I am starting to work with Asterisk which is a Linux VoIP PBX, that lets you even send your minutes traffic, to VoIP gateways, and therefore one more time Linux is helping us lower the costs of maintaining an office.

As a first thing I tried to install it from repositories both on Debian and CentOS.

Let's start with Debian.

Once you have installed Debian

Just enter as root:

apt-get install asterisk

Then configure your sip.conf and extensions.conf as minimum, then edit the file:

/etc/default/asterisk

and change the option to start asterisk at boot from "no" to "yes"

Now on CentOS

First install CentOS

Then create this file

/etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo

with this content on it.

[atrpms]
name=CentOS $releasever - $basearch - ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/el$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
gpgcheck=1

Once that is done enter:

yum install asterisk

You will this output:

Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
Reading repository metadata in from local files
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
---> Package asterisk.i386 1:1.4.9-43.el5 set to be updated
--> Running transaction check
--> Processing Dependency: libpq.so.4 for package: asterisk
--> Processing Dependency: libtonezone.so.1.0 for package: asterisk
--> Processing Dependency: libspeex.so.1 for package: asterisk
--> Processing Dependency: libodbc.so.1 for package: asterisk
--> Processing Dependency: libpri.so.1.0 for package: asterisk
--> Restarting Dependency Resolution with new changes.
--> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
---> Package unixODBC.i386 0:2.2.11-7.1 set to be updated
---> Package zaptel.i386 1:1.4.4-37.el5 set to be updated
---> Package postgresql-libs.i386 0:8.1.9-1.el5 set to be updated
---> Package libpri1.i386 1:1.4.1-17.el5 set to be updated
---> Package speex.i386 0:1.0.5-4 set to be updated
--> Running transaction check

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
 Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
 asterisk                i386       1:1.4.9-43.el5   atrpms             10 M
Installing for dependencies:
 libpri1                 i386       1:1.4.1-17.el5   atrpms             57 k
 postgresql-libs         i386       8.1.9-1.el5      updates           196 k
 speex                   i386       1.0.5-4          base              206 k
 unixODBC                i386       2.2.11-7.1       base              832 k
 zaptel                  i386       1:1.4.4-37.el5   atrpms            2.0 M

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install      6 Package(s)
Update       0 Package(s)
Remove       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 13 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/6): unixODBC-2.2.11-7. 100% |=========================| 832 kB    00:23
(2/6): zaptel-1.4.4-37.el 100% |=========================| 2.0 MB    01:01
(3/6): postgresql-libs-8. 100% |=========================| 196 kB    00:06
(4/6): libpri1-1.4.1-17.e 100% |=========================|  57 kB    00:03
(5/6): asterisk-1.4.9-43. 100% |=========================|  10 MB    04:19
(6/6): speex-1.0.5-4.i386 100% |=========================| 206 kB    00:07
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
  Installing: speex                        ######################### [1/6]
  Installing: libpri1                      ######################### [2/6]
  Installing: postgresql-libs              ######################### [3/6]
  Installing: zaptel                       ######################### [4/6]
  Installing: unixODBC                     ######################### [5/6]
  Installing: asterisk                     ######################### [6/6]

Installed: asterisk.i386 1:1.4.9-43.el5
Dependency Installed: libpri1.i386 1:1.4.1-17.el5 postgresql-libs.i386 0:8.1.9-1.el5 speex.i386 0:1.0.5-4 unixODBC.i386 0:2.2.11-7.1 zaptel.i386 1:1.4.4-37.el5
Complete!

In this case you just need to configure

/etc/asterisk/sip.conf

and

/etc/asterisk/extensions.conf

according to your needs, and you are done.

On both systems you can start or stop asterisk with

/etc/init.d/asterisk [start, stop, restart]