newbie guide to asterisk on f11?

[Bob Gustafson]

On May 12, 2009, at 13:52, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

> On Tue, 12 May 2009, Bob Gustafson wrote:
>
>> I imagine that when F11 goes golden, and if it does include the
>> 1.6.1 version of Asterisk, it will include all of the necessary
>> packages, or will 'depend' on them.
>>
>> My guess is that so much time is being spent on sorting out other
>> Fedora problems, Asterisk will be whipped into shape at the last
>> moment, perhaps with a regress to an earlier version.
>>
>> You are playing with several moving targets.
>
>   if you can tolerate a bit more rambling, i have a question that has
> ramifications beyond just asterisk and involves packaging strategies.
>
>   in order to debug the issues related to installing asterisk-1.6.1 as
> an rpm, i also downloaded the tarball and installed *that* via the
> normal configure/make/install process, and the differences in the end
> result are ... interesting.
>
>   if i install via yum, then try to run asterisk, the invocation gives
> me the following warning:
>
>   ... Error opening firmware directory
> '/usr/share/asterisk/firmware/iax': No such file or directory

It really shouldn't be an error, only a warning, if that. Many  
telephony hardware devices (such as the discontinued Digium iaxy)  
require a firmware upload before they will work. If you don't have  
the device, in theory, you shouldn't get the error/warning.

Since you got an error, the assumption is that the installation quit  
at that point, thus there are probably other pieces which were not  
installed...  And it should be filed in BZ as a bug.

In this particular case, since iaxy is optional, I think the  
installation process (yum) just cruises through that error and  
ignores it.

>
> a little poking around showed me that that would be satisfied by
> independently installing the asterisk-firmware package, whose entire
> content is the single file /usr/share/asterisk/firmware/iax/iaxy.bin.
> but that brings up the obvious question -- how closely should
> installing software as an rpm file track installing it via building
> from a tarball?
>
>   if i install from a tarball, then i'll get that file and i won't get
> a warning diagnostic whenever i run asterisk.  if, however, i install
> the current package using yum, suddenly i get that warning because i
> might not realize that that file is provided via a different and
> independent package.  that strikes me as a violation the principle of
> least astonishment.  is there a reason that the behaviour of
> installing via yum clearly deviates from the behaviour of installing
> via tarball?

If you use the Fedora System->Administration->Add/Remove Software  
tool - and search for 'Asterisk', you will see a list of packages  
that are 'related' to Asterisk - if only because they include the  
word 'Asterisk' somewhere exposed to the search.

To load those packages (and any hidden dependencies), click the  
checkbox in front of the name. You will see the packages related to  
alsa and oss here. However, most of these packages are not needed to  
run Asterisk. If they were needed, then there should have been a  
dependency for that package in the Asterisk package (and there would  
already be a mark in the checkbox saying it was already installed)

>
>   that's not the only example -- installing via tarball installs the
> files /etc/asterisk/{alsa,oss}.conf when you run "make samples",
> whereas the core asterisk package doesn't include those files.  and as
> someone pointed out, you get those from two *more* packages.
>
>   i understand the value in breaking software into smaller and more
> modular packages so users can be more selective about what they
> install, but there's also the danger that, if users are used to
> building from source, then installing the base package via yum will
> leave them with missing files and directories and quite possibly
> confuse them.

I doubt there is any organized process for going from tarball to  
modular packages. Some applications are more modularly organized than  
others. The key is to look for pieces which are common to other  
applications - and split them off - and use the code developed by  
someone else. The problem here is independently developed code can  
independently change, and break the application.

Going back to the Add/Remove Software tool list, you will see a  
number of 'helper' pieces - adapters for MySQL or PostgreSQL for  
example. The Asterisk developers are not going to re-create a  
database, so they use an existing database and write an adapter  
(which presumably depends on a particular version of the database).

If, as a user of Asterisk, you don't want to squirrel away stuff in a  
database, you won't download the database adapter, and you won't  
depend on that particular database manager.

>
>   and, to close this off, the reason i'm bringing this up is that i'm
> trying to follow along a recipe for basic asterisk installation and
> configuration that works fine when asterisk is built from a tarball,
> but is missing components unless you know exactly what
> asterisk-related packages need to be installed to get the same end
> result.
>
>   is this making any sense?

Yes, of course. Thought is useful.

>
> rday
> --