How-Tos and Tutorials on Other Sites

There are many other sites that offer Tutorials and How-Tos that could be of interest to FreePBX users. Some of these were written with a particular distribution in mind, but may be usable (or at least get you started in the right direction) if you use a different distribution. We have NOT tested most of these, and simply offer links to these sites as a convenience - in other words, if something doesn't work as expected, take it up with the author of the article (although if things really go badly, you may wish to post a comment to that effect on this page). Also note that many of these articles may have at least some outdated information.

If you should discover a dead link, please keep in mind that you may still be able to view the page by right-clicking on the link, copying the link (the URL) to your clipboard, then going to the Wayback Machine and pasting the link in there, then clicking the "Take Me Back" button. Or, if you copy and paste the link title into Google, you may find that Google has a cached copy of the page.

From the Best of Nerd Vittles site:

• AsteriDex™ 4.0 - Web-Based RoboDialer
• Asterisk Weather Station - By Airport Code, By Zip Code, or Worldwide Forecasts
• Asterisk Wi-Fi HotSpot Finder - WiFi Hot Spot Locator for any ZIP Code in the United States
• CallerID Trifecta Superfecta for FreePBX - AsteriDex, Google Phonebook, AnyWho, and WhitePages Name Lookups for Asterisk
• Faxing with Asterisk - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly with VoIP Faxing
• FONmail for Asterisk - Email Delivery of Messages Dictated Using Any Asterisk Phone
• MailCall for Asterisk - Get Your Email by Telephone
• NewsClips for Asterisk - Get News Updates by Telephone
• Phone Genie for Asterisk 2.0 - Web-Based Controller for Asterisk Manager API and CLI
• PodCast Studio for Asterisk - Create and Listen to PodCasts by Telephone
• TeleYapper 3.0 - Message Broadcasting System for Asterisk 1.2
• TeleYapper 4.0 - Message Broadcasting System aka Phone Blasting Software for Asterisk 1.4
• Telephone Reminders 3.0 - Flexible Reminder System for Asterisk 1.2, Now Supporting Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Annual Recurring Reminders
• Telephone Reminders 4.0 - Reminder System for Asterisk 1.4, Now Supporting Recurring Reminders and Web Scheduling
• xTide for Asterisk - The latest Tides, Solar and Lunar Happenings By Phone for Any Port City

From the Elastix Forum:

• 800 numbers using an Enum trunk - use an ENUM trunk to place toll-free calls (800, 888, 877, 866 etc.) at no cost whatsoever
• Easily install Hamachi
• Howto Upgrade IAXmodem,Hylafax, & Install Avantfax
• openvpn - instructions based on OpenVPN setup on Centos 5.2
• Restrict outbound calls using A2billing - only extensions with a positive credit are allowed to place calls on designated routes. See also this post for the rationale behind this.
• Tutorial: How to install the DEVSTATE-mod

From the ElastixConnection site:

• DNS Cache for Elastix - How to setup a DNS Cache on your Elastix system. Helps resolve SIP Hang issue when Internet connection fails
• Installing Asternic Call Centre Stats - Great looking Graphs and information relating to your Call Centre Queues
• Installing ISymphony - How to setup ISymphony, a receptionist console, alllowing you to drag and drop calls with your mouse, including recording calls, barging calls etc.
• Installing OpenFire with MYSQL - How to setup Openfire to use MYSQL as the database and implement Asterisk-IM
• Streaming Music On Hold (Revised) - How to install setup your Elastix system to use Internet Music Streams (Internet Radio) for on hold music

From the Michigan Telephone, VoIP and Broadband blog:

