In addition to other bug fixes, this release candidate fixes several crash issues, and resolved some remaining issues related to call pickup and call
parking that were discovered after the release of Asterisk 1.4.23. In addition, issues related to chan_iax2, and regressions introduced to the ‘h’ extension have been resolved.

This release marks the first inclusion of the release summary files which will be included in all future releases. The purpose is to give a clearer overview of the changes that have taken place between the current and previous release, which issues have been closed, and which community members were involved with issue submission, code commits, and issue testing. Additionally, a diffstat at the end of the file shows at a brief glance the number of changes made to files between the previous and current releases.

For a summary of the changes in this release, please see the release summary:

http://svn.digium.com/view/asterisk/tags/1.4.24/asterisk-1.4.24-summary.html?view=co

For a full list of changes in this release, please see the ChangeLog:

http://svn.digium.com/view/asterisk/tags/1.4.24/ChangeLog?view=co

The following list of bugs were resolved with the participation of the community, and this release would not have been possible without your help!

* Paging application crashes asterisk
- Closes issue #14308. Submitted by bluefox. Tested by kc0bvu. Patched by seanbright.

* Crash in VoiceMailMain if hangup occurs before a valid mailbox number is entered (IMAP only)
- Closes issue #14473. Submitted by, and patch provided by dwpaul.

* Incoming Gtalk calls fail
- Closes issue #13984. Submitted by, tested, and patched by jcovert.

* Realtime peers are never qualified after ‘sip reload’
- Closes issue #14196. Submitted by, tested, and patched by pdf.

* SIP Attended Transfer fails
- Closes issue 14611. Submitted by, tested, and patched by klaus3000.

Thank you for your continued support of Asterisk!

This is a set of coordinated releases intended to begin the transition from Zaptel to DAHDI; for the reasons why this is being done, please see:

http://blogs.digium.com/2008/05/19/zaptel-project-being-renamed-to-dahdi/

The list of packages released today includes:

• zaptel 1.2.27
• zaptel 1.4.12
• dahdi-linux 2.0.0-rc3
• dahdi-tools 2.0.0-rc2
• dahdi-linux-complete 2.0.0-rc3+2.0.0-rc2
• asterisk 1.4.22-rc3
• asterisk 1.6.0-rc4
• asterisk-addons 1.6.0-rc1

All of these packages are available on http://downloads.digium.com in their respective directories. Detailed information about each package release is included below.

=== zaptel-1.2.27 ===

This will be the final release of Zaptel made from the 1.2 release branch. This release includes a number of bug fixes and other improvements, most notably compatibility with the 2.6.26 and 2.6.27
kernels and a fix for wctdm driver (for TDM400P cards) that corrects a problem introduced in 1.2.26 that caused FXO ports to not properly recognize incoming calls.

The change log for this release is here:

http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/zaptel/releases/ChangeLog-1.2.27

=== zaptel-1.4.12 ===

This will be the final release of Zaptel made from the 1.4 release branch. This release includes a number of bugs fixes and other improvements, including the changes that are listed above for the Zaptel
1.2.27 release.

In addition, there are two major changes in this release:

– Support for the Digium TC400B transcoder card has been completely rewritten, and the API used by Asterisk (or any other application) to the card has been changed significantly. The result of this work is that the transcoder interface is more reliable and stable, and it supports variable-sized G.729 frames (including G.729B silence detection frames). However, that means that any Asterisk user using a TC400B who wants to upgrade to this version of Zaptel must *also* upgrade their version of
Asterisk to one of the releases included in this announcement; older versions of Asterisk will not be able to use the transcoder support in this release of Zaptel.

– To help users make the transition to DAHDI (and especially if they need to move back to Zaptel for some reason), this version of Zaptel contains installation steps that will *uninstall* the important parts of DAHDI if they are present on the system during the ‘make install’ step. This will allow a user to ‘switch back’ to Zaptel from DAHDI without having to manually uninstall any portions of DAHDI.

The change log for this release is here:

http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/zaptel/releases/ChangeLog-1.4.12

=== dahdi-linux-complete-2.0.0-rc3+2.0.0-rc2 ===

This release combines dahdi-linux-2.0.0-rc3 and dahdi-tools-2.0.0-rc2 into a single download, one-package installation process, so that users who are installing DAHDI for the first time don’t have to download and install the dahdi-linux and dahdi-tools packages separately.

=== dahdi-linux-2.0.0-rc3 ===

This is the first release candidate of the DAHDI Linux kernel modules package, which replaces the kernel modules components of Zaptel. It contains all the functionality of Zaptel 1.4 plus many improvements, but also has some old (generally unsupported) functionality from Zaptel removed, including (but not limited to):

• Support for Linux 2.4.x kernels
• Support for devfs dynamic device filesystems
• The ‘torisa’ and ‘wcusb’ drivers

Information on upgrading from Zaptel to DAHDI can be found in the included UPGRADE.txt file, which can also be read here:

http://svn.digium.com/view/dahdi/linux/tags/2.0.0-rc3/UPGRADE.txt?view=co

The change log for this release is here:

http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/dahdi-linux/releases/ChangeLog-2.0.0-rc3

=== dahdi-tools-2.0.0-rc2 ===

This is the first release candidate of the DAHDI userspace tools package, which replaces the userspace components of Zaptel. It contains all the functionality of Zaptel 1.4 plus many improvements.

