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Debian 12 Install

These instructions are for installing ASL3 on general purpose operating systems manually. For installation on Raspberry Pis, consider using the AllStarLink 3 Pi Appliance

Architecture Support

Currently, the project does not support armv7l/armhf platforms because all known uses of AllStarLink is on hardware which supports the Bookworm arm64 distribution such as Raspberry Pi 3, 4, 5, and Zero 2 W. If you have a platform that can use armv7l/armhf 32-bit packages only please file an issue at ASL3 on GitHub.

Asterisk/app_rpt on VMs/Cloud

Asterisk/app_rpt works fine on virtual machines in a cloud environment (often terms "VPS"). However Asterisk/app_rpt requires certain kernel modules to function properly and these are provided by ASL3 in the dkms-dahdi package. There are, however, two situations where Asterisk/app_rpt will not work:

  1. When the VPS provider is using a customized Debian using the "cloud" kernel. If the output of uname -r refers to the kernel as something similar to "6.1.0-12-cloud-x86_64" then you cannot use that OS for ASL because it lacks the capabilities build the needed kernel modules. You must install a standard Debian 12 image which is probably a "custom install" for your provider. Ask your VPS provider for support.

  2. When the virtual machine is using an emulated Linux kernel. Microsoft Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) is a good example of this situation. The kernel is custom and not related to the operating system distribution. Asterisk/app_rpt cannot work in this type of setup.

System Requirements

The following are the system requirements for an ASL3 system:

Minimum Required Recommended
CPU/Platform 1 CPU, 64-bit, x86_64 (amd64) or ArmV8 (arm64) 2 - 4 CPUs depending on the number of hardware devices connected to the system
Memory 512M 2 G
Storage 8G (for OS + software) -

UEFI / SecureBoot

For x86_64/amd64 platforms, it is recommended to disable UEFI and SecureBoot if you do not need those features and your platform supports a "legacy BIOS" mode. While they are a good security feature, given that AllStarLink v3 requires building a kernel module, it adds likely-undesired complexity for most ASL users. If you need or want to use UEFI/SecureBoot see the advanced topic document.

OS Install

You’re going to start off by installing a new Debian 12 OS on your PC computer or virtual machine. There are instructions all over the internet that detail how to install Debian 12. Briefly you:

  • Download and boot the Debian 12 net install .iso
  • Take most of the defaults
  • Do not install a Debian desktop environment
  • Do install web server (if you plan to use Allmon3 or other web management packages)
  • Do install SSH server

Note: When setting up users and passwords you may be prompted to set the password for the 'root' account. If you do not provide a password then the root account will be disabled and the system's initial user account (that will requested on the next screen) will be given the power to become root using the "sudo" command. If you do provide a password then the "sudo" command will not be installed on your system. Our recommendation is to NOT set the 'root' password and rely on using the "sudo" command only when needed.

Once your Debian system is up and running, install the ASL package repositories:

cd /tmp
wget https://repo.allstarlink.org/public/asl-apt-repos.deb12_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i asl-apt-repos.deb12_all.deb
sudo apt update

ASL3 Packages Install

Now the packages may be installed and updated directly from the AllStarLink package repository:

sudo apt install asl3

This will install the complete ASL3 system including all of the Asterisk app_rpt-enabled packages (asl3-asterisk, asl3-asterisk-config, asl3-asterisk-doc, asl3-asterisk-modules), the Dahdi kernel module (dahdi-dkms, dahdi-linux, dahdi-source), the needed development tools to keep the kernel module updated, and the asl3-menu.

It's important to note that the new packaging format will allow for easy, automated updates of kernels through the standard apt upgrade process. There is no longer any reason to hold back kernel upgrades with the ASL3 packaging.

The following packages are also available and may be installed separately:

Allmon3 - The updated web interface to AllStarLink which includes strong support for mobile devices and screens of all sizes and shapes. See the Allmon3 page for details.

ASL3 Nodelist Updater - An updated node service to maintain a local copy of the AllStarLink node database (rpt_extnodes). While, in general, the preferred method of node lookup is DNS, some installations with slow Internet or DNS servers that have very long cache timers may benefit from this method of node lookup instead. Install with sudo apt install asl3-update-nodelist.

Node Configuration

Next step is to configure the node settings. It is recommended to use the asl-menu command to manage the configuration for common use cases. See ASL3 Menu for details. YouTuber Freddie Mac has a nice ASL3 RPi installation and configuration video. See the part where the asl-menu is shown.

Docker

Docker support will be coming in the near future.