System information

CHAPTER 4
Initial Configuration Tasks
Careful. We don’t want to learn from this.
—Calvin & Hobbes
In the last chapter, we covered how to install Asterisk. But where should you get started
with configuration? That is the question this chapter answers. There are a few common
configuration files that are relevant regardless of what you are using Asterisk to ac-
complish. In some cases they may not require any modification, but you need to be
aware of them.
asterisk.conf
The asterisk.conf configuration file allows you to tweak various settings that can affect
how Asterisk runs as a whole.
There is a sample asterisk.conf file included with the Asterisk source. It is not necessary
to have this file in your /etc/asterisk folder in order to have a working system, but you
may find that some of the possible options will be of use to you.
Asterisk will look for asterisk.conf in the default configuration location,
which is usually /etc/asterisk. To specify a different location for aster-
isk.conf, use the -C command-line option:
$ sudo asterisk -C /custom/path/to/asterisk.conf
The [directories] Section
For most installations of Asterisk, changing the directories is not necessary. However,
this can be useful for running more than one instance of Asterisk at the same time, or
if you would like files stored in nonstandard locations.
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