Installation
Let’s begin our journey into the world of ASTERISK.
While Asterisk is the most widely used open source PBX solution, it hasn’t been easy for the average user to take advantage of it. A good, basic knowledge of Linux is a fundamental requirement, as is the ability and nerve to handle the telephony hardware and Asterisk configurations.
Broad support is available through Web-based developer forums for those who take this do-it-yourself approach, but even Bill Miller, vice president of product management and marketing for Digium Inc., Asterisk’s main developer, describes this as the “techie” route for potential Asterisk users.
Before we can start, make sure you have the following:
1. Computer with installed Linux OS (For this please check our other posts).
2. Asterisk’s installation packages.
3. AsteriskGeekz 
Note : You do not need any special hardware to install and run Asterisk, not even a sound card is required.
Before downloading the Asterisk source code, the installation requires users to already have a Linux operating system with kernel version 2.4 or higher, and the bison, ncurses, zlib and openssl libraries with their associated developer packages.
The Asterisk code and other packages needed to install Asterisk can be downloaded in several ways.
- As tar formatted files (tarballs) from ftp.digium.com
- From Digium’s CVS server (password anoncvs) using the commands:
# cd /usr/src
# mkdir asterisk
# export CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs@cvs.digium.com:/usr/cvsroot
# cvs login
- From Digium’s SVN server (once an SVN package has been installed) using commands such as:
# svn checkout http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/branches/asterisk-current
If Digium’s own hardware is being used with the installation then both the zaptel and libpri filed should be downloaded along with the Asterisk files.
Installing Asterisk for most Linux distributions is relatively straightforward. Once in the folder in which the source codes are kept issue the following commands:
# cd../asterisk
# make clean; make install
If the full installation with both zaptel and libpri is needed, those should be installed in order as:
# cd../libpri
# make clean; make install
# cd../zaptel
# make clean; make install
# cd../asterisk
# make clean; make install
Seems Interesting but this is what other documentations of Asterisk quoted, Lets Dive into the Future of Telephony with AsteriskGeekz.
I have divided Asterisk Installation into different Milestones MileStone 1
