Page 256 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

bindaddr = 0.0.0.0
[oreilly]
secret = notvery
;deny=0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
;permit=209.16.236.73/255.255.255.0
read = system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user
write = system,call,log,verbose,command,agent,user
In the [general] section, you have to enable the service by setting the parameter enabled
= yes. You will need to reload the Manager in order to have this change take effect
(module reload manager from the Asterisk console). The TCP port defaults to 5038.
Next, you create a section for each user that will authenticate to the system. For each
user, you will specify the username in square brackets ([ ]), followed by the password
for that user (secret), any IP addresses you wish to deny access to, any IP addresses you
wish to permit access to, and the read and write permissions for that user.

It is very important to understand that other than a clear text password
and the ability to restrict IP addresses, there is no security of any kind
on the Manager interface. If you are running Manager on an untrusted
network (or have any other complex needs), you should consider using
David Troy’s excellent AstManProxy to handle all of your connections
to the manager API.

Connecting to the Manager Interface

It is important to keep in mind that the Manager interface is designed to be used by
programs, not fingers. That’s not to say that you can’t issue commands to it directly—
just don’t expect a typical console interface, because that’s not what Manager is for.
Commands to Manager are delivered in packages with the following syntax (lines are
terminated with CR+LF): †
Action: <action type>
Key 1: Value 1
Key 2: Value 2
etc ...
Variable: Value
Variable: Value
etc...
For example, to authenticate with Manager (which is required if you expect to have
any interaction whatsoever), you would send the following:

† Carriage Return followed by Line Feed. This is popularly achieved by pressing the Enter key on the keyboard,
but there are differences across various OS platforms and programming languages, so if you are having trouble
with commands to the interface, it may be worth noting the exact character combination that is required. At
the time of writing, Wikipedia had a respectable writeup on this concept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Newline).

228 | Chapter 10: Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI) and Adhearsion