BigBlueButton - web conferencing system for on-line learning

[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.

[girish]

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

afaik girish and nebulon are aware of this but it's not a big priority right now. (Which I fully support)

Actually, I am just fixing this for 6.1. I am trying out https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/turn and hopefully that works. The main motivation for us is to move to using kopano meet internally and I suspect maybe this use of different port is what is causing many issues (which have been reported on this fourm). I hope the config there works because https://github.com/coturn/coturn/issues/43 was initially closed stating it was not possible (i.e turn requires a dedicated server to run on 443!)

[doodlemania2]

@girish That might also help nextcloud talk high perf backend too.

[BrutalBirdie]

@doodlemania2 ARG I think I read something about nextcloud talk not support turnservers with TLS?

"(D)TLS is currently not supported by Nextcloud Talk and does not have any real security benefit anyway. For more details see the changelog below." -- https://help.nextcloud.com/t/howto-setup-nextcloud-talk-with-turn-server/30794/93703

So be aware of this.

[robi]

What we really need then is a TURN server integrated with Nginx.

Doing a quick search I haven't found an extension for Nginx, but then I thought why not front the TURN server we have with Nginx as a proxy load balancer which can include port 80/443 and UDP ports.

This post goes into the configuration of something like that:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51566225/nginx-load-balancing-a-turn-server

@staff could easily adapt this to handle non HTTP traffic via the TURN server and the rest going to the Apps.

[girish]

@robi Yes, see the jitsi handbook link in my previous post.