This HOWTO details installing AsteriskNOW on an HP t5720 thin client. I assume you're using a Windows system to follow along. If you are using Mac OS or Linux you are probably smart enough to translate these steps for your tools.

The HP t5720 is a good choice for a low-power, silent PBX. It has more than enough horsepower to handle Asterisk and any other PBX related goodies you might want. You can find a t5720 on eBay for under $200.

Unlike many embedded solutions, the t5720 is powerful enough to run any of the full-blown x86 Asterisk distributions, such as Trixbox and AsteriskNOW. However, its local storage is flash-based. As such, it must be set up in a way to minimize writes. I chose to move most filesystems to an external 2.5“ hard drive, connected via USB.

Other options may also yield good results. Using the optional PCI expansion kit, you could add an eSATA card and use an external eSATA drive instead of USB. You might even be able to mount certain filesystems using ATA-over-Ethernet or a similar SAN solution. Let me know if you use another solution, and I'll add the details to this HOWTO.

In order to install AsteriskNOW, you'll need the following.

• An HP t5720.
• A USB flash drive or USB CD-ROM drive.
• If using the USB flash drive approach:
  • Daemon Tools (or similar)
  • physdiskwrite
• A CD burner if you plan on using the USB CD-ROM drive approach
• The latest 32-bit AsteriskNOW ISO

The t5720 doesn't have any removable storage, so you'll need to boot from a USB device, such as CD-ROM or flash drive. I'll describe the flash drive option.

NOTE: If you use a USB CD-ROM instead, just burn the ISO and skip to somefoo.

The AsteriskNOW ISO contains several files that you need to extract. Use Daemon Tools to mount the ISO and note the drive letter it is assigned.

Also extract the physdiskwrite archive.

The AsteriskNOW CD includes an image for creating a bootable USB disk. It resides at \\diskimage.img.

Open a command prompt and cd to the directory containing physdiskwrite.exe. Unplug your USB stick if it is already plugged in. Execute physdiskwrite.exe and make note of the disks it lists. You do not want to write the image to them.

C:\> cd \path\to\physwrite\
C:\path\to\physwrite\> physdiskwrite.exe TODO: check this for correctness

Next, plug in your USB drive. Execute physdiskwrite.exe again and select the new physical drive.

: imagefile path, physdiskwrite output

C:\path\to\physwrite\> physdiskwrite.exe FIXME:imagefile.img
FIXME: physdiskwrite output

Once physdiskwrite.exe finishes, you have a bootable USB flash drive.

Your new bootable USB drive will get the t5720 up and running, but the installer needs access to a lot of extra files from the AsteriskNOW CD. You have several options for this.

• Second USB drive: If you have a spare USB drive large enough to hold the AsteriskNOW ISO, simply copy the ISO to it.
• HTTP: If you have a computer on which you can run an HTTP server, you can copy the contents of the CD to a HTTP-accessible directory.

Plug your USB boot drive into the t5720 and power it on. During power-on, hit F10 to access the BIOS setup. Make sure that “USB” is the first boot device listed under “Advanced BIOS Configuration”.

NOTE: I've noticed some issues when removing/adding USB devices with the t5720 connected to power. As such, whenever I swapped USB devices I also unplugged the power adapter.

If all goes well, you will be greeted with a GRUB boot menu. Enter linux expert at the prompt and hit enter.