Page 489 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

APPENDIX D

Configuration Files

This appendix contains a reference to the configuration files not covered
in the previous appendices. If you are looking for VoIP channel config-
urations, refer to Appendix A. For a dialplan reference, you’ll want to
use Appendix B.

A configuration file is required for each Asterisk module you wish to use. These .conf
files contain channel definitions, describe internal services, define the locations of other
modules, or relate to the dialplan. You do not need to configure all of them to have a
functioning system, only the ones required for your configuration. Although Asterisk
ships with samples of all of the configuration files, it is possible to start Asterisk without
any of them. This will not provide you with a working system, but it clearly demon-
strates the modularity of the platform.
If no .conf files are found, Asterisk will make some decisions with respect to modules.
For example, the following steps are always taken:

• The Asterisk Event Logger is loaded, and events are logged
to /var/log/asterisk/event_log.
• Manager actions are registered.
• The PBX core is initialized.
• The RTP port range is allocated from 5,000 through 31,000.
• Several built-in applications are loaded, such as Answer(), Background(), GotoIf(),
NoOp(), and Set().
• The dynamic loader is started; this is the engine responsible for loading modules
defined in modules.conf.
This appendix starts with an in-depth look at the modules.conf configuration file. We’ll
then briefly examine all the other files that you may need to configure for your Asterisk
system.

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