Asterisk Compilation and Installation on Debian Etch

This guide refers to Asterisk version 1.4.18.1 but has been tested as well on older 1.4.x versions,
tested on the GNU/Linux Debian Etch 4.0 release 3 distribution, installed from the “netinst” cd image version

Index

• Satisfying Asterisk dependencies
• Downloading and extracting Asterisk
• Pre-building configuration
• Building
• Installation
• Installing sample configuration files
• Init scripts for getting Asterisk to start at boot
• First execution of Asterisk
• Reboot and verify

Satisfying Asterisk dependencies

In order to successfully build Asterisk, the following dependencies need to be satisfied:

• gcc
• g++
• make
• libncurses5-dev

On Debian “Etch“, running the following command, as root, will suffice:
apt-get install gcc g++ make libncurses5-dev
The other dependencies will be resolved automatically

Downloading and extracting Asterisk

• Download Asterisk 1.4.18.1 from here or using wget:
  wget http://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/releases/asterisk-1.4.18.1.tar.gz

• Extract the archive with tar:
  tar xzvf asterisk-1.4.18.1.tar.gz
  a new folder named “asterisk-1.4.18.1″ will be created
• Change the current working directory to that folder, with cd:
  cd asterisk-1.4.18.1

Pre-building configuration

Stay in the “asterisk-1.4.18.1″ folder, which holds the source code of Asterisk and run the script:
./configure
which will check the usability of the system libraries and create a ’Makefile’, based on your system.
The ’Makefile’ will later on be used by ’make’ to build Asterisk
If the ’configure’ script ran fine, you should read on the screen something like:
configure: OS type : linux-gnu
configure: Host CPU : i686

Building

Stay in the “asterisk-1.4.18.1″ folder, which now holds also the ’Makefile’ and run make:
make
consider that on an 800MHz AMD Athlon CPU system, the building of Asterisk takes around 7 minutes
however, rebuilding Asterisk from the same source tree will take much less because only the files affected from changes to the ’Makefile’ with the ./configure script will be rebuilt.
If the building ran fine, you should read on the screen:
+——— Asterisk Build Complete ———
+ Asterisk has successfully been built, and
+ can be installed by running:
+
+ make install
+——————————————-

Installation

Always staying in the “asterisk-1.4.18.1″ folder, write the command:
make install
which will finally install Asterisk.
You should then read something like:
+—- Asterisk Installation Complete ——-+
…
…
…

Installing sample configuration files

The sample configuration files which comes with Asterisk, will provide a good basic running setup to start customizing.
To install them, run the command:
make samples

Init scripts for getting Asterisk to start at boot

Having Asterisk to start at boot is as simple as running, in the “asterisk-1.4.18.1″ folder, the command:
make config
which will choose the right init files for your distribution, and copy them in /etc/asterisk
For your information, those files are located in the contrib/init.d/ folder

First execution of Asterisk

As the superuser root, from whatever folder you are in, run:
asterisk -vvvc
Asterisk will load it’s modules and it’s configuration, you should then read:
Asterisk Ready.
*CLI>
this is the command line interface of Asterisk, to logout run the command:
stop now

Reboot and verify

Reboot the system with the command:
reboot
after the reboot process, you can verify that Asterisk is running with the command:
asterisk -r
and logout from the command line interface with the command:
exit

This guide is also available in Italian