I have been using Asterisk for couple of months. I head problems configuring some stuff, but most of them I have menaged to configure.
Today I have instaled Asterisk@home just to se what he has to offer. I must say that I’m veary impressed. He has evrything I have configured on Asterisk and I don’t need to write it down, I just need to make couple of clicks.
Now I wonder why anybdy use Asterisk when there is weary nice distribution - Asterisk@home? Like I said, I’m using A@home for couple of hours only, so I didn’t have enough time to see any of his weeaknesis.
I hope we could have discussion with lots of examples of pro and contra (both, Asterisk and Asterisk@home).
With all due respect: the Asterisk@Home authors know absolutely nothing about Unix security. The A@H installation leaves a lot of files with -rwxrwxrwx access.
A@H takes over your whole computers, placing files all over the place. It is almost like virus. The regular Asterisk only places files in several well known directories.
My advice to anyone is to install the regular Asterisk distribution, and if you want a GIU interface, there is an excellent one available, for free.
Many distros of Linux come with poorly set permission and security settings. I believe you are missing the entire point of AAH. AAH is a easy way to get an Asterisk server up and running with a ton of add ons in almost no time. To have Asterisk, AMP, Sugar CRM, Zaptel drivers, FOP, etc. all in one quick installation that can be installed quickly is an incredible time saver. Customers always appreciate less billing hours. You then have time to tighten up security, setup the firewall, etc. The creator of AAH never claimed it to be the most secure thing on the planet, it was created to save time and help newbs easily understand and learn Asterisk.
A@H is how I found out about Asterisk! I downloaded the distro and had a PBX running in minutes.
Now that I’m getting to grips with it, I’m doing more configuration from the command prompt, but A@H certainly cut short my learning curve to at least get it running!
Yeah A@Home is nice. I started using Asterisk when i found A@H but there are some bugs inside it. I’m using Asterisk now, installed with the same Web Interface in A@H but with less features. At least i know how to do it from scratch rather than just install A@H.
Most of my experience with Asterisk revolves around the @home distribution. It just DOESN’T get any easier than this. I mean, really, PBX in an hour…does it get any easier?
Definitely takes out the learning curve, and definitely isn’t the ideal configuration, but it only took 1 key press two install! What more could you want!
Does @home have anything missing functionality wise that regular Asterisk distribution has?
My question is…why isn’t there other people out there doing the same types of distributions? I LOVE the fact that I can just drop the disk in and press enter, and all the OS is installed for me. The less time I have to waste on getting the stupid OS to work the better.
Asterisk at Home is a great way to shorten the learning curve for those new to Asterisk; however, I would not recommend it for any production system in a business enviroment. Implimention in a production enviroment at “Home” as it states is even questionable. It does a great job at helping you get started but at some point it’s time to remove the training wheels and configure a much more rock solid, and secure, system. Wow, the comparisons we could make cough Windows to *nix.
I used it to begin with so that I could understand what generally does what. Then I wiped it clean, installed a good, stable, Linux image, and built it from the ground up. Secure, stable, and fast.
PS. AMP has some limitations. Esspecially in business enviroments, you may not be able to configure what you want through AMP so steping up to the actual configuration files at some point may be necessary in the end anyways.
Based on some of these opinions wrtitten here, one would think that AAH is intrinsically unsecure. This is not the case, I have very much secured my server as I have done in other linux servers I have worked with.
There is no reason why AAH could not be used both at home and at work. You just need to secure the server and the application and this is a rather simple exercise if you have some experience with Linux (or you have somebody near you that does have the experience).
I do not think the matter to discuss is Asterisk versus AAH, it is rather AAH supporting the asterisk experience in the market.
before installing A@H make a backup of your config files first.
you shouldn’t need to install from ISO, just download the aah tarball, unzip and run the install
from an old A@H doc
[quote]mkdir /var/aah_load
cp asteriskathome-x.x.tar.gz /var/aah_load
cd /var/aah_load
tar xvfz asteriskathome-x.x.tar.gz
./install.sh
[/quote]
this might have changed a little, but i doubt it
This is the first time that I’ve heard of the tools available from IPSoftware. Does anyone have any experience using them? Are they Useful? Stable? Easy? Secure?
I’ve been struggling to get AMP working with Asterisk v1.2. Will IPSoftware be easier to set up?
It seems like IPManager is just a remote client for manipulating the .conf files & stuff for Asterisk. Is this true?
By the way, in aswer to the poll:
I use A@H at home. I’ve been trying to get a custom install of CentOS 4.2 to work with seperatly installed Asterisk & AMP at work, but I’m starting to question the wisdom of that approach.
You then have time to tighten up security, setup the firewall, etc. The creator of AAH never claimed it to be the most secure thing on the planet, it was created to save time and help newbs easily understand and learn Asterisk.
