BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning

[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.

[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)