How to install BigBlueButton on Ubuntu Server

BigBlueButton (aka BBB) is a web conferencing system designed to make online learning easy and convenient for students around the globe. It’s an open-source web application that uses an HTML-5 client for its excellent interface making remote teaching and learning smooth for both teachers and students.

BBB has a variety of features like audio, video, slides, and screen sharing, along with advanced features like polling, breakout rooms, whiteboard, etc. It is a complete package for academic organizations looking to set up a private video conferencing setup for teachers and students.

BigBlueButton 2.2 is so far the most tested and the most stable version of the software. BBB is available in more than 25 languages and it officially supports only Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (64-bit) systems.

In this guide, we will see how to install BigBlueButton 2.2 on your Ubuntu 16.04 server using the bbb-install.sh script.

Prerequisites

BigBlueButton’s developer community has shared some guidelines that your server must fulfill to install it on your remote Ubuntu server. It’s good to consider these guidelines before you head on to install it on your system.

• OS: Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit
• CPU: 4 cores
• Memory: 4GB RAM
• Ports: The TCP (80 and 443) and UDP (16384–32768) ports should be accessible to the user.
• Domain: A Fully Qualified Domain Name or Hostname so you can run the software over HTTPS.

HTTPS/SSL certificate is required because browsers like Chrome and Firefox do not allow the HTML5 applications to use web real-time communications (WebRTC) like microphone, webcam, or screen sharing, etc without a TLS connection.

Installing BigBlueButton from bbb-install.sh script

The bbb-install.sh is a shell script prepared by BBB contributors for setting up BigBlueButton 2.2 on a Ubuntu 16.04 server. This script contains all the steps and commands in a specific order which makes the installation process incredibly easy. All you have to do is run a single command and the bbb-install.sh script will do everything on your behalf and set up BigBlueButton on your server within 30 minutes or so.

The following command will use the latest bbb-install.sh script and send it to the BASH shell interpreter on your machine.

wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- [options]

Install with Hostname + SSL + Greenlight

Greenlight lets users to create an account on BigBlueButton, create rooms, and manage their recordings. It’s a proper front-end written in Ruby on Rails. It also lets people be the administrator and manage user accounts.

To install BigBlueButton with Greenlight type this command in your terminal.

wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- -w -v xenial-200 -a -w -s bigbluebutton.malani.me -e admin@malani.me -t -g

• -g specifies that we want to install BigBlueButton with Greenlight.

Once the installation is finished type the URL of your server in the browser. For example https://bigbluebutton.malani.com/. The following page will load in your browser.

Till now, you do not have the functionality to manage people who create an account on your server. To get this functionality, you need an administrator account. Create an administrator account by typing the following commands in your terminal.

cd greenlight/docker exec greenlight-v2 bundle exec rake admin:create

This command will create an administrator account with a default password, as shown below.

root@localhost:~# cd greenlight/
root@localhost:~/greenlight# docker exec greenlight-v2 bundle exec rake admin:create
Account successfully created.
Email: admin@example.com
Password: administrator
Role: admin
PLEASE CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY

Now log in using admin@example.com and administrator as your account and password respectively. The welcome screen will look like as shown below.

Change your password by clicking on the link as shown below.

Now click on A symbol, organization, site settings, settings and registrations method step-by-step and change the settings from open registrations to Approve/Decline as shown below.

Administrator account setup is complete, nobody can log in to your server without your permission now.

BBB basic Account Setup

To create a new account click on sign up, enter your details and click on sign up as shown below.

Every participant will get a Home Room and a personal invite participant link as shown here.

Click on the start button to start a new meeting. Now you can share your link so that more people can join.

Click on the microphone to check if it’s working or not. You are now ready to take a meeting if you see the following screen. Visit this article to learn how to use BigBlueButton.

Conclusion

Hence the latest version of BigBlueButton is installed on our Ubuntu server. If you have any doubts regarding the installation process then visit this support page for more information.