How to Install FreePBX 15 on Debian 10 with Asterisk 16, PHP 7.3

This manual-install method builds a FreePBX system with the following specifications:

• FreePBX 15
• Asterisk 16 from the Debian Buster package repository
• PHP 7.3, standard with Debian Buster
• 64-bit Intel/AMD (x86_64) platform

Step-by-step guide

All commands are to be run as the root user, either by directly logging in as root or by using sudo su - . 

Start from a base Debian 10 installation. All necessary packages will be installed through the following commands.

Prerequisite recommended OS update

Add the backports repo specifically so that the odbc-mariadb package is available. Then update the OS to current.

• echo deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ buster-backports main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
• echo deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ buster-backports main >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
• apt-get update
• apt-get upgrade

Install all the necessary packages

• apt-get install -y build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` openssh-server apache2 mariadb-server mariadb-client bison flex php php-curl php-cli php-pdo php-mysql php-pear php-gd php-mbstring php-intl php-bcmath curl sox libncurses5-dev libssl-dev mpg123 libxml2-dev libnewt-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev pkg-config automake libtool autoconf git unixodbc-dev uuid uuid-dev libasound2-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libicu-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libical-dev libneon27-dev libsrtp2-dev libspandsp-dev sudo subversion libtool-bin python-dev unixodbc dirmngr sendmail-bin sendmail asterisk debhelper-compat cmake libmariadb-dev odbc-mariadb php-ldap

Install Node.js

• curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_11.x | sudo -E bash -
• apt-get install -y nodejs

Install this required Pear module

• pear install Console_Getopt

Prepare Asterisk

• systemctl stop asterisk
• systemctl disable asterisk
• cd /etc/asterisk
• mkdir DIST
• mv * DIST
• cp DIST/asterisk.conf .
• sed -i 's/(!)//' asterisk.conf
• touch modules.conf
• touch cdr.conf

Configure Apache web server

• sed -i 's/\(^upload_max_filesize = \).*/\120M/' /etc/php/7.3/apache2/php.ini
• sed -i 's/\(^memory_limit = \).*/\1256M/' /etc/php/7.3/apache2/php.ini
• sed -i 's/^\(User\|Group\).*/\1 asterisk/' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
• sed -i 's/AllowOverride None/AllowOverride All/' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
• a2enmod rewrite
• service apache2 restart
• rm /var/www/html/index.html

Configure ODBC

• cat <<EOF > /etc/odbcinst.ini
[MySQL]
  Description = ODBC for MySQL (MariaDB)
  Driver = /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/odbc/libmaodbc.so
  FileUsage = 1
  EOF
   
• cat <<EOF > /etc/odbc.ini
[MySQL-asteriskcdrdb]
  Description = MySQL connection to 'asteriskcdrdb' database
  Driver = MySQL
  Server = localhost
  Database = asteriskcdrdb
  Port = 3306
  Socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
  Option = 3
  EOF

Download FFMPEG static build for sound file manipulation

• cd /usr/local/src
• wget "https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/releases/ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz"
• tar xf ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz
• cd ffmpeg-4*
• mv ffmpeg /usr/local/bin

Install FreePBX

• cd /usr/local/src
• wget http://mirror.freepbx.org/modules/packages/freepbx/freepbx-15.0-latest.tgz
• tar zxvf freepbx-15.0-latest.tgz
• cd /usr/local/src/freepbx/
• ./start_asterisk start
• ./install -n

Get the rest of the modules

Only a very basic system is installed at this point. You will probably want to install all the modules. Alternatively, you can skip this and pick-and-choose the individual modules you want later.

• fwconsole ma installall

Uninstall digium_phones

Broken with PHP 7.3 (April 2020).

• fwconsole ma uninstall digium_phones

Apply the current configuration

• fwconsole reload

Set symlinks to the correct sound files

• cd /usr/share/asterisk
• mv sounds sounds-DIST
• ln -s /var/lib/asterisk/sounds sounds

Perform a restart to load all Asterisk modules that had not yet been configured

• fwconsole restart

Set up systemd (startup script)

• cat <<EOF > /etc/systemd/system/freepbx.service
[Unit]
  Description=FreePBX VoIP Server
  After=mariadb.service
  [Service]
  Type=oneshot
  RemainAfterExit=yes
  ExecStart=/usr/sbin/fwconsole start -q
  ExecStop=/usr/sbin/fwconsole stop -q
  [Install]
  WantedBy=multi-user.target
  EOF
   
• systemctl daemon-reload
• systemctl enable freepbx

Asterisk and FreePBX 15 are installed! Go to the web interface at http://YOUR-IP to finish setup.