5.22. Using AsteriskNOW, "Asterisk in 30 Minutes"

Problem

You're not afraid of the command line or of editing text files, but it seems like a lot of work to administer an Asterisk server this way, with a lot of complexity and room for errors. Isn't there a good, clean, graphical administration interface for Asterisk? One that doesn't install with a lot of lard, and lets you make changes from the GUI and the text configuration files without conflicts?

Solution

There is indeed, and it is a product of Digium itself. AsteriskNOW is a software appliance that includes the operating system, Asterisk, and good web-based graphical interfaces for the Asterisk server and the operating system.

Visit AsteriskNOW.org (http://www.asterisknow.org/) to download the installation image. You'll have a choice of several different images, including x86-32 and x86-64, a Xen guest image, a VMWare guest image, and a liveCD image.

The installer will look for a DHCP server. Log on to the server to find its IP address with the username admin, password password. It should tell you the IP address right on the console. If it doesn't, because gosh knows Asterisk is evolving faster than science fiction critters, use the ifconfig command.

Alt-F9 takes you to the familiar Asterisk CLI, and Alt-F1 takes you back to the console menu.

Then, log in to the web administration interface from a neighboring PC. Fire up a Firefox web browser, and go to https://[ip address]. You'll get a bunch of scary warnings about the server certificate. Accept the certificate, and continue. Log in with admin, password. This is not the same admin user as on the server console, but the web GUI admin user. You'll be required to change the password, then relog in and run a setup wizard before you can do anything else. You can quickly skip through the setup wizard if you want to get right into exploring the interface.

On the top right of the AsteriskNOW web GUI, click System Configuration to get into the rPath Linux control panel. This has yet a third separate admin user.

An SSH server runs by default, so you can log in remotely this way:

	$ ssh admin@[ip address]

AsteriskNOW does not come with a root password. You can use sudo for most chores, but you should still have a root password on the server. On the AsteriskNOW console, create one this way:

	[admin@localhost ~]$ sudo passwd root

Discussion

Using sudo in the way AsteriskNOW has it setup is convenient. You only have to remember one password, and all sudo commands are logged. But, you still need a real root password. Not all commands work with sudo because some commands and scripts don't know how to handle sudo asking for a password. And, perhaps more importantly, the Ext3 filesystem reserves 5 percent of the filesystem exclusively for the root user. This makes it possible for root to recover a system when user processes have have gone berserk and completely filled up the filesystem.

AsteriskNOW comes with one-click purchase and provisioning of Polycom IP phones, one-click setup with VoicePulse, and you can upgrade from the free AsteriskNOW to the supported Asterisk Business Edition. Watch for more integration with hardware and service vendors with new AsteriskNOW releases and upgrades.

See Also