Asterisk on FreeBSD, the saga begins
(Grr. I lost the first edit of this.)
Well, I managed to get Asterisk running up on my FreeBSD 6.1 machine. A few things I've learned along the way:
- The book Asterisk: The Future of Telephony is an excellent starting reference. (I get no kickbacks from the link.)
- However, don’t ignore the sample configurations: they are extensively commented, and very useful.
- The order of statements in certain stanzas of certain files (zapata.conf) is more crucial than the book or the sample files may lead you to believe. Yes, of course the order in the dialplan is crucial, but we knew that coming in. I'm talking about the order of the zaptel card configuration stuff.
- The out-of-the-box installation of many parts of Asterisk—voicemail for one—is just plain fantastic. (The dial-by-name directory is also excellent.)
- There appear to be hardware issues between my Zaptel card and my on-board ethernet (which I have mentioned previously)
I suppose I should find someone whose voice is a little bit higher in tenor for better audibility, too.
All in all, though, setting up the entire thing without missteps probably only took about 5 or 6 hours all told, which would probably have been as long as it would have taken to iron out all the kinks if I had purchased a service directly from Verizon.
Next steps are to get Mark Shoulson an IP phone in his house, so he can feel like a real Grown Up Employee of 3 Phase...