[asterisk-users] Asterisk on Debian Etch

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 06:36:25PM -0600, Stephen Bosch wrote:
> Diego Iastrubni wrote:
> > you need to use "apt-get install asterisk".
> > 
> > If you MUST HAVE 1.217 or your cats die, there are repositories available. For 
> > example, read this: http://www.buildserver.net/
> > 
> > If you still MUST build asterisk yourself, I wish you good luck.
> 
> This kind of commentary isn't at all helpful. One, source installations
> are preferable if there isn't some specific reason not to use them, and
> two, not using the most current Asterisk on a fresh install is
> irresponsible. I cannot recommend getting an "unstable" package from
> some repository.

Right. And usingthe current packages from buildserver.net is in a way a
bit worse than using unstable (more on the bleeding edge).

A number of specific reasons:

1. The init.d script that comes with the zaptel package is broken. I'm
working on fixing it, but the distro-specific one in the deb is
tried-and-tested.

For Zaptel I wholesomely recommend using the debs.

2. The installation of misdn from inside the installation of zaptel is
simply a broken method IMHO. You should know what you install. 

* misdn i not related to zaptel in any way whatsoever (excet that both
  need the kernel) 
* You should have a reproducable build. The installer downloads a 
  versionless misdn tarball, which turns out to be a CVS snapshot with a 
  few later fixes. There have been newer releases since from misdn.org
  (actually versioned) and yet the installation instructions for misdn
  hardware remain "install zaptel". 

Sady the state of misdn in Etch is quite poor (and with the added
confusion, and the fact that no releases were actually released in time
for the Etch freeze). 
See http://bugs.debian.org/418276 .

On Ubuntu this broken package sadly exists, and breaks installations of
Asterisk/misdn.

> 
> He is better off installing from sources, and more likely to get
> something that performs as it should.
> 
> Source installs are not complicated -- even when you are using zaptel.

But why do all the extra work, and end up with a system you cannot
easily reproduce?

> 
> Josu, if you are concerned about dependencies, use apt-get to install
> Asterisk first, then remove only Asterisk, Zaptel and libpri and install
> from source.

Well, if you do decide to go this route, you need build dependencies
rather than run-time dependencies. 

Make sure you have a deb-src source in your sources.list (and
that you ran 'apt-get update' later) and then run 'apt-get build-dep
asterisk' . Likewise for zaptel and libpri. Again, all the misdn-related
packages have been removed from Etch due to lack of maintinance.

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen       
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