asterisk users - Apr 2007 - Asterisk without PSTN interface cards

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 ???

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

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

Regards,


Alejandro

On 4/10/07, Alejandro Cabrera Obed <acabrera@sintys.gov.ar>
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 ???
>
> 2) Do I have to configure a dummy PSTN interface in my case ??
>
> And if you have a debian-asterisk howto, I really thank you.
>
> Regards,

Hola Alejandro,

I used asterisk some days on a mac without any PSTN whatsoever, just to talk
between softphones (and ip phones). No problem with that.

Cheers,

Francis


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Alejandro,

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Alejandro Cabrera Obed said something to this effect:
> 1) Is it enough to install with "apt-get" the asterisk 1.2 or do
I have
> to get asterisk 1.4 manually ???
   I am not sure if the debian release yet contains 1.4.x.  It may be safer 
to compile from source if you want the bleeding-edge version.  But 1.2.x
works quite well, too, so it's really up to you.  I prefer 1.4.x personally
at this point, now that it's been hanging out there for a while.
> 2) Do I have to configure a dummy PSTN interface in my case ??
   I am not sure exactly what you mean by dummy PSTN interface, but in 
principle, the answer is no.  However, there are situations in which it
may benefit you to have a Digium-derived card in the machine so that the
RTC (real-time clock) on it can be used for driving the intervals of
hold music, conference calling (MeetMe), etc.  But there is also a 
"ztdummy" module that can be loaded into the kernel which emulates
such
an RTC.

   So, if your intent is purely to use SIP internally, no need for any PSTN.

-- Alex

--
Alex Balashov <sasha@presidium.org>

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, 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 ???
>
> 2) Do I have to configure a dummy PSTN interface in my case ??
>
> And if you have a debian-asterisk howto, I really thank you.
I run Debian servers. I also run Asterisk on them.

In my case, I do not use the supplied Debian packags, but prefer to 
compile my own. That way I get the version of asterisk that I want with 
the config files where I want them (which oddly enough are as per the 
asterisk documentation)

You only need a timing interface for some operations - MeetMe and possibly 
Music On Hold springs to mind, in which case, the ztdummy module will 
probably be sufficient for your needs.

Gordon

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@jabber.org
+972-50-7952406           mailto:tzafrir.cohen@xorcom.com       
http://www.xorcom.com  iax:guest@local.xorcom.com/tzafrir