Jitsi Meet
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@scooke said in Jitsi Meet:
I think what with the lockdown and all, having a solution like Kopano and just a link for others to join, would be wonderful.
Yes, I know. We have been flooded with requests over the past week, even doing some priorities development on a sfu (like the videobridge of jitsi) for some schools.
@avatar1024 said in Jitsi Meet:
What are the differences between Kopano and Jitsi...it seems to me the tech is similar, but one you need to install an account to use which is not as good (Kopano)
Yes, the general purpose is similar and in the end both require the additional setup of a turn service (Kopano customers can request access to a hosted turn service, which is included in the subscription). Kopano Meet has a newer more modern architecture (its also substantially younger than Jitsi, which as a company has been acquired and sold on a few times already). One of the main differences for the end user is that with Jitsi you need to install additional apps on your phone and on your desktop you need additional extensions for screensharing. Kopano Meet on the other hand is designed as a PWA, which means even though its a webpage it will offer itself to be installed as an app on devices supporting this (which is iOS, Chrome and Firefox on Android and Chrome, Firefox and Edge on the desktop). The installed app automatically refreshes if the code on the server is updated. For calling and screensharing native browser apis are used which means no need to install further software either.
Like I said guest access is just a matter of configuration, the app just has not been setup to do this automatically. The instructions for this are located at https://documentation.kopano.io/kopano_meet_manual/special_configuration.html#enabling-guest-users-for-meeting-rooms
Edit: if someone is interested in sponsoring the work needed to implement and test guest mode in the app you can reach me at felix@9wd.eu. I'll do my best to make the individual contributions as transparent as possible (or anonymous of the contributor prefers that).
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@yusf Agreed!
@fbartels Thanks for the info and for your work on thisIs there any news on the state of the Jitsi app?
And again, does anyone know what is the actual limitation of using the meet.jit.si domain? And would running Jitsi on our own Cloudron improve performance?
Many thanks
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@avatar1024 said in Jitsi Meet:
would running Jitsi on our own Cloudron improve performance?
Assuming enough resources are dedicated to it, then yes it should perform better than that shared free service.
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@avatar1024 Hi @avatar1024 , I just went through the install process for Jitsi Meet, thinking it would be different/better than Zoom or Kopano. However, I am not convinced it is. A few things: 1) The other users STILL need to download the Jitsi app to connect. I tried on an iPhone 6, an iPad, a Pixel phone, and Chrome on my Mac and every one needed to download the Jitsi app to connect. 1A) the Jitsi app is not intuitive. The user has to enter the full url of the chat not just the room name. 2) The install (self-installed using https://jitsi.org/news/new-tutorial-installing-jitsi-meet-on-your-own-linux-server/) leaves you with a Jitsi server that is wide open to the internet. ANYONE who finds the url can start their own chat. Switching this to a authentication approach is long and convulated and requires installing Proxody and some other apps and making another virtual host using yet another subdomain... reading https://community.jitsi.org/t/easiest-way-to-secure-jitsi-meet/21330/43 led me to think it was "easy" but I did not find it so. 3) the pixel, iPad (2018) and Mac connected fine... the iPhone 6 couldn't maintain a connection and the app crashed every time, so somehow only newer mobiles seem to work.
The only good thing I can say was the base install went fine, using a OpenVZ VPS with 2.5 GB ram. I wish I could say it is easier or better than Zoom or Kopano, but I haven't not found it so. Assuming that Kopano can allow guests to join with just a browser (and not an app like Zoom or Jitsi), and isn't wide open like Jitsi Meet is (without extra extra extra steps), then Kopano might be the dark horse of self-hosted group video chats.
A life lived in fear is a life half-lived
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This complexity of setting it up is precisely why we need Jitsi as a Cloudron app.
There are also mobile software that integrates a Jitsi client, such as Riot.
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Hi,
yes we need it now with the covid-29 crisis ! We have a lot of demands about it with organizations searching GAFAM video conferencing alternatives. Please add it in the app store ! Thanks !
