The World of VoIP, Asterisk and Linux

Unlike my very first painful installs of Asterisk 1.0.9 on Fedora 4 in 2004, nowadays it is very easy to install Asterisk on almost any system. I did a brand new setup of Asterisk yesterday on CentOS, and noted down all the step both for my own reference and to help anybody who wants to do a similar install.

The setup included:

• MySQL
• PHP
• Tweaking of Apache
• Asterisk 1.4
• Asterisk-Addons 1.11
• Asterisk-MySQL Setup
• Asterisk Realtime Setup
• Munin Install and Setup

Make sure you server is connected to the Internet, as you”ll need to download stuff.

So here is how it goes:

Core Components Install

This setup assumes that you already have a CentOS 5.2 server setup. First download Asterisk and Asterisk Add-Ons to /usr/src folder

wget http://www.asterisk.org/downloads/asterisk/releases/asterisk-1.4-current.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/asterisk-addons-1.4.11.tar.gz

Now install the following one by one, including setup MySQL:

yum install gcc
yum install gcc-c++
yum install ncurses-devel
yum install doxygen
yum install mysql mysql-server mysql-devel
mysql_secure_installation
yum install php php-mysql

Finally install Asterisk. For this untar the downloaded asterisk source file, compile and install it. The steps are as follows. Note that in the following make menuselect will take you to a menu where you could select optional installation packages for Asterisk. I installed additional sounds through it. Rest of all the required stuff is already pre-selected.

cd /usr/src
tar zxvf asterisk-current-tar.gz
cd asterisk-1.4.35
./configure
make
make menuselect
make install
make samples
make progdocs
cd ..
rm asterisk-1.4.35 -fr

Now setup Asterisk Add-Ons package. You need it for Asterisk-MySQL interaction.

cd /usr/src
tar zxvf asterisk-addons-1.4.11.tar.gz
cd asterisk-1.4.11
./configure
make
make install
cd ..
rm asterisk-1.4.11 -fr

This is all what is required to do the complete setup. There should be no errors faced during these steps.

Now install some more tools which you must have on your server:

Other Necessary Software and Munin

1. Isn’t it a good idea to have OpenSSL installed:
   yum install openssl
2. Install tcpdump to be able to sniff network traffic:
   yum install tcpdump
3. Now install TFTP, you will need it for remote provisioning. Or you can ignore it if you won’t be doing any remote provisioning:
   yum install tftp-server
4. If there is no FTP server installed, install it now:
   yum install vsftpd
5. Sooner or later you’ll require to install perl anyways, so better install it now. Munin requires it which you’ll be installing next:
   yum install perl

Isn’t it pretty much straight forward, using yum to install everything. However Munin, which is a must on any Linux server to monitor its health, is not available in CentOS repositories. There are some other repositories which include it, one of which is called dag. One option is to download Munin and install it manually, but I prefer to use yum. So setup dag repository as follows:

1. Create a file named dag.repo in yum repositories folder:
   vi /etc/yum.repos.d/dag.repo
2. Now paste the following text into it, followed by saving and exiting the file.
   [dag]
   name=Dag RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
   baseurl=http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el$releasever/en/$basearch/dag
   gpgcheck=1
   gpgkey=http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt
   enabled=1
3. Now install Munin simply by using yum:
   yum install munin munin-node
4. Then there is iftop, a very useful graphical tool to see network activity:
   yum install iftop

Now you have everything you need on your server, and what is left is its configuration. We’ll start with configuring Asterisk.

Configuring Asterisk

CDR

As we plan to store the CDR in a MySQL database, not in text file, so we need to first of all create a database to store it. I followed the instructions from the famous, one and only voip-info.org website (http://ilovetovoip.com/tM) and created a new MySQL user asterisk, database named `asterisk` and a table called `cdr` as follows:

CREATE DATABASE asterisk;
GRANT INSERT
ON asterisk.*
TO asterisk@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY 'asterisk';
USE asterisk;
CREATE TABLE `cdr` (
`calldate` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
`clid` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`src` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`dst` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`dcontext` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`channel` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`dstchannel` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`lastapp` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`lastdata` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`duration` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`billsec` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`disposition` varchar(45) NOT NULL default '',
`amaflags` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`accountcode` varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
`userfield` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ''
);
ALTER TABLE `cdr` ADD `uniqueid` VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL default '';
ALTER TABLE `cdr` ADD INDEX ( `calldate` );
ALTER TABLE `cdr` ADD INDEX ( `dst` );
ALTER TABLE `cdr` ADD INDEX ( `accountcode` );

Next is to update configuration file cdr_mysql.conf in /etc/asterisk folder, it should look like this:

[global]
hostname=localhost
dbname=asterisk
table=cdr
password=asterisk
user=asterisk
;port=3306
;sock=/tmp/mysql.sock
;userfield=1

And this is it. Your Asterisk is ready to roll. Create a dialplan in extensions.conf or extensions.ael, setup an extension in sip.conf, register a phone and test it.

