[asterisk-users] Asterisk without PSTN interface cards

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 10:58:45AM -0300, Alejandro Cabrera Obed wrote:
> People, I will install asterisk on my Debian Etch box without a PSTN
> interface card. I want to use only softphones for the moment.
> My question are:
> 
> 1) Is it enough to install with "apt-get" the asterisk 1.2 or do I have
> to get asterisk 1.4 manually ???

http://packages.debian.org/asterisk

(Hey, Etch is out! "oldstable" no longer has Asterisk 0.1 ;-)

As you can see, there is 1.2.16 (and soon 1.2.17, I've already asked to
upload it) in Sid, and 1.4.2 in Experimental . Etch has 1.2.13 .

Alternatively, try:

  deb http://updates.xorcom.com/rapid etch main

which has some backports of Sid packages.

> 
> 2) Do I have to configure a dummy PSTN interface in my case ??

You need the zaptel module ztdummy. As you just need ztdummy and not a
real zaptel, there's really no reason to use latest&greatest
bleeding-edge zaptel. 

If you added my packages source from above:

  apt-get install zaptel zaptel-modules-`uname -r`
  /etc/init.d/zaptel start

If you have just the standard Etch sources, the procedure is a bit more
complicated, because you have to generate the package zaptel-modules for
your kernel:

  apt-get install zaptel zaptel-source build-essential
  # maybe you need to also explicitly install linux-headers-`uname -r`
  # to build and install the zaptel-modules package for your kernel:
  # (Will probably fetch the proper linux-headers package as well)
  m-a a-i zaptel 
  /etc/init.d/zaptel start

In both cases 
You should get an error from ztcfg because there's no zaptel.conf, but
just ignore it, as you don't need ztcfg for ztdummy. To make that error
disappear you can run:

  touch /etc/zaptel.conf




> 
> And if you have a debian-asterisk howto, I really thank you.

As usual with Debian, start from /usr/share/doc/PACKAGE/README.Debian .

Two other potentially-useuful packages in our repository:

  freepbx  # though still a bit broken. maybe try 
           # 'freepbx-common freepbx-modules'
  asterisk-config-simple

Maybe they'll also help you getting started.

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen       
icq#16849755                    jabber:tzafrir at jabber.org
+972-50-7952406           mailto:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com       
http://www.xorcom.com  iax:guest at local.xorcom.com/tzafrir