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@nebulon I'm finding that for many of these chat apps the idea that promote the idea that "people can join so long as they have the room URL" are misleading because it isn't as simple as needing the URL... they end up needing the app too. I went and installed Jitsi Meet to see if it was true, and it wasn't. The four devices used all had to download the Jitsi Meet app. Maybe I'm the only one looking for a video chat solution that truly requires guests to have only the URL, but thus far Jitsi Meet and Zoom both need it. I am hoping that Kopano Meet doesn't, but as I've been reading about it it seems like a user needs to activate some other Turn service to allow guests from outside the network... still checking.
A life lived in fear is a life half-lived
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@scooke said in Jitsi Meet:
but as I've been reading about it it seems like a user needs to activate some other Turn service to allow guests from outside the network... still checking.
The admin always needs to configure a turn service, that is true for all webrtc based solutions (Jitsi, Nextcloud talk, ..). But once guest access is configured in Meet users do not need to install additional apps or extensions.
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@fbartels Well, that's good news, if you could get this solution up to speed I think you'll get ahead of the pack... For various reasons I really don't like the "just the link is needed" promises which then require the participants to download an app to actually make it work.
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@scooke Thank you for the reply. It is useful that you shared your experience. However as @yusf pointed out, if Jitsi was a Cloudron app then the set-up would be easy.
Now I'm not sure I agree with you on the usability, and this might be a matter of personal preference which I don't we should discussed back and forth on here. As long as you use a laptop, you indeed only need the URL with Jitsi and you do not need an app. So @nebulon is right on this. Only on a phone you need an app, and while the jitsi app is not perfect, it works fine. You do not need to enter the whole url, only room name works (by default it uses the meet.jit.si domain but you can change the server url in the settings to put your own). Personally, out of the other Free Software option out there, Jitsi stills seem the most mature, reliable and easy to use so it'd be a great addition to Cloudron (and indeed very needed currently).Do we know if anyone is working on this? (I wish I could contribute but I'm not a programmer sadly)
@jdaviescoates Thanks for the reply
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For jitsi to work properly, we would need a coturn instance on Cloudron, which unfortunately has to run on port 80/443 to work reliably on public wifis (other ports are often blocked there). So far we haven't found a solution to make turn work with our nginx reverse proxy, which also has to run on the same ports. If anyone finds a solution here, which we can try, I am happy to give it a shot.
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@nebulon damn, guess that means Jitsi wont be coming to Cloudron any time soon
wish I could help, but have no idea! -
@nebulon That is very unfortunate, but thank you for explaining these underlying issues. Do I understand it correctly that if there's a solution, the TURN server would need to be a part of the Cloudron software itself, not an app?
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@nebulon said in Jitsi Meet:
For jitsi to work properly, we would need a coturn instance on Cloudron, which unfortunately has to run on port 80/443 to work reliably on public wifis (other ports are often blocked there)
Perhaps an interim solution would be to use other ports? I'm mean, it'd be great if people could join using open public WiFi, but I think in many use cases Jitsi not working on such networks wouldn't be too much of an issue. Eg. Like right now the need is for people in covid_19 coronavirus lockdown using their own private WiFi to be able to use it.
I note @iqweb has managed to install a coturn server on the same VPS as their Cloudron, for use with Nextcloud Talk, could that be part of the solution to getting Jitsi working too? https://forum.cloudron.io/post/4207
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Before everyone jumps to conclusions
So far, @nebulon has been trying to make coturn to be part of the app itself. This is indeed quite hard.So, I think what this means is that we have to integrate the turn server into the platform code base itself. So, it would become an addon/service just like the databases and other things. And then nextcloud, jitsi, kopano meet etc can just use this coturn service. Integrating coturn into cloudron is not very hard but will require a new release of Cloudron.
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Thanks for the added clarity, @girish - certainly look forward to this and other apps such an addition would enable!
