Preparing for Asterisk on Ubuntu 10.10

Through the next few posts, I plan on showing you how to install Asterisk 1.6.x on Ubuntu 10.10, link it to an Avaya S8700/8300 through H.323 and configure it to successfully handle all voicemail.  This project is a great solution for anyone still using an Octel voicemail box, as support is quickly coming to an end (June 2011).  This solution solves a few problems others have been having – including MWI (message waiting indicators) on Avaya telephones AND figuring out what extension was dialed.

I plan on showing an exact step-by-step on my setup, so duplicating it should be very straight forward.   Let’s start with the installation.To begin, you’re going to need a copy of Ubuntu 10.10  Before we go any further, I’m sure there are plenty of users that would love to debate the usage of a certain flavor of *nix over another.  I’m not interested.  I’ve worked with Red Hat, CentOS and Mandrake/Mandriva, but *most* of my experience has been with Ubuntu.  I first installed Dapper Drake on my home machine years ago, and forced myself to become familiar with a Windows alternative.  I am NOT a Linux power user, but feel fairly comfortable with Ubuntu – so I choose to use it for my Asterisk solution.

Installing Ubuntu should be cake, and reproducing a walk-through for this would be repetitive and unnecessary.

After installing Ubuntu, we’re going to need a few packages/libraries prior to installing Asterisk.  If your install requires more than setting up Asterisk as just a voicemail server, you may need additional packages.  In some future posts, I’ll go over this along with step by step instructions on getting things to work (for example – I have my Asterisk box working with Google Voice.  This required 2 more packages and recompiling Asterisk.)

Let’s start by getting a command prompt, and elevating our permissions.

sudo su

Next, let’s install some packages (some might already be installed)

apt-get install ssh
apt-get install gcc
apt-get install ncurses-dev
apt-get install g++
apt-get install flex
apt-get install libcurl3-dev
apt-get install libxml2-dev
apt-get install libiksemel-dev
apt-get install build-essential

Rockin and rollin now!  The system is getting close for our Asterisk install.

If you plan to allow voicemail users to receive voicemail via email, we’ll also want to install Postfix.  To do that type:

apt-get install postfix

During the install of postfix, you will be asked a few questions about how you want Postfix to behave.   On my system, I set Postfix up as a relay server, forwarding mail to our Exchange boxes to be processed.

Optionally, you may want to install Postgres or MySQL to store CDR (call data records) or leverage Asterisk’s Realtime component.  I will cover this in a later post, as my setup uses MySQL to store all voicemail box information – making management a breeze and eliminating the need to reload the voicemail configuration files after each modification.