asterisk users - Apr 2023 - Intro and question

I've been using Asterisk, including administering and maintaining it, in 
some aspect since 2003, but this is the first time I have attempted a 
from-scratch installation and setup on my own. I'm following the 
instructions in the ePub edition of the book "Asterisk, the Definitive 
Guide, Fifth Edition," published by O’Reilly Media, Inc. in 2019, for 
Asterisk version 16 on a fresh install of Dedbian 11.6 (Bull's Eye).


Backround:


In Chapter 3, "Installing Asterisk," in the section "Asterisk
Packages,"
the book says, and I quote from the ePub:


There are Asterisk packages  that can be installed using package 
management systems  such as  yum or  apt-get . You are encouraged to use 
them once you are familiar with Asterisk.

So, thinking I was familiar enough with the product, I indeed used 
aptp[get to install.


# apt-get install asterisk


I got lots of dependencies, plus the core, everything went swimmingly, 
no errors. In a minute or two, I had Asterisk 1:16.28.0~dfsg-0+deb11u2. 
Great.


A little further along down the book, there's an "Initial
Configuration"
section detailing some changes to modules.conf and logger.conf, and a 
few ownership change commands to certain files and directories. All went 
exactly according to the documentation.


Then the weeds started to appear, and I was off into them.


The first was the mention of Alembic. This was not installed as part of 
the apt-get installation mentioned above, but I expected whatever 
Alembic could do, I could do manually, it'd just take longer and be more 
tedious. NO problem. I'd get through it.


Reading on, I found this, regarding an SQL database:


Log into the database now, and review all the tables that have been created:


SQL? Database? Where ... what ... I got no SQL when I installed from the 
Debian package management system, nor was there any mention of it in the 
book with regard to complete package installation. Come to think of it, 
on some of the old implementations on which I'd worked in the past, I 
don't remember seeing SQL as a part thereof.


Time to put the brakes on, find out what's going on, or what I did wrong.


So, my question is, what is the correct approach to supplementing or 
correcting the standard Debian package installation, or if there isn't 
one, should I remove what I installed and stqart over, or even deeper, 
re-generate the Debian system (which I can do in less than fifteen 
minutes) and build from sources according to the book?


Thanks in advance for any assistance.

On Thursday 06 April 2023 at 15:48:24, Steve Matzura wrote:
> this is the first time I have attempted a
> from-scratch installation and setup on my own.
...<so far, so good>...
> Then the weeds started to appear, and I was off into them.
> 
> The first was the mention of Alembic.
> Reading on, I found this, regarding an SQL database:
> SQL? Database? Where ... what ...
> Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Well, my first question would be "are you intending to use Asterisk
Realtime
features (ie: configurations in database tables instead of text files) in this 
installation?"

If you are, then you do need to install a few more packages on your Debian 
system, but if not, then there is no reason to pay any attention at all to 
anything to do with Alembic, Realtime, SQL etc.


Antony.

-- 
René Descartes walks in to a bar.
The barman asks him "Do you want a drink?"
Descartes says "I think not," and disappears.

                                                   Please reply to the list;
                                                         please *don't* CC
me.

Even I was confused, and the directions in that book seem like a
complication of a simple affair, at least for my modest needs.

Finally, I installed Asterisk with apt and created extensions.conf and
pjsip.conf files.