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@girish said in Jitsi Meet:
So, I think what this means is that we have to integrate the turn server into the platform code base itself. So, it would become an addon/service just like the databases and other things. And then nextcloud, jitsi, kopano meet etc can just use this coturn service. Integrating coturn into cloudron is not very hard but will require a new release of Cloudron.
That'd be totally awesome!
Which I guess is what we've come to expect from Cloudron
It also sounds like having a turn server service/ addon that can be used by nextcloud talk/ jitsi meet/ kopano meet etc, would be a much better solution anyway, so I'm actually really glad that making it part of the app is hard!
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Great thinking @girish! In addition to Nextcloud Talk, Jitsi Meet and Kopano, the Matrix app will also benefit from this.
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On the app packaging level, has there been efforts to include LDAP support? Iād like for Cloudron users to be the ones able to create rooms, then able to invite whoever: users and guests alike.
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LDAP seems to be supported out of the box in dockerized Jitsi Meet!
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Sounds like end to end encryption coming to jitsi soon (although also sounds like perhaps only for chromium/ chrome):
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Any news on a Jitsi app on Cloudron?
The Privacy Authority of The Netherlands published a overview of video-call apps (https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/nl/nieuws/keuzehulp-privacy-bij-videobel-apps) and here (https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/sites/default/files/atoms/files/keuzehulp_privacy_videobellen.pdf) you see that it looks like Jitsi is the best choice!
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@girish is there any news? Our experience with Kopano Meet was not succesfull and as mentioned above Jitsi is the best solution in this COVID-19 times.
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Iām also awaiting Jitsi. Maybe it would also make sense from a (Cloudron) marketing perspective? Like,
Ready to drop Zoom for something free, unlimited and safe? Host Jitsi Meet yourself in 10 clicks with Cloudron.
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No major news on this so far, unfortunately it is quite the beast to package with a lot of undocumented configuration options, even their own debian packaging scripts are a hit and miss in our experience. Surely it would be good to have and hopefully eventually we will get there.
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@nebulon Keep us posted for any aid you need in furthering this endeavor.
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Office topic: Jitsi gets integrated in the Brave Browser - https://www.ghacks.net/2020/05/27/brave-launches-brave-together-video-calling-in-latest-nightly-version/amp/
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+1 for Jitsi Meet Server on Cloudron
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+1 for Jitsi Meet Server on Cloudron
Especially with user manegement
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+1 for Jitsi Meet on Cloudron
I'm using Kopano and I don't find it to be as reliable for establishing connections as the public Jitsi server. I would far prefer to use my own machine though.
Is this being actively worked on? Can I help at all, say by testing?
Would it help if there was a small bounty for getting it working (if that is appropriate in this community)?
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We had postponed this a bit because Jitsi support on Firefox was spotty but that seems to be sorted out now - https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/issues/4758 . (Unrelated, but of course, with all the layoffs at mozilla, I bet it's going to regress more).
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I'd also +1 Jitsi Meet on Cloudron!! A big "thank you" to the maintainers
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Is there any update on this?
The COVID-19 pandemic is (almost everywhere) increasing and measures for working from home are again and/or still there. The public Jitsi service is overloaded so it's very very welcome after all these months to have a Cloudron version of Jitsi-server.
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+1
Just another vote in for this. I would love to implement this with my element and matrix instances already on Cloudron. Would be super helpful in these current times.
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@ericdrgn to actually +1 it you need to upvote the original post at the top of the thread
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Out of curiosity, is there any progress on adding this app?
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@yusf I am a web developer. Can I lend a hand at all?
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Hi @nebulon and @girish,
Is the jitsi-meet app still in the backlog and are there any more concrete plans with it?
Did I get it right that a TURN-server is already implemented as an integrated cloudron service?
Would it be possible to install jitsi-meet with docker manually next to cloudron and its apps (and use the TURN-server coming with cloudron, if it does)?
(I actually came here by looking for a (hassle free) way to get nextcloud and jitsi-meet running on a single vServer/VPS. - Do you think this is possible in general, at all?)Thanks!
