Section 3.1. What Packages Do I Need?

3.1. What Packages Do I Need?

Asterisk uses three main packages : the main Asterisk program ( asterisk ), the Zapata telephony drivers ( zaptel ), and the PRI libraries ( libpri ). If you plan on a pure VoIP network, the only real requirement is the asterisk package. The zaptel drivers are required if you are using analog or digital hardware, or if you're using the ztdummy driver (discussed later in this chapter) as a timing interface. The libpri library is technically optional unless you're using ISDN PRI interfaces, and you may save a small amount of RAM if you don't load it, but we recommend that it be installed in conjunction with the zaptel package for completeness.

One other package you may want to install is asterisk-sounds . While Asterisk comes with many sound prompts in the main source distribution, the asterisk-sounds package will give you even more. If you would like to expand the number of professionally recorded prompts for use with your Asterisk system, this package is essential. Some of our examples in the following chapters will make use of files included in this package, so we will assume that you have it installed.

3.1.1. Package Requirements

To compile Asterisk, you must install the GCC compiler (Version 3.x or later) and its dependencies. While Version 2.96 of GCC may work for the time being, future versions will not support it. Asterisk also requires bison , a parser generator program that replaces yacc , and ncurses for CLI functionality. The cryptographic library in Asterisk requires OpenSSL and its development packages. If you want to use ztdummy for timing, or any of the hardware drivers provided by Zaptel, you'll need to install the zaptel package as well. If you are installing libpri , be sure to install it before asterisk (see "Compiling libpri").

Zaptel requires libnewt and its development packages for the zttool program (see "Using ztcfg and zttool," below) and the usb-uhci module for ztdummy . If you're using PRI interfaces, Zaptel also requires the libpri package (again, even if you aren't using PRI circuits, we recommend that you install libpri along with zaptel ).

The following sections discuss how to obtain, extract, compile, and install the asterisk , zaptel , libpri , and asterisk-sounds packages.