ARA – Asterisk Real-Time Arhitecture

I prefer dynamic ARA over static text file architecture.  Setting it up is pretty easy. All what is required is to setup tables in a MySQL database,  uncomment necessary lines from the extconfig.conf file and update res_mysql.conf file.

res_mysql.conf should look like this:

[general]
dbhost = 127.0.0.1
dbname = asteriskrealtime
dbuser = asterisk
dbpass = asterisk
dbport = 3306
dbsock = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
;sock=/tmp/mysql.sock

To setup tables in MySQL, first create a database, e.g. as we defined in the file above, name it `asteriskrealtime`. Once done, create all the following tables:

CREATE TABLE `asterisk`.`sip_buddies` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`name` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`accountcode` varchar(20) default NULL,
`amaflags` varchar(7) default NULL,
`callgroup` varchar(10) default NULL,
`callerid` varchar(80) default NULL,
`canreinvite` char(3) default 'yes',
`context` varchar(80) default NULL,
`defaultip` varchar(15) default NULL,
`dtmfmode` varchar(7) default NULL,
`fromuser` varchar(80) default NULL,
`fromdomain` varchar(80) default NULL,
`fullcontact` varchar(80) default NULL,
`host` varchar(31) NOT NULL default '',
`insecure` varchar(20) default NULL,
`language` char(2) default NULL,
`mailbox` varchar(50) default NULL,
`md5secret` varchar(80) default NULL,
`nat` varchar(5) NOT NULL default 'no',
`deny` varchar(95) default NULL,
`permit` varchar(95) default NULL,
`mask` varchar(95) default NULL,
`pickupgroup` varchar(10) default NULL,
`port` varchar(5) NOT NULL default '',
`qualify` char(3) default NULL,
`restrictcid` char(1) default NULL,
`rtptimeout` char(3) default NULL,
`rtpholdtimeout` char(3) default NULL,
`secret` varchar(80) default NULL,
`type` varchar(6) NOT NULL default 'friend',
`username` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`disallow` varchar(100) default 'all',
`allow` varchar(100) default 'g729;ilbc;gsm;ulaw;alaw',
`musiconhold` varchar(100) default NULL,
`regseconds` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`ipaddr` varchar(15) NOT NULL default '',
`regexten` varchar(80) NOT NULL default '',
`cancallforward` char(3) default 'yes',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
UNIQUE KEY `name` (`name`),
KEY `name_2` (`name`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

CREATE TABLE `asterisk`.`extensions` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`context` varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
`exten` varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
`priority` tinyint(4) NOT NULL default '0',
`app` varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
`appdata` varchar(128) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (`context`,`exten`,`priority`),
KEY `id` (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

CREATE TABLE `asterisk`.`voicemessages` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`msgnum` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`dir` varchar(80) default '',
`context` varchar(80) default '',
`macrocontext` varchar(80) default '',
`callerid` varchar(40) default '',
`origtime` varchar(40) default '',
`duration` varchar(20) default '',
`mailboxuser` varchar(80) default '',
`mailboxcontext` varchar(80) default '',
`recording` longblob,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `dir` (`dir`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

CREATE TABLE `asterisk`.`queues` (
`name` varchar(128) NOT NULL,
`musiconhold` varchar(128) default NULL,
`announce` varchar(128) default NULL,
`context` varchar(128) default NULL,
`timeout` int(11) default NULL,
`monitor_type` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`monitor_format` varchar(128) default NULL,
`queue_youarenext` varchar(128) default NULL,
`queue_thereare` varchar(128) default NULL,
`queue_callswaiting` varchar(128) default NULL,
`queue_holdtime` varchar(128) default NULL,
`queue_minutes` varchar(128) default NULL,
`queue_seconds` varchar(128) default NULL,
`queue_lessthan` varchar(128) default NULL,
`queue_thankyou` varchar(128) default NULL,
`queue_reporthold` varchar(128) default NULL,
`announce_frequency` int(11) default NULL,
`announce_round_seconds` int(11) default NULL,
`announce_holdtime` varchar(128) default NULL,
`retry` int(11) default NULL,
`wrapuptime` int(11) default NULL,
`maxlen` int(11) default NULL,
`servicelevel` int(11) default NULL,
`strategy` varchar(128) default NULL,
`joinempty` varchar(128) default NULL,
`leavewhenempty` varchar(128) default NULL,
`eventmemberstatus` varchar(4) default NULL,
`eventwhencalled` varchar(4) default NULL,
`reportholdtime` tinyint(1) default NULL,
`memberdelay` int(11) default NULL,
`weight` int(11) default NULL,
`timeoutrestart` tinyint(1) default NULL,
`periodic_announce` varchar(50) default NULL,
`periodic_announce_frequency` int(11) default NULL,
`ringinuse` tinyint(1) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`name`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM

CREATE TABLE `asterisk`.`queue_members` (
`uniqueid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`membername` varchar(40) default NULL,
`queue_name` varchar(128) default NULL,
`interface` varchar(128) default NULL,
`penalty` int(11) default NULL,
`paused` tinyint(1) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`uniqueid`),
UNIQUE KEY `queue_interface` (`queue_name`,`interface`)

) ENGINE=MyISAM

Once the tables are created, you can open extconfig.conf file and uncomment the lines which refer to `sip_buddies`, `extensions` and any other tables you would be using in your setup. Usually sip_buddies and `voicemail_users` are the only table you will be using.

Now you can restart asterisk, and it is ready to use ARA.

MUNIN

Munin comes in pretty much pre-configured, but the only problem is that it doesn’t create the folder where it stores its graphs. That part you can do manually by first editing the /etc/munin.conf file and setting up the html folder to /var/www/html/munin and then doing the following:

cd /var/www/html
mkdir munin
rmdir /var/www/munin
chown munin.munin
service munin-node restart

Here you’d also need to update the /etc/

This is all what is required for Munin. In a few minutes you’ll have Munin graphs generated. You can see them through a web browser pointed to <your server’s IP address>/munin.

3 people like this post.

Unlike

Other posts related to this topic

• No Related Post