The reference page is http://www.asterisk.org/

We can download the 1.6.2.20 version and untar it.

1)

# tar -zxvf asterisk-1.6.2.20.tar.gz
# rm -f asterisk-1.6.2.20.tar.gz
# cd asterisk-1.6.2.20

2) execute "make"

And if everything has been correct

3) execute "make install"

The first time is recommended to install the examples of Asterisk PBX using the command

4) "make samples"

But, caution !! This command will rewrite all the configuration files that you already had

Then you can start Asterisk PBX with the following command

# asterisk -vvvc

You could see a lot of messages at the screen when Asterisk starts. (the "vvv" means "very very verbose") and the "c" letter shows us at the end of all the messages a console command line like the following one.

*CLI>

At this point Asterisk is installed and running. The command "help" at the command line is very useful

You also can use the command "man asterisk" in the linux command line to get information about how to start and stop Asterisk server.

The Asterisk configuration files have been installed in the /etc/asterisk directory where you can find a lot of information.

Now we are going to verify that Asterisk is running ok with some easy tests:

We must configure a softphone, for example SJPhone, (more info about its configuration in Sjphone configuration) to register in our own Asterisk server. The default installation has two user that we can use.

A: user: 3000 password=anything works
B: user: 3001 password=anything works

When we have it properly configured and the user has been registered in our Asterisk server it is time to make some calls defined in the default extension dialplan.

1000 - Main menu
1234 - Transfer the call to the console (you could see the call at the console command line)
1235 - Console voicemail
1236 - Call to the console command line

3000 - Call to 3000 SIP user
3001 - Call to 3001 SIP user

500 - Call to Digium

600 - Echo test

8500 - Voicemail menu

99990 AGI test
99991 EAGI test
99992 Tell the hour
99999 Music

700 Parked call
701-720 Parking calls

One interesting tests at this moment is to configure 2 softphones in two different computers: one with the 3000 user and the other one with the 3001 user and make a call each other. If it works you are ready to learn how to configure Asterisk and create new users and dialplans in the first steps with Asterisk chapter.