Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, 2nd Edition

manager.conf

The Asterisk Manager Interface is an API that external programs can use to communicate with and control Asterisk, much as you would do from the Asterisk console.

Warning

The Manager gives programs the ability to run commands and request information from the Asterisk server. However, it is not very secure; its authentication mechanism defaults to using plain-text passwords, and all connected terminals default to receiving all events. The Asterisk Manager should be used only on a trusted local area network, or locally on the box. The permit and deny constructs allow you to restrict access to certain extensions or subnets.

Many of the available graphical interfaces to Asterisk—such as the Flash Operator Panel—use the Manager to pull data and determine the status of applications. The manager.conf file defines the way programs authenticate with the Manager.

The Manager commands (which you can list by typing show manager commands at the Asterisk console) have varying degrees of privilege. You can control the read and write permissions for these commands with the use of the read and write options in the manager.conf file.

Here’s a sample manager.conf file:

[general]
enabled = no
port = 5038
bindaddr = 0.0.0.0

[oreilly]
secret = notvery
deny=0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
permit= 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0
read = system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user,config
write = system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user,config

For more information on the Asterisk Manager Interface, see Chapter 10.