Welcome to AllStarLink Asterisk version 1.01. This updated version contains a number of bug fixes and enhancements. The method used for installing and upgrading AllStarLink Asterisk has been changed from building from source code to simply install and upgrade the programs that make up AllStarLink Asterisk. AllStarLink Asterisk is now using the same update method any other Debian program has used for years. The package management system is called APT. From the Debian Wiki APT (acronym for Advanced Package Tool) is a set of tools for managing Debian packages, and therefore the applications installed on your Debian system. APT makes it possible to: Install applications Remove applications Keep your applications up to date Keep your Operating System up to date and much more... From this point forward, AllStarLink Asterisk will be MUCH easier for you to maintain your AllStarLink node. For most users, installing or upgrading will use the standard Debian apt commands. We know there will be bugs. We know there will be enhancements. When those bug fixes or enhancements are available, all you will have to do is "apt-get upgrade". Not only will you get upgraded AllStarLink Asterisk programs, you will also get any upgrades to your operating system. Most upgrades will not even require a reboot of the node. One of the biggest issues with AllStarLink Asterisk is the need to rebuild the DAHDI kernel modules when the kernel of the OS is upgraded. AllStarLink Asterisk will now rebuild DAHDI any time the kernel is upgraded. If we were supporting one version of the operating system for one hardware platform, this would be easy. AllStarLink Asterisk supports installation on multiple hardware platforms and OS Distributions. Using APT, we can support many more platforms. As we progress, some of the more common "add on" programs we have come to rely on will be packaged using apt. This will allow for a simple "apt-get install xyz". The program xyz will be installed and if there are any configuration options, you will be guided through them. Upgrades to these programs will be handled the same as any other program, and the source is ALWAYS available. The AllStarLink Asterisk source will always be published on GitHub . If you have a customization, you can still build your own version of AllStarLink Asterisk. We encourage people to submit enhancements and bug fixes to the GitHub repository. The programs used to configure and manage AllStarLink Asterisk are greatly improved. Not only are they easier to use, they offer many more features for configuring AllStarLink Asterisk. We have also added a number of menus to help you secure your node from intrusion. As with any computer exposed to the Internet, good system hygiene is crucial. We've received several requests to improve AllStarLink. One of them is for a way to improve the node backup and restore system. Backing up and restoring your node configuration to allstarlink.org has been enhanced, and added to the menu system. We have also added a simple web server that you can run when you want to download or upload your backup to the node. All you will have to do is start the web server on the node from the menu. You will be able to download and upload backups of your node configuration using a web browser on a different computer on your LAN. This web server will not run all the time. You are in control of it, and, it is limited to access from your LAN only. All images are built on Debian or distributions based on Debian. This includes Intel/AMD, Raspbian (Raspberry Pi), Armbian (Various ARM based single board computers) and others. AllStarLink Asterisk supports the current release of Debian (Stretch) and the previous release (Jessie). As Debian releases a new version, AllStarLink Asterisk will add support for the newly released version and freeze the oldest release. Images in the repository take 2 forms - - Net Installers and Images. A Net Installer will install Debian with AllStarLink Asterisk on the target computer. The target computer will require a Internet connection since Debian and AllStarLink packages are downloaded during the install. A Image already contains the OS and AllStarLink Asterisk. This is usually transferred to SD card. The card is then inserted in the target computer. Raspbian is a example of this type of Image. Once booted, you are ready to run AllStarLink Asterisk. Net Installers and images are available for the following systems: Intel/AMD Raspberry Pi Beagle Board xM BeagleBone Black NanoPi NEO If your system is not on this list and it is Debian based, you can still install AllStarLink Asterisk. The Wiki contains simple instructions for installation. In this example, each image file will be in a zip container. The container will include the following files: ASL_1.01-20180228-amd64-i386-netinst.readme ASL_1.01-20180228-amd64-i386-netinst.md5 ASL_1.01-20180228-amd64-i386-netinst.iso The readme file will contain login information, and any other notes specific to image. Files that contain the .md5 file extension are checksum files that are used to ensure that the data within a file is complete and has not become corrupt. An MD5 file verifies the integrity of the disk image. If you are using Linux, md5sum will give you the md5 value of the file. In the above example: "md5sum ASL_1.01-20180228-amd64-i386-netinst.iso" should be the same as the contents of ASL_1.01-20180228-amd64-i386-netinst.md5. If you are using Windows "CertUtil -hashfile ASL_1.01-20180228-amd64-i386-netinst.iso MD5" will give you the md5 of the file. There is also a freeware app called HashTab that integrates neatly with Windows Explorer Don't let the number of digits in the md5 scare you. A simple check is to compare the first 4 digits and the last 4 digits. Example: 8044d756b7f00b695ab8dce07dce43e5 Do 8044 and 43e5 match on the two md5 values? If so, you are probably good. One of the common questions I expect is.... "My image is dated 20180228" in human February second 2018. "How do I know I'm running the most current version of ASL Asterisk"? The answer is two fold. The images and installers take time to build. In the case of the image The version of ASL Asterisk used is whatever the current version in the APT repository is. No matter what, all you have to do is "apt-get upgrade" If there is a more current version of any of the ASL Asterisk programs, tools or diagnostics they will be installed. If you want to verify exactly what version of ASL Asterisk you are running you can simply connect to your running instance of Asterisk: "asterisk -r" (without the quotations) You will see: AllStarLink Asterisk Version 1.01 2/13/2018 GIT Version 004b9dd Copyright (C) 1999 - 2018 Digium, Inc. Jim Dixon, AllStarLink Inc. and others. Created by Mark Spencer Asterisk comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; type 'core show warranty' for details. This is free software, with components licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 and other licenses; you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type 'core show license' for details. ========================================================================= Connected to Asterisk GIT Version 004b9dd currently running on repeater (pid = 422) repeater*CLI> In this example: AllStarLink Asterisk Version 1.01 Dated: 2/13/2018 GIT Version 004b9dd What is GIT version? This points you to exactly the last change made to asterisk before it was built. In this case the commit on Feb 16, 2018.