System information

We’re going to want extra sound prompts installed instead of just the default core sound
prompts, and in a better-sounding format than GSM. We can do this with the menu-
select system by running make menuselect in the Asterisk source directory. Before ex-
ploring that, though, let’s talk about the different menuselect interfaces.
menuselect interfaces
There are two interfaces available for menuselect: curses and newt. If the libnewt libra-
ries are installed, you will get the blue and red interface shown in Figure 3-1. Otherwise,
by default menuselect will use the curses (black and white) interface shown in Figure 3-2.
The minimum screen size for the curses interface is 80x27, which means
it may not load if you’re using the default terminal size for a simple
distribution installation. This is not a problem when you’re using SSH
to reach the server remotely, as typically your terminal can be resized,
but if you’re working at the terminal directly you may need to have
screen buffers installed to enable a higher resolution, which is not rec-
ommended for a system running Asterisk. The solution is to use the
newt-based menuselect system.
Figure 3-1. menuselect using the newt interface
60 | Chapter 3: Installing Asterisk