Before You Install
For updated documentation and instructions to install the newest version of BigBlueButton, see http://docs.bigbluebutton.org/.
Note: The packaging is for Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit only. We no longer support 32-bit packaging for 0.81.
The requirements are
- Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit
- 4 GB of memory (8 GB is better)
- Quad-core 2.6 GHZ CPU (or faster)
- Ports 80, 1935, 9123 accessible
- Port 80 is not used by another application
- 500G of free disk space (or more) for recordings
- 100 Mbits/sec bandwidth (upstream and downstream)
In addition to the above, the locale of the server must be en_US.UTF-8. Furthermore, the contents of /etc/default/locale must contain the single line LANG="en_US.UTF-8". You can verify this as below.
$ cat /etc/default/locale
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
If you don't see LANG="en_US.UTF-8", then do the following
sudo apt-get install language-pack-en
sudo update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
and the logout and log back into your session. After the above, do cat /etc/default/locale again and verify you see only the single line LANG="en_US.UTF-8". Note: if you see an additional line LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8, then remove the setting for LC_ALL before continuing.
Also, check that you are running under 64-bit.
$ uname -m
x86_64
You should see x86_64. You should also not have any version of ruby installed.
$ ruby -v
-bash: ruby: command not found
If you have a version of ruby installed (such as ruby 1.8) uninstall the packages first. BigBlueButton has been tested with ruby 1.9.2, which will be installed in the steps below.
Installing BigBlueButton 0.81
These instructions assume you do not have a previous version of BigBlueButton installed.
If you are upgrading from BigBlueButton 0.80 to 0.81, start here.
1. Update your server
The following steps will install 0.81.
You first need to give your server access to the BigBlueButton package repository.
In a terminal window, copy and paste the following commands.
```
Add the BigBlueButton key
wget http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bigbluebutton.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
Add the BigBlueButton repository URL and ensure the multiverse is enabled
echo "deb http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid_dev_081/ bigbluebutton-lucid main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list ```
Next, ensure that you have lucid multiverse in your sources.list. Do the following.
$ grep "lucid multiverse" /etc/apt/sources.list
If you have the lucid multiverse in your sources.list, you should see
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse
If you don't see the deb line for lucid multiverse, execute the following line to add this repository to sources.list.
echo "deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
Before proceeding further, do a dist-upgrade to ensure all the current packages on your server are up-to-date.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
If you've not updated in a while, apt-get may recommend you reboot your server after dist-upgrade finishes. Do the reboot before proceeding to the next step.
2. Install LibreOffice
BigBlueButton uses LibreOffice to convert uploaded MS office documents to PDF. LibreOffice does a far better job of converting documents than the default OpenOffice packages in Ubuntu 10.04.
First, we'll install a stub package for openoffice. This will serve as a placeholder for BigBlueButton's dependency on OpenOffice..
wget http://bigbluebutton.googlecode.com/files/openoffice.org_1.0.4_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i openoffice.org_1.0.4_all.deb
If you get an error in the above, check if you have openoffice.org-core installed. If so, remove all the existing openoffice.org pacakges and try to install the above stub package again.
Next, we'll install LibreOffice
``` sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:libreoffice/libreoffice-4-0 sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libreoffice-common sudo apt-get install libreoffice ```
3. Install Ruby
The record and playback infrastructure uses Ruby for the processing of recorded sessions.
Check if you have a previous version of ruby install.
dpkg -l | grep ruby
If you already have ruby installed, check it's version
~$ ruby -v
ruby 1.9.2p290 (2011-07-09 revision 32553)
If the version of ruby does not match the above, uninstall it before continuing.
Download the following pre-build ruby package.
wget https://bigbluebutton.googlecode.com/files/ruby1.9.2_1.9.2-p290-1_amd64.deb
This next install command will give you an error about dependencies not found.
sudo dpkg -i ruby1.9.2_1.9.2-p290-1_amd64.deb
To resolve the dependencies, enter
sudo apt-get install -f
After the package installs, run the following two commands to setup the paths to the ruby executable.
``` sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/ruby ruby /usr/bin/ruby1.9.2 500 \ --slave /usr/bin/ri ri /usr/bin/ri1.9.2 \ --slave /usr/bin/irb irb /usr/bin/irb1.9.2 \ --slave /usr/bin/erb erb /usr/bin/erb1.9.2 \ --slave /usr/bin/rdoc rdoc /usr/bin/rdoc1.9.2 sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gem gem /usr/bin/gem1.9.2 500
```
Run the following command to check that ruby is now installed.
$ ruby -v
ruby 1.9.2p290 (2011-07-09 revision 32553)
And that gem is now installed.
$ gem -v
1.3.7
Finally, to make sure you can install gems, run the commands below to install a test gem. (BigBlueButton does not need the gem hello; rather, we're just testing to makes sure gem is working properly).
$ sudo gem install hello
Successfully installed hello-0.0.1
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for hello-0.0.1...
Installing RDoc documentation for hello-0.0.1...
Make sure you can execute the above three commands without errors before continuing with these instructions. If you do encounter errors, please post to bigbluebutton-setup and we'll help you resolve the errors.
You might be wondering why not use the default Ruby packages for Ubuntu 10.04? Unfortunately, they are out of date. Thanks to Brendan Ribera for the above script for installing the latest ruby on Ubuntu 10.04 as a package.
4. Install ffmpeg
BigBlueButton uses ffmpeg to process video files for playback. To install ffmpeg, create a file called install-ffmpeg.sh and copy and paste in the following script.
``` sudo apt-get install build-essential git-core checkinstall yasm texi2html libvorbis-dev libx11-dev libxfixes-dev zlib1g-dev pkg-config
LIBVPX_VERSION=1.2.0 FFMPEG_VERSION=2.0.1
if [ ! -d "/usr/local/src/libvpx-${LIBVPX_VERSION}" ]; then cd /usr/local/src sudo git clone http://git.chromium.org/webm/libvpx.git "libvpx-${LIBVPX_VERSION}" cd "libvpx-${LIBVPX_VERSION}" sudo git checkout "v${LIBVPX_VERSION}" sudo ./configure sudo make sudo checkinstall --pkgname=libvpx --pkgversion="${LIBVPX_VERSION}" --backup=no --deldoc=yes --default fi
if [ ! -d "/usr/local/src/ffmpeg-${FFMPEG_VERSION}" ]; then cd /usr/local/src sudo wget "http://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-${FFMPEG_VERSION}.tar.bz2" sudo tar -xjf "ffmpeg-${FFMPEG_VERSION}.tar.bz2" cd "ffmpeg-${FFMPEG_VERSION}" sudo ./configure --enable-version3 --enable-postproc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx sudo make sudo checkinstall --pkgname=ffmpeg --pkgversion="5:${FFMPEG_VERSION}" --backup=no --deldoc=yes --default fi ```
Next, run the commands
chmod +x install-ffmpeg.sh
./install-ffmpeg.sh
After the script finishes, check that ffmepg is installed by typing the command ffmpeg -version. You should see the following
$ ffmpeg -version
ffmpeg version 2.0.1
built on Sep 1 2013 02:02:28 with gcc 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5.1)
configuration: --enable-version3 --enable-postproc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx
libavutil 52. 38.100 / 52. 38.100
libavcodec 55. 18.102 / 55. 18.102
libavformat 55. 12.100 / 55. 12.100
libavdevice 55. 3.100 / 55. 3.100
libavfilter 3. 79.101 / 3. 79.101
libswscale 2. 3.100 / 2. 3.100
libswresample 0. 17.102 / 0. 17.102
5. Install BigBlueButton
We're now ready to install BigblueButton. Type
sudo apt-get install bigbluebutton
This single command is where all the magic happens. This command installs all of BigBlueButton components with their dependencies. The packaging will do all the work for you to install and configure your BigBlueButton server.
