Asterisk Live CF card b-01 review

Asterisk Live CF card is, clearly, a compact flash install of asterisk that will give you a complete, running system similar to that

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 46357K Developer: Asterisk Team

0

Asterisk Live CF card is, clearly, a compact flash install of asterisk that will give you a complete, running system similar to that of the asterisk live CD.

Indeed most things are the same although there have been some additions and changes.

To install the CF you will need some way of getting the image onto the card. Generally this can be done with a USB CF card reader using

dd if=asterisk-cf-b01 of=/dev/sda bs=1k count=64000

Useful things to know

1. The cf install currently assumes it's hda (1 2 and 3) so you'll need to put it in as your primary master using your CF->IDE adaptor, this will be more automagical in the future

2. example configs are stored on hda3 along with a new feature script called remoteconfig. This will allow you to update the configuration/OS automatically on boot from a remote webserver. More detail on how to use this feature will appear at http://www.automated.it/asterisk be sure to read any notes there first.

3. At the minimum you'll need a 64mb CF card but you can use a larger one if you wish and create futher partitions. Currenly when you create the CF from the image the following partitions exist

Disk /dev/hda: 8 heads, 32 sectors, 490 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 256 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 33 4208 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 34 354 41088 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 355 490 17408 83 Linux

4. Once booted you will need to make changes to the files in /dev/hda3/astlive-example, particularly networking and the zapata/zaptel configs. Note, if you rename the astlive-example directory to astlive then on the next boot the files will be copied and activated on the running system automatically. Using the example astlive directory includes a PASSWORD CHANGE for root from 'EPPING' to 'epping' (without quotes) as a demonstration. At the minimum you MUST change the networking to suit your environment, since they will change to what is in this directory too.

5. All partitions on the CF are unmounted after boot so if you need to work on them, you will need to specifically mount them.

6. I've tested E100P, X100P and TDM40B cards using this install, and would be interested to hear of other cards proven to be working.