BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning

[jdaviescoates]

Adding the words Big Blue Button to this thread so it can be found if people search for that (like I just did)

[nebulon]

Apparently their support for Ubuntu 18.04 is coming along https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bbb-install/issues/37

[fair]

Would love to see support for this in cloudron, I've had great experiences with BBB, vps seems to be fine, although the developers really do recommend iron.

[jdaviescoates]

@fair yeah I'd like BBB on Cloudron even more than Jitsi Meet. It's more of a complete Zoom replacement (and has quite a few nice features Zoom doesn't have too).

I think the main thing stopping the Cloudron team from working on packaging it is that at present it won't run on Ubuntu 18.04. Once that is sorted hopefully they'll prioritise it!

[jdaviescoates]

@jdaviescoates said in BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning:

I think the main thing stopping the Cloudron team from working on packaging it is that at present it won't run on Ubuntu 18.04.

Although I also note that the recommended minimum requirements for BBB in production include running it on a bare metal server:

For a server intended for production, we additionally recommend:

500G of free disk space (or more) for recordings
250 Mbits/sec bandwidth (symmetrical) or more
Dedicated (bare metal) hardware
A hostname (such as bbb.example.com) for setup of a SSL certificate
IPV4 and IPV6 address

Why do we recommend a bare metal server? BigBlueButton uses FreeSWITCH for processing of incoming audio packets and FreeSWITCH works best in a non-virtualized environment (see FreeSWITCH recommended configurations).

https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/2.2/install.html#minimum-server-requirements

So it might be that our best hope of scalable video conferencing on Cloudron is Nextcloud Talk High Performance Backend

[mehdi]

@jdaviescoates After reading the arguments about why they recommend a bare-metal server ( on https://freeswitch.org/confluence/display/FREESWITCH/Performance+Testing+and+Configurations#PerformanceTestingandConfigurations-RecommendedConfigurations ), it seems to me that running it in cloudron (that means in a container) if cloudron itself is installed on a bare metal machine would be perfectly acceptable, as the kernel and its clock are shared between the host and containers.

[jdaviescoates]

@mehdi thanks. I've also seen this post https://forum.meet.coop/t/communitybridge/145/3?u=jdaviescoates which would seem to suggest it can work quite well on a VPS too

[jdaviescoates]

@jdaviescoates said in BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning:

I think the main thing stopping the Cloudron team from working on packaging it is that at present it won't run on Ubuntu 18.04. Once that is sorted hopefully they'll prioritise it!

It's getting close! Builds of BigBlueButton 2.3-dev are ready for testing on Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit, see https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/dev/dev23.html

[ei8fdb]

Hi all, is there any update on a BBB app? I've been using Kopano, but I'm not liking it too much.

[fbartels]

Hi @ei8fdb,

@ei8fdb said in BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning:

I've been using Kopano, but I'm not liking it too much.

You've mentioned in another topic that you are working in UX design. I would be very interested to learn why you are "not liking it too much". You can reach me through feedback at kopano dot com.

[jdaviescoates]

@ei8fdb said in BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning:

Hi all, is there any update on a BBB app?

I'm assuming there wont be any progress until there is a stable 2.3 release which runs on ubuntu 18.04. Packaging a Cloudron app before then wouldn't really be possible because Cloudron needs ubuntu 18.04.

[ei8fdb]

@fbartels I will indeed. Apologies - my comment was unintentionally cryptic. I will reply with a longer explanation during the week.

[BrutalBirdie]

I am currently working on the greenlight Cloudron App for BigBlueButton.
So far the basic functionality is working fine but the ldap-auth is giving me trouble.