• A quick way for FreePBX/Elastix/Trixbox users to auto-update Dyndns, maybe
• BETA Perl script for Caller ID popups when using Linksys/Sipura devices
• Echo problems with Asterisk? Try OSLEC
• Linksys and Sipura adapter users - check your RTP Packet Size and Network Jitter Level - also applicable to some Linksys phones
• Review of Atcom AG-188N IAX+SIP ATA (VoIP adapter) – Part 2 – Initial setup using IAX, Part 3 – Setting the time and configuring outbound dialing, and Part 4 – Setting up SIP, and securing the adapter - these three parts (of a six part series) show how to set up the Atcom AG-188N SIP/IAX2 VoIP adapter for use with Asterisk and FreePBX.
• Review of Ring Voltage Booster II™ from Mike Sandman Enterprises - this is how to connect more ringers (phones) to a VoIP adapter that has a low REN rating
  Setting up an OpenVPN tunnel using a CentOS-based system as the server and a router flashed with Tomato firmware as the client – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 - the server in this case was also running Elastix and FreePBX

• Stop entering passwords: How to set up ssh public/private key authentication for connections to a remote server
• Voip Phreak - » FreePBX Ubuntu Howto
• Using Asterisk and FreePBX as a podcast player - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

From Moshe's Blog:

• BLF and FreePBX feature codes
• Howto: list Asterisk contexts and includes
• Miscellaneous/Custom application/extensions: How to extend FreePBX with custom dialplan (part 1 of 2)
• Miscellaneous/Custom application/extensions: How to extend FreePBX with custom dialplan (part 2 of 2)
• Queue weights vs. Queue priorities
• Restricting call transfers with FreePBX
• Restricting outbound calls in FreePBX (blacklist)
• Restricting outbound calls in FreePBX (whitelist)
• Time Groups & Time Conditions

From the Nerd Vittles site:

• Adding Post-Dial Processing to Asterisk and FreePBX Dialplans
• Allison’s Text-to-Speech Trifecta: Cepstral, Asterisk 1.4 or 1.6, and FreePBX 2.4
• Asterisk CallerID Perfected: CallerID Superfecta 2.0
• Asterisk Hell: A Minefield Navigation Guide for Newbies
• Asterize Your Data: Taming ODBC with Asterisk
• Avoiding the $100,000 Phone Bill: A Primer on Asterisk Security
• Cloud Computing 101: Using Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service) for Off-Site Asterisk Backups
• Free Asterisk Calls to Zillions of Phones with ENUM and Gizmo5’s Backdoor Dialing
• Good Morning: Hotel-Style Wake Up Calls Return to Asterisk
• Introducing Noojee Click for Asterisk: The Free Click-to-Dial Solution for Firefox Using AJAM
• The Lean, Mean Asterisk Machine: And Now It’s a Fax Machine - the part about faxing begins part way down the page
• VoIP Over VPN: Securely Interconnecting Asterisk Servers
• Why Wait? Build Your Own Skype Gateway to Asterisk - see also How to set up a Skype gateway on this site.

From the PBX in a Flash Forum:

• End Point Configuration Manager Module for FreePBX - Part 1
• Installing wideband (g722) codec translation in Asterisk 1.4.x
• Overhead paging with v1.4 and OSS
• Simple Hotel Style Wake-Up Calls – THE MODULE
• Streaming MOH / MP3 MOH / Listen to Internet radio by Phone
• Text to Speech FreePBX Module
• Weather by Zip Code: THE MODULE

From the voip-info.org site:
NOTE: This site has a tremendous amount of information about Asterisk and VoIP in general. The following links just scratch the surface...

