Modules, or "Things that make Asterisk work."

The Power of Asterisk lies in its modules: applications (app_), channel drivers (chan_), ressources (res_) and much more. The modules are what provides Asterisk with the features, that you use: zap, iax, sip and h.323 telephony, call parking, voicemail, conference bridges etc.

You will very soon see, that most configuration files used for Asterisk are tied together with these modules and we will go through them, while describing the features that each module brings with it.

But let's start with the basics, you will have to define, which modules you want to load:

Core Asterisk configuration

Defining file locations (asterisk.conf)

The asterisk.conf configuration file is used to tell Asterisk where to locate various things for run time.


			[directories]
			astetcdir => /etc/asterisk
			astmoddir => /usr/lib/asterisk/modules
			astvarlibdir => /var/lib/asterisk
			astagidir => /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
			astspooldir => /var/spool/asterisk
			astrundir => /var/run
			astlogdir => /var/log/asterisk
			

The above configuration is the default that comes with Asterisk. It lists 7 locations of files that Asterisk looks for while running.

astetcdir points to the folder which holds all the configuration files.

astmoddir reflects the path of all the compiled Asterisk modules.

astvarlibdir is where all the Asterisk database and sound files are stored.

astagidir is the location where Asterisk will attempt to load AGI applications from.

astspooldir includes the location where all outgoing call files are stored as well as voicemail. For more informatoin on call files, see chapter 7.

astrundir point to where the pid files for Asterisk's processes are stored.

astlogdir refers to the location of all the Asterisk log files.

The Dialplan (extensions.conf, see chapter 4 and 5)

extensions.conf is not described in this chapter, because that is where you build your dialplan and the size and complexity of extensions.conf would go beyond the limits of this chapter. We have dedicated extensions.conf a chapter of it's own.