If you are behind a HTTP Proxy, you will get an error from the package bbb-record-core. You can resolve this by manually installing the gems.
If you get an error message
...... Error: FreeSWITCH didn't start
you can ignore it as we'll do a clean restart of all the components in step 7.
Next, we've updated the desktop sharing applet with a new certificate. You can download the JAR file using the following command
wget http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/files/bbb-deskshare-applet-0.8.1.jar
and then update the existing applet with the following command
``` sudo cp bbb-deskshare-applet-0.8.1.jar /var/www/bigbluebutton/client/bbb-deskshare-applet-0.8.1.jar
```
6. Install API Demos
To interactively test your BigBlueButton server, you can install a set of API demos.
sudo apt-get install bbb-demo
You'll need the bbb-demo package installed if you want to join the Demo Meeting from your BigBlueButton server's welcome page. This is the same welcome page you see at dev081 demo server.
Later on, if you wish to remove the API demos, you can enter the command
sudo apt-get purge bbb-demo
7. Do a Clean Restart
To ensure BigBlueButton has started cleanly, enter the following commands:
sudo bbb-conf --clean
sudo bbb-conf --check
The --clean option will clear out all the log files for BigBlueButton. The --check option will grep through the log files looking for errors.
The output from sudo bbb-conf --check will display your
current settings and, after the text, " Potential problems described
below ", print any potential configuration or startup problems it has
detected.
Upgrading BigBlueButton 0.81
If you have already installed an earlier version of 0.81, to upgrade to the latest version
``` sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo bbb-conf --clean sudo bbb-conf --check ```
If sudo bbb-conf --check warns that you are running an
older version of ffmpeg (you need version 2.0.1 installed), re-install
ffmpeg and enter the following commands:
sudo bbb-conf --clean
sudo bbb-conf --check
Upgrading from BigBlueButton 0.80
The packaging is for Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit only. We no longer support 32-bit packaging for 0.81. This means you cannot upgrade the BigBlueButton 0.80 virtual machine (VM) to 0.81 as the VM is 32-bit. Recommend you create a new Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit server. See Ubuntu Virtual Machines.
If you are upgrading from BigBlueButton 0.80, please note if you've made any custom changes to BigBlueButton, such as
- applied custom branding
- modified /var/www/bigbluebutton/client/conf/config.xml
- modified /var/www/bigbluebutton-default/index.html
- modified API demos
- modified settings to FreeSWITCH configurations
- etc ...
then you'll need to backup your changes before doing the following upgrade, after which you can reapply the changes.
The following steps will update a BigBlueButton 0.80 server to 0.81.
1. Update your server
First, update the package URL to point to the new BigBlueButton release.
echo "deb http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid_dev_081/
bigbluebutton-lucid main" | sudo tee
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list
Next, update the package database on your server.
sudo apt-get update
2. Switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice
LibreOffice does a far better job of converting documents than the default OpenOffice packages in Ubuntu 10.04.
First, to avoid issues, stop the openoffice headless init script.
sudo /etc/init.d/bbb-openoffice-headless stop
Now we'll install a stub package for openoffice. This will serve as a placeholder for BigBlueButton's dependency on OpenOffice.
wget http://bigbluebutton.googlecode.com/files/openoffice.org_1.0.4_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i openoffice.org_1.0.4_all.deb
And then we tell apt to clear out the old openoffice packages:
sudo apt-get autoremove
Next, we'll install libreoffice ``` sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:libreoffice/libreoffice-4-0 sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libreoffice-common libreoffice ```
Note that you should not restart the openoffice headless init script, since the version from 0.80 may not correctly recognize libreoffice. The 0.81 installation process will start it later.
3. Update red5
You must update red5 first before the other BigBlueButton packages. To update red5, do the following:
sudo /etc/init.d/red5 stop
sudo apt-get install red5
If you get prompted to update the the configuration file `/etc/init.d/red5'
Configuration file `/etc/init.d/red5'
==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
What would you like to do about it ? Your options are:
Y or I : install the package maintainer's version
N or O : keep your currently-installed version
D : show the differences between the versions
Z : background this process to examine the situation
The default action is to keep your current version.
