The *98 extension looks like this:
exten => *98,1,NoOp(${CALLERID(num)})
exten => *98,2,VoicemailMain(${CALLERID(num)})
exten => *98,3,Hangup
This doesn’t happen every time. The server can go for almost a week most times before the load jumps up. And it certainly doesn’t go up proportionally to the number of people using Voicemail.
Hi
I also had the same problem. I enabled voice mail on 40 extensions and from then on my pabx was misbehaving. Cpu usage was so high, extensions freezing. After disabling voice mail on all extensions, performance improved greatly. I am running asterisk 1.4.15, 2GB RAM, Dual processor 3.6, 16 Zap channels, supporting 50 extensions.
Hi,
I’m having the same issue here. I’m running asterisk 1.4.22 on a Dell 1950 (Xeon Quad core E5410 @ 2.33GHz) with 4 GB ram.
I completely rebuilt the whole server but the problem started again after few days… 
Okay, I’ve definitely confirmed that this problem has been fixed in more recent versions. I’m specifically running 1.4.22, and after Asterisk has been running for 2 weeks straight, we haven’t seen the CPU usage spike at all.
Hi gromm,
I’m still having the same problem with asterisk 1.4.22 as well.
Could yo please tell me what versions of linux-kernal, libpri, zaptel (or dahdi-linux) you are using?
Thanks
We’re using Gentoo Linux (2.6.17-gentoo-r4 #1 SMP), zaptel 1.4, and Asterisk-Addons 1.4.7.
For a long time, I thought it was Gentoo that was the problem. It used to be that Asterisk had a memory leak that would eat up all available RAM. Mind you, that was also many versions of Asterisk ago.
Oh yes, and LibPRI 1.4.3. It also looks like we’re using Zaptel 1.4.9.2 instead.
I got the same memory leak problem related to voicemail usage…
I use Asterisk 1.4.21.2 and libpri 1.4.7. Does anyone have resolved the problem??.. Could upgrading to Asterisk 1.6 be the solution ??
…¿?
Yes, I’ve resolved this problem. See my notes above.
This was a problem with an older version of Asterisk. Upgrading to a version of 1.4.22 or higher appears to be the solution. We’re using 1.4.23.1 and it hasn’t been a problem yet.
However, there seem to be some issues with Asterisk segfaulting now. I say upgrade anyway though. 
For the past several days at least, our Asterisk server has been running at 100% CPU usage, and as far as I can tell, there’s not really anything unusual happening in Asterisk, except that perhaps an unusually high number of SIP channels are open - over 100 where “normal” operation has about 60 or so.