FreePBX 17 on Debian 12 ARM64 - Installer Script

FreePBX Installation / Upgrade
1

Hi all,

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on an automated installer to get FreePBX 17 running on Debian 12 ARM64:

I’ve been running and testing this in production across ARM64 VPS instances, Raspberry Pi boards, and repurposed Android TV boxes running Armbian. It has been rock solid so far.

How it works & handling Asterisk

Since Sangoma only provides Asterisk packages for amd64, running FreePBX 17 on ARM64 usually means compiling everything manually. Here is how the project handles it:

  • Pre-built tarball via GitHub Actions: A GitHub workflow automatically compiles Asterisk for ARM64 and uploads the compiled tarball to the repository releases. The installer simply downloads and deploys it.

  • The update_asterisk script: When a new Asterisk build is released, running update_asterisk downloads the updated tarball from the repo, stops services, replaces the binaries and modules while preserving your configuration, and restarts Asterisk cleanly.

  • Handling APT updates: Asterisk packages are prevented from being pulled from Sangoma’s upstream APT repos to avoid missing-package errors during system updates. This keeps Asterisk managed via the script/tarball while Debian packages and FreePBX modules update normally through apt and the GUI.

I’m really happy with the stability so far, and hopefully it saves time for anyone looking to run FreePBX 17 on ARM64 hardware.

Feel free to test it out, report bugs, or submit PRs on GitHub.

Cheers!

  • Slythel.
2

That’s awesome!

I really wanted sth like this, since the raspbx project became stale with bullseye.