Securing Your Asterisk Server, Part 1 - page 3

The Importance of Passwords

The Nano text editor commands are displayed on the screen when you open it; to get more help hit ^G, which means the Control key plus the letter g, lowercase. Don't bother trying to make it a capital G, even though it is displayed that way. The Nano man page (*man nano*) may be helpful.

Just to keep it interesting, some commands do require using the Shift key, like the command to navigate to a specific line number, which is is ^_, or Control Shift Underscore.

Commands like "M-Y" mean Alt key plus y. M stands for Meta key. Why not just say Alt key? On old Sun systems the Meta was a key marked with a diamond, and on Macintosh it's the Command key. On modern systems some users prefer to use a custom keyboard mapping, so the Meta key is wherever they choose to put it. But for most of us, it's the Alt key.

ARI (Asterisk Recording Interface) Password

# nano -w /var/www/html/recordings/includes/main.conf

On line 53, change the admin password within the quotes:

$ari_admin_password = "ari_password";

Hit ^w to search for "ari_password", or ^_ to go directly to line 53.

If you're thinking "Um, storing passwords in plain text is not a good idea," you are correct. But that's the way it is for now, so guard your root password and Asterisk server well.

Flash Operator Panel (FOP) password

Close out the /var/www/html/recordings/includes/main.conf file with ^X, then hit Y to save your changes. Then:

# nano -w /var/www/html/panel/op_server.cfg

Down near the end of the file, change the password on this line:

;security_code=passw0rd

MeetMe Password

Exit Nano and run this Asterisk@Home command:

# passwd meetme

System Mail password

Use this command:

# passwd admin

A2Billing password

Go to http://[your-Asterisk-IP]/a2billing and log in with "root" and "myroot". Go to Administrator - Show Administator to change both the default user passwords.

Sugar CRM Password

Click "CRM" on the Asterisk@Home splash page. Login with "admin" and "password," then click "My Account" on the upper right to set a new password.

Come back next week to learn how to finish locking down Asterisk@Home.

Resources

• Asterisk@Home
• My very own Linux Cookbook is designed for beginning-to-intermediate Linux system administrators and users.