Editing Config Files

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To modify your node beyond the basic settings of nodesetup.sh, you'll need to manually edit the config files. Of course, you'll need to know the user ID and password of your AllStarLink server. You also want to understand the Structure of Config Files before you start.

Linux CLI Editors

For quick and simple changes the built-in Linux editors are the way to go.

  • vi is pretty much the default editor on most linux distros. Learn it, love it.
  • vim is an improved version of vi with plugin support and many more features. To install:
apt-get -y install vim
  • nano is easier to learn and preferred by many.

GUI Editors

Many folks prefer a GUI editor and file transfer client over the Linux vi and nano editors. If you need to do a lot of copy and paste these are much easier. Here are some of the many clients out there.

For Windows:

  • WinSCP is a popular file transfer and editor client. See | Using WinSCP Topic on Community.
  • Putty is not an editor but you'll need it. It is the SSH and Telnet client.

For Mac:

Location of Config Files

Nearly all of the files you'll need to edit are in /etc/asterisk

Warnings

There are other ftp/sftp gui's like filezilla. To use this program for example, it does not have a built-in editor. If you install this on a windows machine and use a windows editor, know that the way windows systems handle text files is different. Mainly with they way a linefeed and carrage-return linefeed is inserted into the file. This is something you will not visually see unless you feed the file into something like Notepad++ and use the option 'reveal all codes'.

While 'most times' you will not notice any issues while only editing .conf files, do not use windows editors on system files such as crontab etc. You likely will not like the results. However, there are windows based editors that will handle this correctly or can if is set to handle it correctly. Investigate before you find yourself in need of help as you will never see anything wrong with the file. Any internal editor will be just fine and WinSCP is a exelent choice. If using Filezilla on a linux system, choose 'KATE' or similar to edit your files from within the program and all will be fine.