In this guide, we are looking at how to install Asterisk 22 LTS on CentOS Stream 10 | RHEL 10. Asterisk is an open-source framework for building communications applications. Additionally, Asterisk transforms the ordinary computer into a communications server, and it runs IP PBX systems and VoIP gateways and conference servers and other custom applications. Small and large business companies, call centers, carriers and government agencies worldwide utilize it.

Keep in mind that this is a guide that asks the administrator to do quite a bit of legwork on his or her own. It is not that hard to install a communications server, but it is somewhat complex to maintain one. While this guide will put your server into operation, it will not be in a condition that you’re ready to put it into production with at the completion of the steps.

Some of the cool features of Asterisk PBX system are listed below:

• Conference calling
• Call Monitoring
• Call Recording
• Distributed Universal Number Discovery
• SMS Messaging
• Trunking
• Transcoding
• Voicemail
• Caller ID on Call Waiting
• Direct Inward System Access
• Call Parking

Follow the below steps to install Asterisk 22 LTS on CentOS Stream 10 | RHEL 10.

Step 1: Update System packages

Ensure that your system packages are up to date before beginning installations. Run the below command:

sudo yum -y update

Reboot the system once upgraded:

sudo reboot

Step 2: Set SELinux in Permissive

I am going to set SElinux in Permissive mode so as not to prevent any installations.

sudo setenforce 0
sudo sed -i 's/^SELINUX=.*/SELINUX=permissive/g' /etc/selinux/config

You can confirm using the commands:

getenforce

Step 3: Install EPEL Repository and Dependencies

To install the EPEL repository, refer to our guide:

• How to install EPEL on RHEL 10 and CentOS Stream 10

There are a number of packages that Asterisk requires to be installed. Run the below command to install them:

sudo yum install -y dmidecode gcc-c++ ncurses-devel libxml2-devel make wget openssl-devel newt-devel kernel-devel sqlite-devel libuuid-devel gtk2-devel jansson-devel binutils-devel libedit libedit-devel chkconfig wget

Also install Development Tools group packages with the below command:

sudo yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools"

Step 4: Install Jansson

Jansson is a C library for encoding, decoding, and manipulating JSON data. Clone the jansson repository from Github and install as below:

cd /usr/src/ 
sudo git clone https://github.com/akheron/jansson.git 
cd jansson 
sudo autoreconf  -i 
sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr/ 
sudo make 
sudo make install

Step 5: Install PJSIP

PJSIP is a free and open-source multimedia communication library. It implements standard based protocols such as SIP, SDP, RTP, STUN, TURN, and ICE. Download the latest version from the official website using wget, extract and install as below:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/pjsip/pjproject.git
cd pjproject
./configure CFLAGS="-DNDEBUG -DPJ_HAS_IPV6=1" --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib64 --enable-shared --disable-video --disable-sound --disable-opencore-amr
make dep
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

Check that all libraries have been installed.git clone https://github.com/pjsip/pjproject.git

ldconfig -p | grep pj 

Step 6: Install Asterisk 22 LTS

Visit Asterisk official website and download the latest version or use wget to get it directly to your terminal and extract it.

cd /usr/src
sudo wget https://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/asterisk-22-current.tar.gz
sudo tar xvf asterisk-22-current.tar.gz
cd asterisk-22*/

To enable mp3 music to play when on hold, run the following commands to install the required dependencies.

sudo yum install svn
sudo ./contrib/scripts/get_mp3_source.sh

Now run configure script to prepare package for compiling

sudo contrib/scripts/install_prereq install
sudo ./configure --libdir=/usr/lib64 --with-jansson-bundled

Let’s now start build process

sudo make menuselect

You should get a list of features to enable. Use arrow keys to navigate and ‘ENTER’ key to select On Add-ons select chan_ooh323 and format_mp3  as shown below:

On Core Sound Packages, select the formats of Audio packets like below:

For Music on Hold,select the shown packages.

On Extra Sound Packages select as shown below.

Once done, navigate to ‘Save & Exit’ then hit Enter.

Then build and install Asterisk with the following commands.

sudo make
sudo make install

Install sample configuration files.

sudo make samples

To start Asterisk on boot:

sudo make config

Now create a separate user to run Asterisk services and update ownership of directories

sudo groupadd asterisk
sudo useradd -r -d /var/lib/asterisk -g asterisk asterisk
sudo chown -R asterisk:asterisk /etc/asterisk /var/{lib,log,spool}/asterisk /usr/lib64/asterisk
sudo restorecon -vr {/etc/asterisk,/var/lib/asterisk,/var/log/asterisk,/var/spool/asterisk}

Set Asterisk default user to asterisk:

$ sudo vim /etc/sysconfig/asterisk 
###Uncomment these lines
AST_USER="asterisk" 
AST_GROUP="asterisk" 

$ sudo vim /etc/asterisk/asterisk.conf
###Uncomment these lines 
runuser = asterisk ; The user to run as. 
rungroup = asterisk ; The group to run as.

Configure Asterisk Systemd Service

Now, the Asterisk make install command drops in an old SysV init script, (/etc/rc.d/init.d/asterisk). Keep in mind that Oracle/Alma/Rocky 10 are systemd-only, and they no longer ship with /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions. That being said, if you try running the asterisk service, you will run into errors.

To solve this, you need to replace the legacy init script with a native systemd service unit (/etc/systemd/system/asterisk.service) as follows:

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/asterisk.service > /dev/null <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Asterisk PBX and telephony daemon.
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment=HOME=/var/lib/asterisk
#if systemd do not provide hostname and you need to use ${ENV(HOSTNAME)}
#Environment=HOSTNAME=%H
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/asterisk
User=asterisk
Group=asterisk
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/asterisk -f -C /etc/asterisk/asterisk.conf
ExecStop=/usr/sbin/asterisk -rx 'core stop now'
ExecReload=/usr/sbin/asterisk -rx 'core reload'
#if /var/run is a tmpfs, this will create /var/run/asterisk on start
RuntimeDirectory=asterisk

#Nice=0
#UMask=0002
LimitCORE=infinity
#LimitNOFILE=
Restart=always
RestartSec=4

# Prevent duplication of logs with color codes to /var/log/messages
StandardOutput=null
PrivateTmp=false

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Then reload the system to pick up the new unit and disable the old SysV wrapper.

# Reload systemd to pick up the new unit
sudo systemctl daemon-reexec
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

# Disable the old SysV wrapper
sudo systemctl disable asterisk

Enable & start the new service.

sudo systemctl enable --now asterisk

Test if you can connect to Asterisk CLI

sudo asterisk -rvv 

We have successfully installed Asterisk 22 LTS on CentOS Stream 10 | RHEL 10. I hope the guide has been useful. Watch out for more PBX system installation guides in our coming tutorials.

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