Installing Linux for Asterisk
In order to use Asterisk you are going to have to use Linux. If you are a Linux ‘guru’ then you might want to skip this section and just take a look at the dependencies. This section deals with installing a Linux system for use with Asterisk. I make no excuses or arguments for the chosen distribution, Red Hat 8; I have no intention of discussing the pros and cons of the many different distributions available. In other words, if you don’t like Red Hat, stop bitching and find a windows user to torment.
Getting the ISO images
I’m not going to tell you how to create the CD’s required to install Linux, there are other sites for this. You can find the ISO images required from places like http://www.linuxiso.org. Download the ISO images and burn them. For This installation you only actually need disks 1, 2 and 3 (the assumption is you are using the default language settings)– If you are pushed for a network connection you can get away with only downloading and burning those, however, I would recommend getting the whole set for the sake of completeness.
Installing Linux
The first step is to insert CD 1 of your freshly burned ISO images into the target machine’s CDROM drive and boot. At this stage I’m going to make an assumption that you are either installing Asterisk on a new machine or overwriting the disks of whatever was there before. If you want to dual boot into Asterisk, please look elsewhere for initial configurations. You might want to consult your physician too. I make no apologies that this section is going to treat you like a moron; this is intentional. Since we want to be sure that you have no problems running Asterisk we need to make sure that your installation matches the one I used to build and run it.
The first thing you will need to do on your target machine is ensure that you can boot directly from CD. Most modern (if not all) will allow this, it is usually just a setting in your BIOS. If you don’t feel comfortable with messing in the BIOS the simplest test you can do to check and see if booting from CD is enabled is, funnily enough, to put CD 1 into the drive and reboot the machine. If the machine starts to boot and eventually shows a screen like the one on the following page, then you are ok. If you are happy fiddling with the BIOS then just enable booting from CD and make it the first device to attempt to boot from.
In either case you should have something like this appear on your screen:
At this point all you need to do is press ENTER. After a short while, you will be presented with the following introductory screen:
Click the NEXT button
Select the language you want to use during the installation. Since I used the default on English, all the following screens will also be in English. Then Click NEXT.
Select the keyboard layout for your particular PC. Most keyboards in the English speaking world tend to be U.S. English but check yours.
Since we are not going to be installing a windowing system on this machine, in all honesty we don’t care about the mouse. Click NEXT.
Since we are going to build a custom installation select CUSTOM and click NEXT.
This bit might seem a little scary, there’s nothing to worry about, since we have already established that we are NOT going to dual boot and there is nothing that we want to keep on the disks in this machine. You did check that right?! Click NEXT.
If you get the previous screen, don’t worry too much just click YES. You many note that the message box refers to ‘hda’ not ‘sda’, don’t worry about this either, it’s just the type of disks you are using. If you have IDE disks then this would say ‘hda’.
Depending on the state of this machine and the disks before you started this install you can either select ‘Remove all Linux Partitions on this System’ or ‘Remove all Partitions on this system’
If the disks have been previously used for another Operating system then select the ‘Remove all partitions on this system’ option. If your disks are brand new and have not been used before then either of the first two options is fine.
The box below these options will list the hard drives available on your system, leave the selections alone.
Click the NEXT button. If you chose to remove all partitions on the system you will see the message box on the following page. Again the disk name /dev/sda may and most likely would be /dev/hda…
Click YES…
You should see the following screen showing how the disks will be laid out, click the NEXT button.
Click NEXT
Now comes the hard part. If you know nothing about your network then we are going to be a little stuck. This is the part that is specific to your installation. I am not going to attempt to explain how networks function, if you have one they you should at least understand the terms in the next couple of paragraphs.
As shown on the screenshot on the previous page, the default for a Red Hat installation is to use DHCP. If you are using a DHCP server on your network then you can click NEXT. If you are not then you will need to click the ‘edit’ button, then deselect DHCP and enter an IP address and subnet mask for this machine. As a side note most home run networks tend to use the address range 192.168.0.x and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 – The x being replaced with the individual IP address of a particular machine. You can establish this by looking at one of your other machine’s, and its configuration settings. Again, generally, the Gateway and DNS are usually going to be something like 192.168.0.1 for both. This is however VERY SPECIFIC to your network. You much make the setting match your existing network.
If you are using DHCP then for the hostname you can let DHCP handle it. If not then select ‘manually’ and type a name for this host.
Again, for a non-DHCP environment fill in the Gateway and Primary DNS fields. Do NOT use the settings in the above screenshot unless they match your network. Once you have done this click NEXT
Select ‘no firewall’ and click NEXT.
Click NEXT. If you want to use additional languages, select the ones you want first.
Select your location or at least the nearest place to you that is listed and click NEXT.
Enter a password for the ‘root’ user. If you were unaware, the root user is like the administrator account on a Windows machine, the big boss account.. Use TAB or the mouse to move between the fields. Once you’ve done that (and remembered the password!) click NEXT.
Click NEXT
Now we have to select the applications that we want to install. The only things you need to select are:
· Development Tools
· Kernel Development
· Text Based Internet (optional but advised)
Make sure you also have ‘Select individual packages’ selected (see cursor on previous page screenshot).
Now click NEXT
Select ‘Flat View’ and ensure that the following ADDITIONAL items are selected:
* OpenSSL-Devel
* Readline41
* Ncurses4
* Ncurses C++ Devel
* SOX
Now click NEXT
Ok, this is it, we are about to do the install, Click NEXT
The first ting you’ll see is the disks being formatted and partitioned, once complete the various packages will be installed. You will be prompted to insert disks, change the CD, and then click OK.
You don’t really need to create a boot disk. Select no and click NEXT.
Do NOT remove the CD, the install will eject it for you, Click EXIT and your machine will reboot. Once complete you will be presented with something like:
You may now dance around the room a little; you have completed the Linux install part of Asterisk…
Get a coffee, tea, cola or drink of your choice and bask in this glorious moment. Then read the next section on installing Asterisk.