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@hutzacharus said in Jitsi Meet:
Did I get it right that a TURN-server is already implemented as an integrated cloudron service?
Yes, but I think it still needs some work to get it right/ more usable, see this post by @girish https://forum.cloudron.io/post/23347
@hutzacharus said in Jitsi Meet:
Would it be possible to install jitsi-meet with docker manually next to cloudron and its apps (and use the TURN-server coming with cloudron, if it does)?
It's generally not a good idea to install other things alongside Cloudron.
@hutzacharus said in Jitsi Meet:
(I actually came here by looking for a (hassle free) way to get nextcloud and jitsi-meet running on a single vServer/VPS. - Do you think this is possible in general, at all?)
That'll be easy once Jitsi has been packaged, and it's still marked as a Work in Progress https://forum.cloudron.io/tags/wip
I'm not sure of the current status, but it doesn't look like there have been any related commits for 4 months:
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Thanks a lot, @jdaviescoates for the reply and the advice regarding separate installations!
I also saw the activity apparently halted at the jitis-app repo, that's why I was asking. But judging from the cross-linked bbb-thread, there seems to be work still going on in the direction of this app, so this is good news.However, here is a (possibly naive) thought (without any deeper understanding of the matter):
Since the main problem seems to be to get a TURN server running on the same instance as the other cloudron apps, and since a TURN-server is optional anyway, wouldn't it be possible to include the jitsi-meet app into the cloudron app repository without a TURN server and create an additional repository, say "cloudron_dedicated" or "cloudron_exclusive", with a collection of apps that can only be installed exclusively on a separate/dedicated server? This app repo could include, besides a TURN-server app, also BigBlueButton (which according to their docs also requires a dedicated server to run on) and possibly other apps as well. Does this make any sense? -
@hutzacharus said in Jitsi Meet:
Since the main problem seems to be to get a TURN server running on the same instance as the other cloudron apps
I'm not sure, but I don't think that is the main problem.
There is already a TURN addon running on the same instance. As I understand it it's just the the TURN addon needs to be better to support more ports, hence making it more usable.
@hutzacharus said in Jitsi Meet:
and since a TURN-server is optional anyway
It's not really optionally if you want to talk to people on other network (which is normally that case for the vast majority of video calls).
@hutzacharus said in Jitsi Meet:
wouldn't it be possible to include the jitsi-meet app into the cloudron app repository without a TURN server
I could be wrong, but I don't think it is TURN server issues that are holding up the packaging of jitsi (or BBB), just that is a complicated app that is hard to package (and in the case of BBB there isn't even a stable version that'll run on Ubuntu 18.04 yet).
@hutzacharus said in Jitsi Meet:
create an additional repository, say "cloudron_dedicated" or "cloudron_exclusive", with a collection of apps that can only be installed exclusively on a separate/dedicated server? This app repo could include, besides a TURN-server app, also BigBlueButton (which according to their docs also requires a dedicated server to run on) and possibly other apps as well. Does this make any sense?
I'm not sure it does!
At present there is no way for different instances Cloudrons on to connect and play nicely together, although as I understand it there are plans afoot for that (and yeah, for BBB especially it sounds like that would make sense because they recommend a dedicated server for that - although I've also heard of people running it fine on a VPS)
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@hutzacharus said in Jitsi Meet:
Is the jitsi-meet app still in the backlog and are there any more concrete plans with it?
It's in our plans. In fact, for many months now but we have been swamped with other things
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@girish Jitsi is an absolute must, please. It will make Cloudron perfect!
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I am using jitsi as well, if I could host this via cloudron that would be amazing.
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Any updates on jitsi meet?
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Jitsi Meet is an excellent suggestion and there has been an awful lot of extra work put into it lately. There is also:
https://jitsi.org/jitsi-videobridge/
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-videobridgeJitsi Nightlies
https://download.jitsi.org/unstable/Jitsi Docker
https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-guide-docker
