The Asterisk spool directory contains several subdirectories, including dictate/, meetme/, monitor/, outgoing/, system/, tmp/, and voicemail/ (see Figure 3-4). Asterisk monitors the outgoing directory for text files containing call request information. These files allow you to generate a call simply by moving the correctly structured file into the outgoing/ directory.

Call files being placed into the outgoing/ directory can contain useful information, such as the Context, Extension, and Priority where the answered call should start, or simply, the application and its arguments. You can also set variables and specify an account code for Call Detail Records. More information about the use of call files is presented in Chapter 9.

The dictate/ directory is the default location the Dictate() application looks for files.

The meetme/ directory is the location where MeetMe() conference recordings are saved.

Recordings from either one-touch recording (the w and W flags to the Dial() application), the MixMonitor(), or Monitor() applications are stored in the monitor/ directory.

system/ is used by the System() application for temporary storage of data.

The tmp/ directory is used, funny enough, to hold temporary information. Certain applications may require a place to write files to before copying the complete files to their final destinations. This prevents two processes from trying to write to and read from a file at the same time.

All voicemail and user greetings are contained within the voicemail/ directory. Extensions configured in voicemail.conf that have been logged into at least once are created as subdirectories of voicemail/.