[How-to] Install FreePBX 15 on CentOS 8

Owned by Kelli Higdon
Last updated: Mar 06, 2024
4 min read

 

READ FIRST

Manual installations of FreePBX is considered an EXPERTS ONLY exercise. This method of installation is enough to get CORE functionality of FreePBX. Non-commercial modules may not function as expected or detailed in the Wiki's. Certain modules and features may require additional software to be installed and configured on the server.

**** COMMERCIAL MODULES CANNOT BE INSTALLED ON THIS OS ****

For Asterisk 16 you must enable app_macro in make menuselect

 

Install Centos 8

Initial System Setup

You MUST run all of these commands as the root user!

Disable selinux

sed -i 's/\(^SELINUX=\).*/\SELINUX=disabled/' /etc/sysconfig/selinux sed -i 's/\(^SELINUX=\).*/\SELINUX=disabled/' /etc/selinux/config

reboot, and verify the selinux status by running 'sestatus'. It should say:

SELinux status: disabled

Update Your System

dnf -y update dnf -y group install "Development Tools"

Add the Asterisk User

Firewalld Basic Configuration

You must open port 80 so that you can access the administration interface

Install Additional Required Dependencies

Install php7.2

Install nodejs

Enable and Start MariaDB

You must have MariaDB running for freepbx to operate normally.  It must start automatically, and be running continuously.

Now that our MariaDB database is running, we want to run a simple security script that will remove some dangerous defaults and lock down access to our database system a little bit

The prompt will ask you for your current root password. Since you just installed MySQL, you most likely won’t have one, so leave it blank by pressing enter. Then the prompt will ask you if you want to set a root password. Do not set a root password. We secure the database automatically, as part of the install script.  Apart from that you can chose yes for the rest. This will remove some sample users and databases, disable remote root logins, and load these new rules so that MySQL immediately respects the changes we have made.

Enable and Start Apache

FreePBX uses the Apache web server, so this must be started and running.

Install Legacy Pear requirements

Install and Configure Asterisk

Download Asterisk source files.

Compile and Install jansson

Compile and install Asterisk

You will be prompted at the point to pick which modules to build. Most of them will already be enabled, but if you want to have MP3 support (eg, for Music on Hold), you need to manually turn on 'format_mp3' on the first page.

After selecting 'Save & Exit' you can then continue

Set Asterisk ownership permissions.

Install and Configure FreePBX

A few small modifications to Apache.

Download and install FreePBX.

That's it!

Reboot the system and start using FreePBX.  Open up your web browser and connect to the IP address or hostname of your new FreePBX server.  You will see the Admin setup page, which is where you set your  'admin' account password, and configure an email address to receive update notifications. 

We hope you enjoy using FreePBX 15!

Automatic Startup

Please note you need to set up FreePBX to start asterisk (and it's associated services) on bootup. You can view an example systemd startup script here.

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