Asterisk

Overview

I am once again messing around with Asterisk systems. Now it's version 13. I used Asterisk for several years and then I went to a simpler system for a time. VOIP Then I went to having only the mobile.

My long history of using VOIP, compressed. Packet8 ($30/month) then Les.net (gone) then Grandcentral + GISMO5 (free!) then Google ate Grandcentral AND GISMO5 and gutted them. Then mobile phones for years.

Incoming calls

Currently all incoming calls route through my Google Voice number. I might be able to get Asterisk to pick up Google calls again some day?

Outgoing calls

I have used Les.net and voipjet.com which are both out of business. Nothing right now. I need to revisit this.

Business Asterisk system

Setting up PostgreSQL

When building Asterisk from source, you must have the postgres dev package installed before you do ./configure. Asterisk build is not good about telling you what is available when ./configure completes. You can do 'make menuselect' and see what will be available.

CEL = Channel Event Log, more details than CDR (CDR = Call Detail Record)

In cel.conf

enable=yes

In cel_pgsql.conf, at the bottom

hostname=localhost
port=5432
dbname=asterisk
password=yoursecretpasswordhere
user=asterisk
table=cel          ; SQL table where CEL's will be inserted                                                        
appname=asterisk   ; Postgres application_name support (optional). Whitespace not allowed.                             

If you wish, follow suit and fix up res_pgsql.conf and cdr_pgsql.conf too.

Create the database, user and appropriate permission

su - postgres
createdb asterisk
echo "CREATE USER asterisk WITH PASSWORD 'yoursecretpasswordhere';" | psql
echo "GRANT ALL ON DATABASE asterisk TO asterisk;" | psql

I got this code from voipinfo.org

CREATE TABLE cel (
 id serial,
 eventtime timestamp with time zone NOT NULL DEFAULT now(),
 eventtype character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 userdeftype character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 cid_name character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 cid_num character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 cid_ani character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 cid_rdnis character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 cid_dnid character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 exten character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 context character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 channame character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 appname character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 appdata character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 accountcode character varying(20) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 peeraccount character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 uniqueid character varying(32) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 linkedid character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 amaflags integer NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
 userfield character varying(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 peer character varying(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT ::character varying,
 CONSTRAINT cel_pkey PRIMARY KEY (id)
);

Personal Asterisk system

Hardware

Server is bellman (appropriate name for this) which runs Linux. I think Debian; at the moment its in storage!

1 Grandstream BT-100 Budgetone phone

1 Desktop running Ubuntu on the LAN with Ekiga softphone installed

Not using at the moment: 1 Packet8 DTA-310, reflashed to be a Leadtek BVA8051. See http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Packet8+DTA310+and+Asterisk and http://www.stromcarlson.com/projects/dta-310/

Softphone

Using Ekiga on the same system that has Asterisk installed on it meant I had to run gconf-editor (apps->Ekiga->Protocols) to change the SIP listen port from 5060 to 5061 since Asterisk was already using 5060.

Ekiga is the softphone installed by default with Ubuntu 8.10 Hardy Heron. I've seen softphones I like more but it works for testing and I use hard phones most of the time.

Implementation

To install on Linux Mint 14 (or Ubuntu 12):

apt-get install asterisk asterisk-mp3 asterisk-mysql asterisk-flite asterisk-mobile

This installs dependencies that I also want, including voicemail and sound and music on hold files.

Customizations

As much as possible I keep general changes out of main config files by using include files. This makes updates much simpler. In sip.conf add this line: #include sip-wildsong.conf and in extensions.conf add this: #include extensions-wildsong.conf The voicemail.conf file warns agains this approach so I edit it directly.

For each of the extensions, I then add entries in sip-wildsong.conf and extensions-wildsong.conf and voicemail.conf.

I edit the web settings for the hard phones and the configuration settings for the Ekiga softphones.

That's about it.