*** red5 (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ?
Respond with Y and press Enter.
4. Install ffmpeg
BigBlueButton uses ffmpeg to process video files for playback. To install ffmpeg, create a file called install-ffmpeg.sh and copy and paste in the following script.
``` sudo apt-get install build-essential git-core checkinstall yasm texi2html libvorbis-dev libx11-dev libxfixes-dev zlib1g-dev pkg-config
LIBVPX_VERSION=1.2.0 FFMPEG_VERSION=2.0.1
if [ ! -d "/usr/local/src/libvpx-${LIBVPX_VERSION}" ]; then cd /usr/local/src sudo git clone http://git.chromium.org/webm/libvpx.git "libvpx-${LIBVPX_VERSION}" cd "libvpx-${LIBVPX_VERSION}" sudo git checkout "v${LIBVPX_VERSION}" sudo ./configure sudo make sudo checkinstall --pkgname=libvpx --pkgversion="${LIBVPX_VERSION}" --backup=no --deldoc=yes --default fi
if [ ! -d "/usr/local/src/ffmpeg-${FFMPEG_VERSION}" ]; then cd /usr/local/src sudo wget "http://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-${FFMPEG_VERSION}.tar.bz2" sudo tar -xjf "ffmpeg-${FFMPEG_VERSION}.tar.bz2" cd "ffmpeg-${FFMPEG_VERSION}" sudo ./configure --enable-version3 --enable-postproc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx sudo make sudo checkinstall --pkgname=ffmpeg --pkgversion="5:${FFMPEG_VERSION}" --backup=no --deldoc=yes --default fi ```
Next, run the commands
chmod +x install-ffmpeg.sh
./install-ffmpeg.sh
5. Update BigBlueButton
Next, update BigBlueButton itself
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
You'll be asked to update the nginx definition for BigBlueButton.
Configuration file `/etc/nginx/sites-available/bigbluebutton'
==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
What would you like to do about it ? Your options are:
Y or I : install the package maintainer's version
N or O : keep your currently-installed version
D : show the differences between the versions
Z : background this process to examine the situation
The default action is to keep your current version.
*** bigbluebutton (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ?
Enter 'Y' to continue the upgrade. Next, we'll need to trigger an update to the !FreeSWITCH configuration as the dependencies of the packages have changed. To trigger the update, we'll remove the old package
sudo apt-get remove bbb-freeswitch
Enter 'Y' to remove the old package, and then re-apply the new packages. this will trigger a download and install of the new bbb-freeswitch package.
Next, install the newer version of FreeSWITCH.
sudo apt-get install bbb-freeswitch=0.81ubuntu55
and then re-install the remaining BigBlueButton packages.
sudo apt-get install bigbluebutton
Next, to enable recording of webcams for record and playback (webcams were not recorded by default in 0.80) edit /usr/share/red5/webapps/video/WEB-INF/red5-web.xml and change line 49 to show
<property name="recordVideoStream" value="true"/>
To ensure all configuration files have the correct hostname/IP, do
sudo bbb-conf --setip <ip_or_hostname>
where
is the IP or hostname for your BigBlueButton server.
Use the BigBlueButton configuration utility to do a clean restart (clean out log files) check for any installation errors.
sudo bbb-conf --clean
sudo bbb-conf --check
6. Updating the recording scripts
The installation of 0.81 will install a new record and playback script called presentation. This replaces the older record and playback script slides in 0.80.
After upgrade, you'll still have the older record and playback scripts installed.
