Elastix, the most popular choice at VOIP telephony server as well as free IP PBX.

From the version 5, Elastix is not free actually. A license key is needed to activate your server. But, don’t worry !

Elastix old version (up to 4 version) was completely free for unlimited extensions/phones. So, I’m going to setup an old version in this tutorial.

Old version of Elastix setup in these days is really tough. Because you can not download Elastix old version software from the official Elastix site (www.elastix.org) and also you might get the system update problem. But, I will guide you to install an old version with system update setup, step by step in this tutorial.

 

1) To get started, click here to download an Elastix old version ISO image to burn on CD/DVD, and burn it to DVD

 

2) Insert the Elastix image DVD disk to your cd/dvd drive

 

3) Start the Server/PC to begin installation

 

4) Press Enter to start installation

 

5) Choose English as your Elastix server language, and press Enter to go next

 

6) Select your keyboard layout and hit Enter

 

7) Press Enter/Yes to initialize disk partition

 

8) Press your keyboard’s Up arrow key to select “Remove all partitions on selected drives and create default layout.” then press your keyboard’s Right arrow key to select Yes and press Enter

 

9) Press your keyboard’s right arrow to select Yes to remove all old partitions and press Enter

 

10) Press your keyboard’s right arrow to select No to keep default partition layout

 

11) Press Yes/Enter to configure network

 

12) Enable IPV4 network support and press OK

 

13) Provide your real IP address details (provided by your ISP) to access Elastix server. You can also select DHCP if you are in a local network

Note: Please do not use the same IP address which is listed in the above image, this is for example only. You must use “your” Internet provider’s (ISP’s) given IP address details.

 

14) Give a hostname to your Elastix server

 

15) Press down arrow, select your timezone, then press right arrow and press OK

 

16) Provide a root password to access your CentOS Linux system server

 

17) Provide MySQL database password and press Enter

again provide the same MySQL password and press Enter

 

18) Provide a login password

 

19) Installation done. Now you can login to your Elastix from another computer by visiting your real IP address

 

20) Open a browser (eg. Firefox) and visit your Elastix IP address

If notice, click “Enable TLS 1.1”

Click “Advanced”

Click “Add Exception”

Click “Confirm Security Exception”, and you are done.

 

21) As the Elastix 2.4.0 version is based on Linux CentOS 5.9 version, the CentOS 5 was officially unsupported from March 31, 2017.
So, we need to stop the system update, so that we can use Elastix old version for life.

Login to Elastix admin panel on Firefox browser, and click Updates

 

22) Disable all repository/mirror-list and save settings

 

23) Disable online update of PBX

 

24) Use command line tool, login to your Elastix base (CentOS Linux System) as root by using PuTTy. If you are unfamiliar about basic Linux command please click here to learn the startup command of Linux and PuTTy uses.

 

Run some commands in PuTTy command line tools.

Install nano:

yum -y install nano

Disable updater helper agent and also disable portknock:

service elastix-updaterd stop
chkconfig elastix-updaterd off

service elastix-portknock stop
chkconfig elastix-portknock off

Open NTP (Network Time Protocol) file to add Google time server.

nano /etc/ntp.conf

Add time.google.com server address above the ntp pool list.

server time.google.com

Save and exit the file. (Press “Ctrl+x” and then type “y” and then press “Enter”)

Open Cronjob file to add time-sync job after reboot:

nano /etc/crontab

Insert a line of time-sync code at the end of the cronjob lines:

@reboot /bin/sleep 180 && ntpdate time.google.com

Exit from PuTTy.

 

25) Reboot the server.

* We can always restart or shutdown the Elastix from admin panel.

 

Make sure you have open incoming port UDP 5060-5061 and UDP 10000-20000 on your firewall in order to Elastix works.

 

Congrats ! we have completed the Elastix free PBX installation done. Configure your extensions and Enjoy !

Click here to learn how to forward conditional call from Elastix.

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