BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning

[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.

[jdaviescoates]

@cyberfreakde I don't think anyone has started to package BBB for Cloudron yet as there isn't a stable BBB release that runs on Ubuntu 18.04 yet...

[cyberfreakde]

@jdaviescoates But if it is a docker container? I think it doesn't matter.

[jdaviescoates]

2.3-alpha-4 is out:

https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton/releases/tag/v2.3-alpha-4

[jdaviescoates]

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

I think it doesn't matter.

I think it probably does matter, otherwise @staff likely would've started trying to package BBB already (rather than waiting for a stable version that runs on 18.04)

[girish]

Technically speaking, @cyberfreakde is correct. It doesn't matter because container can even contain centos. But to keep our maintenance burden low, we only use Ubuntu 18 in containers. Mentally, this is the equivalent of having to maintain app packages for different distributions.

[robi]

@girish bbb-install.sh supports installing BigBlueButton 2.3 and coturn on Ubuntu 18.04.

[BrutalBirdie]

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

@girish bbb-install.sh supports installing BigBlueButton 2.3 and coturn on Ubuntu 18.04.

Yes but 2.3 is not stable.

TL;DR
It's not time yet. ~ Sound warning!

I also talked to Fred Dixon some weeks before last Christmas about the state of 2.3.

Here a quote from him, which I gather from my memory (all statements without guarantee):

We will not give a release date because we only ship a functional product and don't work with due dates.
This only sets false expectations and leads to bad code.

I can share this 2.3-draft where you could get some information about current state of 2.3.

---

Lets talk BBB and turnserver.

There is a turn addon default by Cloudron.
Problem is, its a docker container cloudron/turn:1.1.0 running on port:

listening-port=3478
tls-listening-port=5349

This turnserver is kinda useless.
In short terms, a app is needed for turn, so the turn can listen to port 80/443.
Why?
Company / School with a firewall.
Only Ports 80,443,22,993,587 outbound is allowed. (Everything else blocked).
The turn server should now act like as a MITM (big empasis - like a) so this client can use webRTC via turn.
But since it's running on port 5349/3478 its useless.

afaik girish and nebulon are aware of this but it's not a big priority right now. (Which I fully support)
Also BBB takes a lot of resources. For running small sessions 2-5 People or even 10 it could work out.
But since BBB is running alongside other Apps this could lead to quite a problem if to many people turn on their webcam.