$ dpkg -l | grep slides
ii bbb-playback-slides 0.80ubuntu94 BigBluebutton playback of slides and audio
If you didn't have any recordings in 0.80, you can simply remove the old script.
sudo apt-get autoremove
If you do have recordings, you'll want to keep this package to enable
users to view the older recordings; however, prevent BigBlueButton from
processing newer recordings using slides (again, you'll want to use the newer presentation scripts), you can disable the older scripts by doing the following.
mkdir -p /var/tmp/process /var/tmp/publish
sudo mv /usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/process/slides.rb /var/tmp/process
sudo mv /usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/publish/slides.rb /var/tmp/publish
Troubleshooting
If you encounter an error at one of the installation/upgrade steps,
Run sudo bbb-conf --check
We've built in a BigBlueButton configuration utility, called bbb-conf, to help you configure your BigBlueButton server and trouble shoot your setup if something doesn't work right.
If you think something isn't working correctly, the first step is enter the following command.
sudo bbb-conf --check
This will check your setup to ensure the correct processes are running, the BigBlueButton components have correctly started, and look for common configuration problems that might prevent BigBlueButton from working properly. For example, here's the output on one of our internal servers:
If you see text after the line ** Potential problems described below **, then bbb-conf it may be warnings (which you can ignore if you've change settings) or errors with the setup.
Dependencies are not met
For some VPS installations of Ubuntu 10.04, the hosting provider does not give a full /etc/apt/source.list. If you are finding your are unable to install a package, try replacing your /etc/apt/sources.list with the following
``` # #
deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx - Release amd64 (20100427)]/ lucid main restricted
deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx - Release amd64 (20100427)]/ lucid main restricted
See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to
newer versions of the distribution.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted
Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
distribution.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates main restricted deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates main restricted
N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any
review or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid universe deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid universe deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates universe deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates universe
N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu
security team.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse
Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports'
repository.
N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-backports main restricted universe multiverse
Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's
'partner' repository.
This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the
respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users.
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu lucid partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu lucid partner
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security main restricted deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security main restricted deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security universe deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security universe deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security multiverse deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security multiverse ```
then do
sudo apt-get update
and try installing BigBlueButton again.
Change the BigBlueButton Server's IP
A common problem is the default install scripts in for BigBlueButton configure it to list for an IP address, but if you are accessing your server via a DNS hostname, you'll see the 'Welcome to Nginx' message.
To change all of BigBlueButton's configuration files to use a different IP address or hostname, enter
sudo bbb-conf --setip <ip_address_or_hostname>
For more information see bbb-conf options.
Unable to install gems
The install script for bbb-record-core needs to install a number of ruby gems. However, if you are behind a HTTP_PROXY, then the install script for bbb-record-core will likely exit with an error. This occurs because the bash environment for bbb-record-core will not have a value for HTTP_PROXY.
You can resolve this by manually installing the gems using the following script. ```
!/bin/bash
export HTTP_PROXY=""
gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY builder -v 2.1.2 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY diff-lcs -v 1.1.2 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY json -v 1.4.6 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY term-ansicolor -v 1.0.5 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY gherkin -v 2.2.9 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY cucumber -v 0.9.2 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY curb -v 0.7.15 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY mime-types -v 1.16 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY nokogiri -v 1.4.4 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY open4 -v 1.3 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY rack -v 1.2.2 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY redis -v 2.1.1 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY redis-namespace -v 0.10.0 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY tilt -v 1.2.2 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY sinatra -v 1.2.1 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY vegas -v 0.1.8 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY resque -v 1.15.0 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY rspec-core -v 2.0.0 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY rspec-expectations -v 2.0.0 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY rspec-mocks -v 2.0.0 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY rspec -v 2.0.0 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY rubyzip -v 0.9.4 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY streamio-ffmpeg -v 0.7.8 gem install --http-proxy $HTTP_PROXY trollop -v 1.16.2 ```
Once all the gems are installed, you need to tell BigBlueButton install scripts bbb-record-core to not try to install the gems anymore. Edit the file /var/lib/dpkg/info/bbb-record-core.preinst and comment out the line
```
gem install $gem
```
Then run
sudo apt-get install -f
