System information

Asterisk comes with a simple script that will greatly improve the security of your voi-
cemail system. It is located in the source code under the folder: /contrib/scripts/voice-
mailpwcheck.py.
We strongly recommend that you copy it to your /usr/local/bin folder (or wherever you
prefer to put such things), and then uncomment the externpasscheck= option in your
voicemail.conf file. Your voicemail system will then enforce the password security rules
you have established.
Part of the [general] section is an area that is referred to as advanced options. These
options (listed in Table 8-2) are defined in the same way as the other options in the
[general] section, but they can also be defined on a per-mailbox basis, overriding
whatever is defined under [general] for that particular setting.
Table 8-2. Advanced options for voicemail.conf
Option Value/Example Notes
tz eastern, euro
pean, etc.
Specifies the zonemessages name, as defined in the
[zonemessages] section, discussed in the next section.
locale de_DE.utf8,
es_US.utf8,
etc.
Used to define how Asterisk generates date/time strings in different
locales. To determine the locales that are valid on your Linux system,
type locale -a at the shell.
attach yes, no If an email address is specified for a mailbox, this determines whether
the messages are attached to the email notifications (otherwise, a
simple message notification is sent).
attachfmt wav49, wav, etc. If attach is enabled and messages are stored in different formats,
this defines which format is sent with the email notifications. Often
wav49 is a good choice, as it uses a better compression algorithm and
thus will use less bandwidth.
saycid yes, no This command will state the caller ID of the person who left the mes-
sage.
cidinternalcontexts <context>,
<another
context>
Any dialplan contexts listed here will be searched in an attempt to
locate the mailbox context, so that the name associated with the
mailbox number can be spoken. The voicemail box number needs to
match the extension number that the call came from, and the voicemail
context needs to match the dialplan context.
a
sayduration yes, no This command will state the length of the message.
saydurationm 2 Use this to specify the minimum duration of a message to qualify for
its length being played back. For example, if you set this to 2, any
message less than 2 minutes in length will not have its length stated.
dialout <context> If allowed, users can dial out from their mailboxes. This is considered
a very dangerous feature in a phone system (mainly because many
voicemail users like to use 1234 as their password), and is therefore
not recommended. If you insist on allowing this, make sure you have
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