Noob Question - Compiling Asterisk 1.4.0

Stats are: I am running Redhat Core 6 and attempting to install * 1.4.0.

I extract files then type the below commands:
cd /usr/src/asterisk-1.4.0
make clean
make
make install

After the ‘make install’ I get the error:

****Configure script must be executed before running ‘make’.

I am having a couple of problems with this. The first is because I don’t know enough about Linux to know how to work around this problem and the other is in the book by O’Reilly in Chpter 3 on page 43 under ‘Standard Installation’ the author explains there is never a need to run a configuration script.

Someone set me straight. None of the ‘how to’ articles address this problem. What should I be doing? Should I be using an older version of Asterisk?

Thanks

The way of building * is changed with the release 1.4, run “./configure” before “make” in the * source directory, read UPGRADE.txt (you find it in the * source dir) for details.

Regards.

Marco Bruni

Thanks. Is the ./configure needed to be run in the * source dir only or will I need to use ./configure in the other directories like libpri dir too?

So the new list of commands is:

cd /usr/src/asterisk-1.4.0
make clean
./configure
make
make install

Thanks in advance

The configuration process, with “./configure”, has to be done in the other directories too (zaptel, libpri and addons); your list of commands to build and install * is correct (remember “make install” as to be run as root, the other commands could and should be run as normal user).

Regards.

Marco Bruni

After I type ‘./configure’ I eventually get; configure error: *** termcap support not found

In regards to your suggestion to run the commands before the install command as a normal user is something I haven’t known about. Should I delete all directories and start over? I have been running in the terminal as the root user while I unpack and configure the software. How do I clean up this mess and start over?

Thanks in advance.

The error from “configure” means the termcap library is missing and you have to install it.
To clean up things you should unpack the * sources as a normal user then do everything as normal user until “make install”, but remember, this is not mandatory, just a way to do things securely, it’s good not build programs as root, just install as root :smile:

Regards.

Marco Bruni

It seems I can only unpack the tar.gz files as root. Then I exit back to normal user and run ‘make clean’, ‘./configure’, ‘make’, su back to root and run ‘make install’ ?? Do I need to run ‘make samples’??

When I run ‘./configure’ I get mostly ‘Permission denied’ and ‘cannot access’ messages. I am in /usr/src/asterisk-1.4.0 directory and running as a normal user. Any suggestions?

See, I am a noob!

As root move the files to your home dir and change the owner:

mv asterisk* /home/whoami

#chown whoami.users /home/whoami/asterisk*

Instead of “whoami” use your login, then try build *.

Hope this helps (and try learn soething about Linux CLI, it will be very useful).

Regards.

Marco Bruni

Thank you, that worked although I got the termcap support not found error again. How do I install that termcap? is it part of zaptel? Do I need to install zaptel first?

Termcap is a library and is part of every Linux distribution, so you should install the libtermcap rpm for your Fedora Linux.

Regards.

Marco Bruni

I checked out the development libraries and didn’t see libtermcap but did see libcap so I installed all lib dev libraries. Hope one of those will cause the error to go away.

These are all things the books or ‘how tos’ don’t talk about. Good thing there are forums for these sort of discrepancies.

Thank you for your help with this.

here you go chief for fedora 6
http://rpmseek.com/rpm/termcap-5.5-1.20060701.1.noarch.html?hl=com&cs=termcap:PN:0:0:0:0:3151763

what is missing is the libtermcap-devel package on the CentOS 4.4 OS.

Just run: yum -y install libtermcap-devel

and then run your usual asterisk installation steps. The ./configure will work flowlessly this time around.

have fun!

Ussama