Information on upgrading from Zaptel to DAHDI can be found in the included UPGRADE.txt file, which can also be read here:

http://svn.digium.com/view/dahdi/tools/tags/2.0.0-rc2/UPGRADE.txt?view=co

The change log for this release is here:

http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/dahdi-tools/releases/ChangeLog-2.0.0-rc2

=== asterisk-1.4.22-rc3 ===

This release candidate includes a large number of bug fixes and also is the first release of Asterisk 1.4 that includes support for DAHDI, the package that is replacing Zaptel. This version of Asterisk can be built against *either* Zaptel or DAHDI, but since Zaptel 1.4.12 is the last release of Zaptel 1.4, users are encouraged to transition to DAHDI as soon as they can, so that they will be able to continue to receive bug fixes and other improvements.

Information on how the transition from Zaptel to DAHDI affects this Asterisk release can be found in the included Zaptel-to-DAHDI.txt file, which can also be read here:

http://svn.digium.com/view/asterisk/tags/1.4.22-rc3/Zaptel-to-DAHDI.txt?view=co

The change log for this release is here:

http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/asterisk/releases/ChangeLog-1.4.22-rc3

=== asterisk-1.6.0-rc4 ===

This release candidate marks the transition of the Asterisk 1.6 release branch from ‘beta’ status to ‘release candidate’ status, signifying that it is nearing final release. This version of Asterisk contains a large number of enhancements and improvements over Asterisk 1.4, which can be found in the included CHANGES file, and read here:

http://svn.digium.com/view/asterisk/tags/1.6.0-rc4/CHANGES?view=co

*All* users who install this version of Asterisk are strongly encouraged to read the UPGRADE.txt file to learn about changes that affect compatibility with previous versions of Asterisk; this file can also be read here:

http://svn.digium.com/view/asterisk/tags/1.6.0-rc4/UPGRADE.txt?view=co

Information on how the transition from Zaptel to DAHDI affects this Asterisk release can be found in the included Zaptel-to-DAHDI.txt file, which can also be read here:

http://svn.digium.com/view/asterisk/tags/1.6.0-rc4/Zaptel-to-DAHDI.txt?view=co

The change log for this release is here:

http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/asterisk/releases/ChangeLog-1.6.0-rc4

=== asterisk-addons-1.6.0-rc1 ===

This release candidate marks the transition of the Asterisk-Addons 1.6 release branch from ‘beta’ status to ‘release candidate’ status, signifying that it is nearing final release. This version of
Asterisk-Addons contains a Bluetooth device channel driver called chan_mobile, as well as a number of smaller improvements to existing modules.

*All* users who install this version of Asterisk-Addons are strongly encouraged to read the UPGRADE.txt file to learn about changes that affect compatibility with previous versions of Asterisk-Addons; this
file can also be read here:

http://svn.digium.com/view/asterisk-addons/tags/1.6.0-rc1/UPGRADE.txt?view=co

The change log for this release is here:

http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/asterisk/releases/ChangeLog-addons-1.6.0-rc1

=== ===

Thank you for your continued support of the Asterisk project!

Check out the article here.

Switchvox is an amazing packaged PBX system that is based on Asterisk. A team from Digium did an extensive analysis of the products available in this area, and concluded that the Switchvox package was superior in terms of features as well as ease of use.

Check out the Switchvox features and some screenshots.

Part of the plan is to work with the Switchvox team to take parts of the technology they have developed, and contribute it back to the open source community. As Mark Spencer noted in this interview,

“So as a contrast right, look at what Fonality did. They bought an open source project [trixbox/asterisk@home] and then turned it into a proprietary product. What we are trying to do is go the other way. Take something that started out as a fully proprietary product and to try to leverage that to bring some additional technologies into open source. That’s an interesting angle that I don’t think anyone has covered.”

This is an extremely exciting time for the world of Asterisk. This will have a great impact on our ability to bring the power of Asterisk to the mass market, while also continuing to drive the development of open source telephony. Everyone wins.

More details will be available in the near future as we approach Digium Asterisk World.

The open source Asterisk digital PBX (public branch exchange) platform “is the most interoperable, flexible and feature rich PBX in the market today,” asserted Chad Agate, cofounder and CEO of NeoPhonetics.

The article mentions Asterisk’s powerful architecture that lets it fit an extremely diverse set of needs in the telecom market.

Asterisk “allows for transparent switching between all supported interfaces, allowing it to tie together a diverse mixture of telephony systems into a single switching network. It can act as a media gateway for any legacy or VoIP enabled connection available today,” Agate explained.

Asterisk-based VoIP applications and appliances have been downloaded by business phone system users more than 4.4 million times, implying millions of users, according to Digium, whose founder, Mark Spencer, started what has grown to become Asterisk’s globe-spanning open source project collaboration.

It feels great to have our name up on this list with other influential projects such as the Linux kernel, Firefox, Wikipedia, Apache, and more.