BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning

[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.

[nebulon]

For the email address, we use admin@server.local in such a case. Hopefully it is possible to change this later by the user, just like the pre-setup password?

[BrutalBirdie]

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

For the email address, we use admin@server.local in such a case. Hopefully it is possible to change this later by the user, just like the pre-setup password?

Yes e-mail and password can be changed.
And I will use admin@server.local.

Thanks for the input.

[BrutalBirdie]

@nebulon Changes pushed.

[jdaviescoates]

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

@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.

Ah, yes. I actually realised Greenlight is just a front end because it's what we as the front end for the https://meet.coop BBB server.

I was just secretly hoping that because you'd posted about it in this thread about BBB itself, you were working on a package that included BBB itself too!

[BrutalBirdie]

Hey @luckow can you share your insights about BBB as App in Cloudron?

Referring to this conversation:

@jdaviescoates said in Cloudron 5.6.2:

@BrutalBirdie said in Cloudron 5.6.2:

I remember a conversation about BBB as App not being a good idea.

It could possibly be that BBB recommends bare metal servers because freeswitch (which it depends on) works best like that?

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

But at the same time I have also heard of people using BBB on a VPS without any real issue.

I'd definitely love to have a BBB app!

And I think that once 6.0 with it's unified dashboard (whatever that exactly turns out to be) is out it'll also be easier to have a whole separate VPS dedicated to just Cloudron + BBB, which would help too I imagine.

[cyberfreakde]

Is the development still going on? I host my church meetings in bbb so I need it like 3 times a week. I currently have a extra server for that which costs a lot. Would be nice to have it in Cloudron directly

I found a container directly from BBB https://hub.docker.com/r/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton
Although they say not suitable for production use, I would still love it use it. Did someone try it? I can't get it to run on docker.