[asterisk-users] Newbie Asterisk: Install Asterisk as non-root

[Lee, John (Sydney)]

I was following the instruction on
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+non-root to re-install my
Asterisk as non-root when I had the following questions/issues:


1) " Use your system's preferred method of adding a new user. Examples: 
Red Hat: adduser -c "Asterisk PBX" -d /var/lib/asterisk -u 5060
asterisk"
###Why did we have to choose uid as 5060?  
###In fact, do you need to specify the uid at all?


2) "Edit your Asterisk config file (/etc/asterisk/asterisk.conf): 
astrundir => /var/run/asterisk 
Recompile and reinstall Asterisk."
### Seems a bit strange to modify this before you recompile.
### As it turns out, the reinstall did not change the astrundir variable
### You have to manually modify it if this modification is actually
required.


3) "Also, make note that if you're running udev on your system
(linux-2.6), the /dev directory is dynamically populated with device
nodes, meaning that any permissions you set on /dev/zap will be lost on
your next reboot, and you may get a nasty message such as "Asterisk
ended with exit status 1" 
when trying to start asterisk. Read the file
/path/to/zaptel-src-1.2.x/README.udev for instructions on how to change
the user/group assigned to /dev/zap. "
### There is actually no README.udev file in zaptel source.
### Do I need to worry about this if "uname -r" returns 2.6.18-8.el5
### What actually is udev?


4) "Asterisk needs read permission for these directories and their
contents: 
/etc/asterisk.
chown --recursive root:asterisk /etc/asterisk"
### root is not in group asterisk
### All the while, the instruction has been saying to create a user
asterisk
### under group asterisk.
### Does it mean to put root into group asterisk as well???
### Or should it be "chown --recursive asterisk:asterisk /etc/asterisk"
?


5) Another article says that running as non-root will prevent ToS being
used.
What is ToS?  Do I need to be concerned?


Any thoughts?