Asterisk can't see new sound files

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

Hi,
I’m just getting to grips with Asterisk & have run into a little problem that I just can’t figure out.

One of my clients has an Asterisk system up & running, and all of their own sound files are in a directory called /var/lib/asterisk/own-sounds.
In extensions.conf, to play one of their own files I just write Playback(filename), which works fine.
They needed a new announcement, which we recorded, & I then copied into the own-sounds directory.

However, if I now write Playback(newfilename) nothing is heard & I read in the console that no file of this name exists.
If however I write Playback(/var/lib/asterisk/own-sounds/newfilename) the file is played ok.

As the default location for sounds is /var/lib/asterisk/sounds, I assumed that there was an entry somewhere that also told Asterisk to look in the own-sounds directory.
But if it can play all existing files there just by filename but any new file needs a full path, it looks to me like each file must have been registered individually somewhere.

If they have been, I can’t find where they were.

Does anyone have any ideas please?

Many thanks,
Paul

2

The default location includes a language sub-directory, although this can be disabled.

3

I prefer using a totally new path for my different project files. I put my files in folders like this

/projects/prompts/project1/all-files-related-to-project1
/projects/prompts/project2/all-files-related-to-project2

and then use it in dialplan like this

exten => 12345,1,Set(PROMPTSDIR=/projects/prompts/project1)

and then can play any file anywhere in dialplan like this
exten => 12345,n,Playback(${PROMPTSDIR}/filename)

4

You can also include the full path in the Playback() application.

i.e.

exten => 12345,n,Playback(/projects/prompts/project1/all-files-related-to-project1)

5

Paul I find that we sometimes overlook the simplest explanations (or maybe that is just me). Is it possible that someone created the “own-sounds” directory to keep track of which sound files had been added to the distributed sound files but also copied or created links to the sound files in the /var/lib/asterisk/sounds directory as well. Just a thought.

Raymond