Right now the /app/code/bin/start script writes these variables

sed -i -e "s/LDAP_SERVER=.*/LDAP_SERVER=$CLOUDRON_LDAP_SERVER/g" /app/data/.env \
&& sed -i -e "s/LDAP_PORT=.*/LDAP_PORT=$CLOUDRON_LDAP_PORT/g" /app/data/.env \
&& sed -i -e "s/LDAP_BASE=.*/LDAP_BASE=$CLOUDRON_LDAP_USERS_BASE_DN/g" /app/data/.env \
&& sed -i -e "s/LDAP_BIND_DN=.*/LDAP_BIND_DN=$CLOUDRON_LDAP_BIND_DN/g" /app/data/.env \
&& sed -i -e "s/LDAP_PASSWORD=.*/LDAP_PASSWORD=$CLOUDRON_LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD=/g" /app/data/.env \
&& sed -i -e "s/LDAP_METHOD=.*/LDAP_METHOD=plain/g" /app/data/.env \
&& sed -i -e "s/LDAP_UID=.*/LDAP_UID=cn/g" /app/data/.env \
&& sed -i -e "s/LDAP_AUTH=.*/LDAP_AUTH=simple/g" /app/data/.env \
&& sed -i -e "s/LDAP_FILTER=.*/LDAP_FILTER=\(\&\(objectclass=user\)\(\|\(username=%uid\)\(mail=%uid\)\)\)/g" /app/data/.env \
&& sed -i -e "s/LDAP_ATTRIBUTE_MAPPING=.*/LDAP_ATTRIBUTE_MAPPING=uid=uid;name=displayname;email=mail;nickname=givenName;/g" /app/data/.env

But the LDAP Login fails.

INFO: [af608168-79eb-41e2-818c-1e514f0306bd] method=POST path=/auth/ldap format=html controller=SessionsController action=ldap status=302 duration=17.26 view=0.00 db=0.71 location=https://greenlight.stage.gzevd.de/ldap_signin host=greenlight 
INFO: [70994248-8131-4f51-bfdb-db159292bca0] method=GET path=/ldap_signin format=html controller=SessionsController action=ldap_signin status=200 duration=21.65 view=15.03 db=0.86 host=greenlight 

Maybe someone can help out?

I just pushed my work here: https://git.cloudron.io/BrutalBirdie/greenlight-app
ps: Please ignore my .gitlab-ci.yml this is for my own gitlab for deploying and testing the App.

EDIT:
Thanks @nebulon
The LDAP_UID was wrong. Has to be username
And the Filter can be deleted.
Pushed.

[jdaviescoates]

@BrutalBirdie this is great, thanks!

I'm assuming you're using BigBlueButton 2.3-alpha-2 as the basis for this?

[luckow]

@BrutalBirdie Great news. So greenlight (as one of different other frontends for BigBlueButton) can be used for videoconferencing & user management. While BBB is installed on a different VM or bare metal. And we can use the built in TURN server on Cloudron. Top!

[BrutalBirdie]

I'm assuming you're using BigBlueButton 2.3-alpha-2 as the basis for this?

@jdaviescoates the Greenlight App is just the front end for BigBlueButton.
As @luckow mentioned BBB can be installed anywhere and Greenlight is just the front end which connects to a specific BBB instance or cluster to provide a UI etc.

[BrutalBirdie]

I would like someone to review my greenlight-app.
Just heads up this is my first app for Cloudron so I expect some issues but I will be happy to fix and learn from them.

[doodlemania2]

@girish - can you mark this as WIP for testing?

[nebulon]

I took a brief look at the app and overall it appears to work. Thanks a lot!

Some things to improve:

• I was not sure how to login with the pre-setup admin, since I didn't know the admin email address
• The tests need also test admin login
• The tests need some code cleanup
• Since it is only the webfrontend as far as I can tell, the icon has to somehow reflect this
• The postinstall docs need to mention the fact that the backend has to be adjusted to not use the default test backend

[BrutalBirdie]

@nebulon said in BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning:

I took a brief look at the app and overall it appears to work. Thanks a lot!

Some things to improve:

• I was not sure how to login with the pre-setup admin, since I didn't know the admin email address
• The tests need also test admin login
• The tests need some code cleanup
• Since it is only the webfrontend as far as I can tell, the icon has to somehow reflect this
• The postinstall docs need to mention the fact that the backend has to be adjusted to not use the default test backend

• The Admin E-Mail address is the Mail FROM Address aka. CLOUDRON_MAIL_SMTP_USERNAME variable from e-mail addon also noted in the POSTINSTALL.md. As far as I am aware of I can not write the POSTINSTALL.md dynamically to display the env CLOUDRON_MAIL_SMTP_USERNAME.
  So either I have to do a better job to explain how to get the E-Mail address from Terminal or the log or use a static e-mail address.
  What would be the status quo to for this type of issue?
• Will add the test for admin login as well (above issue again, hmm so static admin e-mail would be better?)
• Understandable
• Greenlight has no own Icon sadly, I would suggest the BBB Icon but in Green?
• Will add that.

Cheers.