[Asterisk-Users] Newbie Instalation

[Friend, George E.]

Trevor,
 
I'm in a fairly similar situation, but maybe a week or two ahead of you.  I'll post this so that maybe you can pick something up, but also so that the gurus of this list can maybe glean some info on how perceptions of the OOB (Out-of-Box) experience are as well..:)
 
My background:
 - Fairly skilled on IBM's AIX (their unix flavor) from a command-line perspective.  NO GUI.
 - Basically, a Microsoft guy.  MCDBA, Win 2003, etc.
 - Experience with Linux has been limited.  Every couple of years, I've installed it, said.  "Wow, that seems like a lot of work", and went back to my Windows Machine. :)
 
Finding Asterisk
 - Needed a basic phone-switch for at home (home-based consulting business)
 - Had a client who was VERY interested in a VoIP solution and CallManager was 51k for his scenario
 - Some searches yielded Asterisk
 - First attempt following one of the walk-thrus was somewhat successful (moreso than prior Linux installs)
 - Installed AMP
 - AMP gave me the confidence that this was "real" and could be made user-friendly enough for on-site administration by non-Linux-Gods.  That's a good thing.
 - AMP also made the extensions.conf, etc. complex enough that I personally wasn't able to grasp many of the concepts of how * was working.
 - I ended up rebuilding from scratch and hand-building by sip.conf, extensions.conf, etc.  This was a HUGE educational experience.  I can now look at the AMP, *@Home, etc. and make sense of it.
 - Everything had been softphone (x-ten) based and echo with the x100p was an issue.  Still have not resolved that, but have a Cisco 7960 and Cisco 7912 to test with.
 - Have installed *@Home and am looking forward to diving into the config scripts to understand some of the additional features it's adding.
 
My Advice for Newbies
 - Don't let the arrogance (perceived or real) of folks on the list get you down. 99% are trying to help, but many of them have been dealing with this stuff for a long time, so our meltdowns are old hat to them!
 - Make sure you get to know the scripts and not rely purlely on AMP, *@Home, etc.
 - Test, test, test
 
George
 

________________________________

From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com on behalf of Tzafrir Cohen
Sent: Fri 3/25/2005 7:54 PM
To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Newbie Instalation



On Fri, Mar 25, 2005 at 08:21:57PM +1030, Trevor Tregoweth wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Thanks for the wonderful advice, and comments, and anything I might of
> missed, and no offence taken.
>
> Yes I am new to this program, and Linux too, so this is a big learning
> curve.
>
> I installed the software "Asterisk" which I believed it did straight from
> the cd, rebooted the computers, and it installed more stuff.
>
> I am then lead to believe that I can use "x-lite" a phone interface, I
> guess, to interact with the new pabx-asterisk system I now have.
>
> I can see from the gui interface that I am trying to make calls, but that's
> about it, not much else is happening
>
> Well if you want to know much more, please ask, as I have no idea what I am
> doing   :)

You can start by stating what CD it is exactly you were using.

There are a number of such CDs (and none of them is "official").

One tool I found very useful is the asterisk CLI. You get it by running
the command 'asterisk -r' from the linux command prompt. It generally
requires being root.

run there 'set verbose 3' and see what happens when you try to call.

Another useful command:

  sip show peers
  sip show peer NNN

--
Tzafrir Cohen         | New signature for new address and  |  VIM is
http://tzafrir.org.il | new homepage                       | a Mutt's 
tzafrir at cohens.org.il |                                    |  best
ICQ# 16849755         | Space reserved for other protocols | friend
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