Setup development environment

A few considerations before we start:

• Required OS: Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic)
• This is intended to run on containers/local-machine setup, such as LXC (don't use it in Production servers)
• This process is similar to BBB 2.2's install. One difference is that we encapsulated Libreoffice in docker for increased security.
• For public/production servers, we recommend installing BigBlueButton using bbb-install.sh

We'll do this in 3 steps:

• Install BBB 2.4 (detailed below)
• Setup SSL
• Setup development environment

Installl BBB 2.4

Install basic deps

Install needed tools

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install curl wget net-tools software-properties-common haveged apt-transport-https openjdk-8-jdk -y

Add needed repositories

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bigbluebutton/support -y

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rmescandon/yq -y

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa

Upgrade packages

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Install MongoDB

(Note: BBB 2.4v uses MongoDB 4.2, while BBB 2.2 uses MongoDB 3.4)

Add key for MongoDB's repository

wget -qO - https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.2.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Add APT's source for MongoDB

echo "deb [ arch=amd64 ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu bionic/mongodb-org/4.2 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list

Install MongoDB

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y mongodb-org

Install Node.js

(Note: BBB 2.4 uses Node.js 12.x, while BBB 2.2 uses Node.js 8.x)

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash -

sudo apt-get install nodejs

Install BigBlueButton

Add key for BigBlueButton

wget https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/repo/bigbluebutton.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Add APT's source for BigBlueButton

echo "deb https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bionic-24 bigbluebutton-bionic main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list

Install it

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install bigbluebutton

(Optional) Install bbb-demo

If you want to test the installation, you can install demos:

sudo apt-get install bbb-demo

Before testing, make sure you have set secure: false in /usr/share/bbb-web/WEB-INF/classes/application.yml file:

# ...
server:
    session:
        cookie:
            secure: false
# ...

You can access http://BBB_IP_ADDRESS , and you will be able to join bbb-demo (probably WebRTC media won't work because it needs HTTPS to be set). BBB_IP_ADDRESS is the ip address of your container/machine running this installation.

Setup HTTPS

Configure nginx to use HTTPS

Depending on your certificate authority (CA), you should now have 2 or more files, as follows:

• Certificate
• Private key
• Intermediate certificate (there may be more than one, or could be none)

The next step is to install the files on the server.

Create the directory /etc/nginx/ssl:

mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl

And now create the private key file for nginx to use (replace the hostname in the filename with your own). In addition, fix the permissions so that only root can read the private key:

# cat >/etc/nginx/ssl/bigbluebutton.example.com.key <<'END'
Paste the contents of your key file here
END
chmod 0600 /etc/nginx/ssl/bigbluebutton.example.com.key

And the certificate file. Note that nginx needs your server certificate and the list of intermediate certificates together in one file (replace the hostname in the filename with your own):

# cat >/etc/nginx/ssl/bigbluebutton.example.com.crt <<'END'
Paste (in order) the contents of the following files:
  1. The signed certificate from the CA
  2. In order, each intermediate certificate provided by the CA (but do not include the root).
END

In addition, we'll generate a set of 2048-bit diffie-hellman parameters to improve security for some types of ciphers. This step can take several minutes to complete, particularly if run on a virtual machine.

openssl dhparam -out /etc/nginx/ssl/dhp-2048.pem 2048

Now we can edit the nginx configuration to use SSL. Edit the file /etc/nginx/sites-available/bigbluebutton to add the marked lines. Ensure that you're using the correct filenames to match the certificate and key files you created above.

server {
  server_name bigbluebutton.example.com;
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;

  # Add the code below
  listen 443 ssl;
  listen [::]:443 ssl;

  ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/bigbluebutton.example.com.crt;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/bigbluebutton.example.com.key;
  ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
  ssl_session_timeout 10m;
  ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
  ssl_ciphers "ECDH+AESGCM:DH+AESGCM:ECDH+AES256:DH+AES256:ECDH+AES128:DH+AES:ECDH+3DES:DH+3DES:RSA+AESGCM:RSA+AES:RSA+3DES:!aNULL:!MD5:!DSS:!AES256";
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
  ssl_dhparam /etc/nginx/ssl/dhp-2048.pem;
  

For reference, note that the SSL settings used above are based on those proposed in https://hynek.me/articles/hardening-your-web-servers-ssl-ciphers/ and provide support for all modern browsers (including IE8, but not IE6, on Windows XP). Please note that recommended SSL settings are subject to change as new vulnerabilities are found.

Configure BigBlueButton to load session via HTTPS

With nginx now configured to use SSL, the next step is to configure FreeSWITCH to use HTTPS for initiating an audio connection.

Edit /usr/share/bbb-web/WEB-INF/classes/bigbluebutton.properties and update the property bigbluebutton.web.serverURL to use HTTPS:

#----------------------------------------------------
# This URL is where the BBB client is accessible. When a user successfully
# enters a name and password, she is redirected here to load the client.
bigbluebutton.web.serverURL=https://bigbluebutton.example.com

Next, modify the creation of recordings so they are served via HTTPS. Edit /usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/bigbluebutton.yml and change the value for playback_protocol as follows:

playback_protocol: https

If you have installed the API demos in step 4, edit /var/lib/tomcat8/webapps/demo/bbb_api_conf.jsp and change the value of BigBlueButtonURL use HTTPS.

// This is the URL for the BigBlueButton server
String BigBlueButtonURL = "https://bigbluebutton.example.com/bigbluebutton/";

Finally, to apply all of the configuration changes made, you must restart all components of BigBlueButton:

bbb-conf --restart

Setup development environment

First, you need to install the core development tools.

sudo apt-get install git-core ant ant-contrib openjdk-8-jdk-headless

With the JDK installed, you need to set the JAVA_HOME variable. Edit ~/.profile (here we are using vim to edit the file)

vi ~/.profile

Add the following line at the end of the file

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64

Reload your profile (this will happen automatically when you next login, but we'll do it explicitly here to load the new environment variable).

source ~/.profile

Do a quick test to ensure JAVA_HOME is set.

$ echo $JAVA_HOME
/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64

In the next step, you need to install a number of tools using sdkman.

curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash
source "$HOME/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh"

sdk install gradle 5.5.1
sdk install grails 3.3.9
sdk install sbt 1.2.8
sdk install maven 3.5.0

To develop bbb-web, you'll need these permissions:

sudo chmod -R ugo+rwx /var/bigbluebutton
sudo chmod -R ugo+rwx /var/log/bigbluebutton

Developing the HTML5 client

Install Meteor.js.

curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh

The HTML5 client in BigBlueButton 2.4 depends on Meteor version 2.5.x. Navigate to bigbluebutton-html5/ and set the appropriate version of Meteor

cd ~/dev/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton-html5

meteor update --allow-superuser --release 2.5

There is one change required to settings.yml to get webcam and screenshare working in the client (assuming you're using HTTPS already). The first step is to find the value for kurento.wsUrl packaged settings.yml.

grep "wsUrl" /usr/share/meteor/bundle/programs/server/assets/app/config/settings.yml

Next, edit the development settings.yml and change wsUrl to match what was retrieved before.

vi private/config/settings.yml

You're now ready to run the HTML5 code. First shut down the packaged version of the HTML5 client so you are not running two copies in parallel.

sudo systemctl stop bbb-html5

Install the npm dependencies.

meteor npm install

Finally, run the HTML5 code.

env NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 npm start

NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 allows you to run html5 with a self-signed certificate. Remove this var, if you are using a valid certificate.