Common Issues

In this section we’re going to cover some common issues you may run into while compiling Asterisk, DAHDI, or LibPRI. Most of the issues you’ll run into have to do with missing dependencies. If that is the case, please review the section called “Software Dependencies” to make sure you’ve installed everything you need.

Note

Any time you install additional packages, you will need to run the ./configure script in your Asterisk source in order for the new package to be detected.

-bash: wget: command not found

This message means you have not installed the wget application, which is required for you to download packages from the Asterisk downloads site, for Asterisk to download sound files, or for DAHDI to download firmware for hardware.

Ubuntu CentOS 
$ sudo apt-get install wget$ sudo yum -y install wget

configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH

This means that the Asterisk configure script is unable to find your C compiler, which typically means you have not yet installed one. Be sure to install the gcc package for your system.

UbuntuCentOS 
$ sudo apt-get install gcc$ sudo yum install gcc

make: gcc: command not found

This means that the Asterisk configure script is unable to find your C compiler, which typically means you have not yet installed one. Be sure to install the gcc package for your system.

UbuntuCentOS 
$ sudo apt-get install gcc$ sudo yum install gcc

configure: error: C++ preprocessor “/lib/cpp” fails sanity check

This error is presented by the Asterisk configure script when you have not installed the GCC C++ preprocessor.

UbuntuCentOS 
$ sudo apt-get install g++$ sudo yum install gcc-c++

configure: error: *** Please install GNU make. It is required to build Asterisk!

This error is encountered when you have not installed the make application, which is required to build Asterisk.

UbuntuCentOS 
$ sudo apt-get install make$ sudo yum install make

configure: *** XML documentation will not be available because the ‘libxml2’ development package is missing.

You will encounter this error when the XML parser libraries are not installed. These are required by Asterisk 1.8 and later, since console documentation (e.g., when you run core show application dial on the Asterisk CLI) is generated from XML.

UbuntuCentOS 
$ sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev$ sudo yum install libxml2-devel

configure: error: *** termcap support not found

This error happens when you don’t have the ncurses development library installed, which is required by menuselect and for other console output in Asterisk.

UbuntuCentOS 
$ sudo apt-get install ncurses-dev$ sudo yum install ncurses-devel

You do not appear to have the sources for the 2.6.18-164.6.1.el5 kernel installed.

You will get this error when attempting to build DAHDI without having installed the Linux headers, which are required for building Linux drivers.

UbuntuCentOS 
$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`$ sudo yum install kernel-devel

E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?

If you encounter this error it’s likely that you forgot to prepend sudo to the start of the command you were running, which requires root permissions.