Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, 2nd Edition

asterisk.conf

The asterisk.conf file defines the locations for the configuration files, the spool directory, and the modules, as well as a location to write logfiles to. The default settings are recommended unless you understand the implications of changing them. The asterisk.conf file is generated automatically when you run the make samples command, based on information it collects about your system. It will contain a [directories] section such as the following:

[directories]
astetcdir => /etc/asterisk
astmoddir => /usr/lib/asterisk/modules
astvarlibdir => /var/lib/asterisk
astdatadir => /var/lib/asterisk
astagidir => /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin
astspooldir => /var/spool/asterisk
astrundir => /var/run
astlogdir => /var/log/asterisk

Additionally, you can specify an [options] section, which will allow you to define startup options (command-line switches) in the configuration file. The following example shows the available options and the command-line switches that they effectively enforce:

[options] ;Under "options" you can enter configuration options ;that you also can set with command line options verbose = 0 ; Verbosity level for logging (-v) debug = 3 ; Debug: "No" or value (1-4) nofork=yes | no ; Background execution disabled (-f) alwaysfork=yes | no ; Always background, even with -v or -d (-F) console= yes | no ; Console mode (-c) highpriority = yes | no ; Execute with high priority (-p) initcrypto = yes | no ; Initialize crypto at startup (-i) nocolor = yes | no ; Disable ANSI ...