You can be lsb compliant and kind to asterisk

Somehow looks like asterisk does not like a start
when it'sa already started. I never had any 
issues but read about it. It's safe to check 
status before running start.

Still need to work in asterisk restart upon
upgrades. And how to deal with monit for that.

debian/asterisk.init

@@ -64,8 +64,17 @@ fi
 # Use the LSB standar functions for services management
 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
 
+
+status() {
+        status_of_proc  "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && return 0 || return $?
+}
+
 case "$1" in
   start)
+	if status > /dev/null; then
+                echo "$DESC is already running. Use restart."
+                exit 0
+        fi
 	log_begin_msg "Starting $DESC: $NAME"
         if [ $AST_USER ] ; then
                 ASTARGS="-U $AST_USER"
@@ -95,7 +104,8 @@ case "$1" in
 	# "restart|force-reload" starts Asterisk and returns 0 even if Asterisk was stopped (as LSB expects).
 	;;
   status)
-       status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
+        status
+        exit $?
        ;;
   *)
 	N=/etc/init.d/$NAME