>/admin/. The default username/password is freepbx/fpbx. After logging in for the first time it is a good idea to click the reload button if it appears. It is also a good idea to regularly update the modules via the "Module Administration" page.
Updating, Querying, Removing Packages

After completing installation of AsteriskNOW, all of the packages for running Asterisk are installed. However system updates are often available.

AsteriskNOW contains several yum repositories in addition to the ones provided by CentOS. These are asterisk-current/asterisk-tested and digium-current/digium-tested. The asterisk- repositories contain packages for Digium-provided Open Source software (such as Asterisk, libpri, and DAHDI). The digium- repositories contain non-free or commercial software (such as codec_g729a, Fax For Asterisk, and the HPEC echo cancellation module). This allows you to install additional software and to stay up to date with the latest changes.

Packages can be installed or removed by using `yum install <package>` or `yum remove <package>`. Updates should be regularly installed by using `yum update`. For a very full list of available and installed packages, you can use `yum list | less`. For more information about Yum, visit http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/YumCommands or type `man yum`.


http://www.asterisk.org/AsteriskNOW-1.5-QuickStart