Getting asterisk to start properly on Debian is pretty simple. I had a hard time with various methods described elsewhere, though.
In a terminal session:
sudo nano /etc/rc.local
# add the following BEFORE the last line (exit 0):
mkdir /var/run/asterisk
chown asterisk:asterisk /var/run/asterisk
/usr/sbin/amportal start
Exact configuration details: Ubuntu 6.06 (kernel 2.6.15-26-server) within VMWare server on Xeon hardware. Asterisk 1.2.9.1 Freepbx 2.1.3
Posted by Pat McKay 
