Help: Asterisk 13 Custom Call Progress Tone Configuration

I’m running Asterisk FreePBX 13.0.190.7 on a RPI2 Model B. It is working well; it handles my GV VoIP and a Lenny script (ultimate telemarketer torture chamber). I’m impressed with the low cost and fantastic features.

I have a special application where I need Asterisk to play a custom disconnect tone when SIP extensions hang up on calls to one of the trunks (a PSTN line handled by a Cisco SPA8800 FXO/FXS adapter).

I edited indications.conf and changed several entries to see if I can influence the call progress tones. In my experimentation with editing the file I discovered two things:

  1. After reloading indications.conf (CLI: config reload indications.conf) the call progress tones do not change.

  2. Restarting asterisk overwrites my edits and restores the indications.conf file to its original state. Specifically, I use Country Indication Tones = United States in the admin->Advance-settings. So the tones are restored to the North American format.

In my searching I found many discussion on altering the call progress tones by editing the indications.conf file. I also read that the edits will be overwritten by Asterisk 13 in a reload. So I am lost on how to make the edits work as intended and remain permanent.

BTW, ideally only the PSTN line would have the custom call progress tone upon disconnected SIP calls. More to the point, can the call progress tone be configured in the dial plan for the trunk line? If that is not possible then no worries, it would be Ok if all SIP extensions heard the same custom disconnect tone.

  • Thomas

Did you try the indications_custom.conf file? That would be my first guess.

Did you try the indications_custom.conf file? That would be my first guess.

Thanks for the reply. My Asterisk 13 installation did not have a indications_custom.conf. So I checked online to see if it is supported; I found nothing about the indications_custom file, but proceeded anyway.

I created the file (in the same directory as indications.conf), added some tone entries for testing, and reloaded. That did not work so I rebooted. Either way, asterisks does not load the file. Are you sure it is supported? Can you provide a link on using indications_custom.conf?

  • Thomas

It was a guess. To find out if it should work, look in the indications.conf file and see if it includes the _custom file.

That was the first thing I checked. There are no includes in the indication.conf file. But despite that, I still tried out the custom file without success.

Hopefully there is a way to do this without changing the source code and recompiling; I want to stick with the stock code.

EDIT: I found an old FreePBX feature request (ticket FREEPBX-2938 dated July 2008) where someone asked for custom indications. Unfortunately the developers did not agree it was needed, so the request was closed without implementation. That’s the only mention of doing what I need that I have found, so it looks like I’m SOL.

But I can see how it would be useful (beyond my special situation). For example, if a FreePBX system served callers from different countries then the call progress tones could be chosen based on the trunk used to process the call (or some other rule) . This would make the calls feel a bit more like home.

  • Thomas