• Asterisk
• Asterisk AGI - The Asterisk Gateway Interface is an interface for adding functionality to Asterisk with many different programming languages. Perl, PHP, C, Pascal, Bourne Shell - it's your choice, really.
• Asterisk auto-dial out - The Asterisk dial plan extensions.conf responds to someone calling an extension on a channel. If you want to initiate a call from an external application, there are several ways to do this.
• Asterisk call notification - Possible instant messaging (and other) tools you could employ...
• Asterisk - documentation of application commands - Here is a list of all the commands that you can use in your Dialplan (in FreePBX you would use these in extensions_custom.conf). You can obtain your Asterisk's list of available applications at the CLI by typing "show applications" and "show application ".
• Asterisk echo cancellation
• Asterisk Functions - Asterisk functions are used in Asterisk's dialplan. Unlike dialplan applications, they cannot be used directly. Instead they return a value that could be used by the dialplan logic.
• Asterisk IAX channels
• Asterisk sound files
• Asterisk T.38 (used to send and receive faxes, especially in Asterisk 1.6)
• Asterisk Telemarketer Torture
• Asterisk tips and tricks - This page includes references to various tidbits of information that may assist you in your configuration of the Asterisk Open Source PBX. The documents are often contributions of Asterisk users, documentation of solutions they've created in their implementation.
• Asterisk tips MythTV integration - The open source PVR application suite named MythTV supports on-screen caller ID notifications. The original source of the caller ID information was from an attached modem, but the application structure allows any source to broadcast the caller ID parameters. This example uses a System() call to invoke mythtv's on screen display (OSD) with caller ID information.
• Asterisk tips simple wake-up call - Yet another wake-up call implementation.
• Asterisk Variables - Asterisk can make use of global, shared and channel-specific variables for arguments to commands
• Fail2Ban (with iptables) And Asterisk - Fail2Ban is a limited intrusion detection/prevention system. It works by scanning log files and then taking action based on the entries in those logs. We are implementing Fail2Ban with a configuration to be able to prevent SIP brute force attacks against our Asterisk PBX's.
• How to install Asterisk 1.4 and FreePBX 2.3.1 in Ubuntu Linux
• Modified Weather.agi to Work with Cepstral - be sure to scroll down to "Alternative Change" heading.
• Packet8 DTA310 and Asterisk
• Setting up paging with a sound card
• Settings Mediatrix APAs with FreePBX
• The Dummies Guide to Direct Sound Card Overhead Paging with Optional Ring Tone Generation - Don't Try This at Home

From various sites not listed above:

• A Simple Asterisk Based Toll Fraud Prevention Script
• Answering machine detection
• Asterisk Call Notification over XMPP
• Asterisk Tutorials - from asteriskguru.com
• AstRecipes - a place to store and share real world "recipes" that can help in configuring and running your Asterisk system.
• Call notification via IRC
• Controlling Applications With Asterisk - this example uses DTMF tones to issue commands to control a VideoLAN VLC Media Player (
  ">additional comments here).

• Creating a FreePBX module
• Elastix Without Tears (link to .pdf file) - if you installed Elastix to get FreePBX and Asterisk then you should download and read this free e-book
• Email notifications for missed calls in Asterisk
• How To Add a Cellular Trunk to Your VoIP System
• How To Add a Cellular Trunk to Your VoIP System - Part 2
• How to connect your Free PBX server to Gizmo5
• How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home - how to safely reuse inside telephone wiring for VoIP
• HowTo: Getting Jabber/XMPP notifications from your PBX - "a quick post to show you JUST HOW SIMPLE it is to get interesting events from your PBX via Jabber."
• How to use ENUM with FreePBX and Asterisk VOIP
• How to use Talkshoe.com with Asterisk
• Important thing to look at if you get one way audio problem with Asterisk 1.4.10 and FreePBX 2.3.0
• iptables for Asterisk and FreePBX - If you’ve installed Asterisk and FreePBX, a good idea is to have the Linux firewall, iptables, running on your system. Here’s an example of how you could set this up.
• Listen to Podcasts on Asterisk - Takes 30 seconds!
• Recover MySQL root password - you can recover MySQL database server password with these five easy steps.
• PiaF without Tears (link to .pdf file) - if you installed PBX in a Flash to get FreePBX and Asterisk then you should download and read this free e-book
• Setup MySQL CallerID Lookup Source on FreePBX
• The wonders of echo cancellation troubleshooting
• Ultimate CNAM script - This perl script looks up a phone number using a number of different sources and tries to match the number to a name and also figure out if the number has been reported as one sometimes found in phone spam calls. The resulting text string is then sent to your phone as the caller id name string. (Instructions are in the README file)
• Using ENUM with FreePBX
• Using monit Tool to Monitor Asterisk
• Using wideband codec in Asterisk 1.4 - How to install g722 as an available codec in Asterisk 1.4.x.

If you have found an especially informative how-to or tutorial page on another site, please leave a comment. I reserve the right to delete any comments that appear to be thinly-disguised spam.