# \[RESOLVED\] asterisk hangs when starting up

**URL:** <https://community.asterisk.org/t/resolved-asterisk-hangs-when-starting-up/2683>\
**Category:** Asterisk Support\
**Created:** [November 23, 2005, 6:31pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/resolved-asterisk-hangs-when-starting-up/2683 "2005-11-23T18:31:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kwilliams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kwilliams](https://community.asterisk.org/u/kwilliams)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2005, 6:31pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/resolved-asterisk-hangs-when-starting-up/2683/1 "2005-11-23T18:31:16Z")

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All,

I’m new to the VoIP, so am hopefully not overlooking something obvious. I am installing on Ubuntu.

I have (I believe) successfully installed Asterisk. I do not have any kind of hardware card (specifically Digium), so I installed zaptel and libpri. I have loaded the zaptel and ztdummy modules and get the expected response using lsmod. My kernel version is: 2.6.12-10-386.

When I try to start asterisk however (/usr/sbin/asterisk -cvvv), the following happens (included last few lines):

[res\_musiconhold.so] =\> (Music On Hold Resource)  
== Registered application ‘MusicOnHold’  
== Registered application ‘WaitMusicOnHold’  
== Registered application ‘SetMusicOnHold’  
== Registered application ‘StartMusicOnHold’  
== Registered application ‘StopMusicOnHold’  
[chan\_mgcp.so] =\> (Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP))  
== Registered channel type ‘MGCP’ (Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP))  
[chan\_zap.so] =\> (Zapata Telephony w/PRI)  
kwilliams@goku:

I’m guessing this has something to do with Zaptel, since the last line was the chan\_zap.so, but I have no idea how to troubleshoot this. Has anyone encountered this before? Any recommendations on how to debug/resolve?

Thanks in advance!

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**Author:** ![kwilliams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kwilliams](https://community.asterisk.org/u/kwilliams)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2005, 7:12pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/resolved-asterisk-hangs-when-starting-up/2683/2 "2005-11-23T19:12:19Z")

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Ok, I figured out what I did wrong. I (doh!) removed all the configuration files in the /etc/asterisk directory to start testing per the documentation (started with sip.conf only in there).

I replaced all the sample files and it started up.

So my question is…which files are necessary in the /etc/asterisk directory?

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**Author:** ![kwilliams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kwilliams](https://community.asterisk.org/u/kwilliams)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2005, 7:59pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/resolved-asterisk-hangs-when-starting-up/2683/3 "2005-11-23T19:59:05Z")

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OK,

For an installation that does not have hardware, but does have zaptel and libpri installed, along with asterisk, I determined that the following configuration files are required for asterisk to start:

/etc/asterisk/phone.conf (can be empty): otherwise hangs on chan\_phone.so  
/etc/asterisk/zapata.conf (can be empty): otherwise hangs on chan\_zap.so

Maybe this will prove useful for someone else down the road–for those experienced asterisk users–should this be reported as a bug (be nice to have to not have asterisk fail to start up if an empty file isn’t there)?