Asterisk Not Running

What Causes This Error

The Asterisk process has stopped or crashed. This causes complete failure of all call processing — no outbound calls can be placed, no inbound calls can be received, and all active calls are dropped. Common causes include memory exhaustion, segmentation faults, codec issues, and failed Asterisk upgrades.

How to Fix It

• 1 Check Asterisk process: ps aux | grep asterisk

• 2 If not running, check logs for crash reason: tail -200 /var/log/asterisk/messages

• 3 Check system memory: free -h (Asterisk crashes on OOM)

• 4 Restart Asterisk: sudo systemctl restart asterisk

• 5 If restart fails, check for stale lock file: rm -f /var/run/asterisk/asterisk.pid then restart

• After restart, verify it’s running: asterisk -rx ‘core show version’

• Check trunk registrations: asterisk -rx ‘sip show registry’

How to Prevent It

Implement Asterisk crash monitoring with automatic restart (systemd watchdog or supervisord). Set up memory alerts at 80% threshold. Schedule regular server reboots during low-traffic windows. Keep Asterisk version pinned to avoid unplanned upgrades.

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