bbb-install is a BASH script that can install BigBlueButton 2.0 with a single command in about 15 minutes.

wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- -v xenial-200 

bbb-install requires that you run it as root on a Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit server that meets the minimal requirements. If the server is behind firewall, such as on an AWS EC2 instance, you'll need to update the firewall settings to allow the needed ports before BigBlueButton will run correctly.

The above command finishes you'll see a message that the API demos are installed to let you quickly test your server.

# Warning: The API demos are installed and accessible from:
#
#    http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/demo/demo1.jsp
#
# These API demos allow anyone to access your server without authentication
# to create/manage meetings and recordings. They are for testing purposes only.
# If you are running a production system, remove them by running:
#
#    sudo apt-get purge bbb-demo

To test, launch FireFox -- you need to use FireFox as does not require the installation of a secure socket layer (SSL) certificate for WebRTC -- open the above URL, enter your name and click Join.

This single command will get you going with a BigBlueButton server that you can access with an IP address. The sections below go into details of how bbb-install.sh works and the configuration options available.

The bbb-install.sh is a shell script that automates the installation steps for BigBlueButton 2.0.

You'll need a server that meets the minimal server requirements. This can be a dedicated or virtual server.

Before running bbb-install.sh, we recommend you setup a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), such as bbb.example.com, that resolves to the external IP address of the server. With a FQDN in place, you can use bbb-install.sh to also install

• a 4096 bit secure socket layers (SSL) certificate from Let's Encrypt,
• the latest developer build of the HTML5 client, and
• the Green Light front-end.

We strongly recommend installing a SSL certificate for any production server. Chrome and Safari both require the server to have an SSL certificate before they will let the user share audio or video using web real-time communications (WebRTC).

The full source code for the script is here github. To make it easy for anyone to run the script with a single command, we host the latest version of the script at https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh.

Many companies, such as Digital Ocean, offer both virtual and bare metal servers that provide you with an Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit server with single public IP address and no firewall.

Other companies, such as ScaleWay and Google Compute Engine offer servers that are setup behind network address translation (NAT). That is, they have both an internal and external IP address. When installing on these servers, the bbb-install.sh will detect the internal/external addresses and configures BigBlueButton accordingly.

However, if your server is behind a firewall, such as on Amazon EC2 instance, you will need to manually configure the firewall (see steps below).

Finally, if you find bbb-install.sh is unable to configure server behind NAT, we recommend going through the step-by-step for installing BigBlueButton. (Going through the steps is also a good way to understand more about how BigBlueButton works).

If you want to install BigBlueButton 2.0 on a server behind a firewall, such an Amazon's EC2 instance (we recommend a c5.xlarge instance type or faster), you first need to configure the firewall to allow incoming traffic on the following ports:

• TCP/IP port 22 (for SSH)
• TCP/IP ports 80/443 (for HTTP/HTTPS)
• TCP/IP port 1935 (for RTMP)
• UDP ports in the range 16384 - 32768 (for FreeSWITCH/HTML5 client RTP streams)

Amazon calls the firewall for EC2 a 'security group'. Here's a screen shot of what the EC2 security group configuration should look like to allow incoming traffic on the above ports:

If you reboot an EC2 instance Amazon will give it a new external IP address (which means you'll need to update the DNS entry for its FQDN). You should also assign the server an Elastic IP so the IP address does not change on reboot.

Since installation on EC2 is common, we created this installation video on EC2 to walk through the above steps.

It's easier to install on Digital Ocean as there is no default firewall. We put together this bbb-install.sh on Digital Ocean video for a walk-through of the configuration options.

See Install using bbb-install.sh on EC2 for a walkabout of installing BigBlueButton 2.0 on Amazon EC2 using bbb-install.sh.

You can get help by passing the -h option.

$ wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- -h
BigBlueButton 2.0 installer script

USAGE:
    bbb-install.sh [OPTIONS]

OPTIONS:

  -v <version>     Install given version of BigBlueButton (e.g. 'xenial-200') (required)

  -s <hostname>    Configure server with <hostname>
  -e <email>       Install SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt using <email>

  -t               Install HTML5 client (currently under development)
  -g               Install Green Light

  -p <host>        Use apt-get proxy at <host>

  -h               Print help

EXAMPLES:

    ./bbb-install.sh -v xenial-200
    ./bbb-install.sh -v xenial-200 -s bbb.example.com -e [email protected]
    ./bbb-install.sh -v xenial-200 -s bbb.example.com -e [email protected] -t -g

SUPPORT:
     Source: https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bbb-install
   Community: https://bigbluebutton.org/support

To install BigBlueButton on a Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit server, login as root and run the following command:

wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- -v xenial-200 

That's it. The installation should finish with the following message:

** Potential problems described below **

......
# Warning: The API demos are installed and accessible from:
#
#    http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/demo/demo1.jsp
#
# These API demos allow anyone to access your server without authentication
# to create/manage meetings and recordings. They are for testing purposes only.
# If you are running a production system, remove them by running:
#
#    sudo apt-get purge bbb-demo

The script also installs the bbb-demo package, so you can immediately test out the install. If you want to remove the API demos, do the command

sudo apt-get purge bbb-demo

If you want to use this server with an third-party integration, such as Moodle, you can get the BigBlueButton server's hostname and shared secret with the command sudo bbb-conf --secret.

# bbb-conf --secret

       URL: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/bigbluebutton/
    Secret: yyy

      Link to the API-Mate:
      http://mconf.github.io/api-mate/#server=http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/bigbluebutton/&sharedSecret=yyy

Since the server does not have a SSL certificate, use must FireFox for sharing audio (at the time of this writing, FireFox does not require SSL to use WebRTC audio). However, Chrome does require a SSL certificate, so users will get an error when sharing their audio with WebRTC.

We recommend installing an SSL certificate (see next section).

Before bbb-install.sh can install a SSL certificate, you first need to configure a domain name, such as bbb.example.com, that resolves to the public IP address of your server. That is, the command dig bbb.example.com @8.8.8.8 should resolves to the public IP address of your server.

Note: we're using bbb.example.com as an example hostname, you would substitute your real hostname in commands below.

Next, you need a valid e-mail address, such as [email protected], to receive updates from Let's Encrypt.

With these two pieces of information, you can use bbb-install.sh to automate the configuration of BigBlueButton server with an SSL certificate using the following command (here we using the sample hostname and e-mail in the command, but you would need to substitute your server's hostname and your e-mail address):

wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- -v xenial-200 -s bbb.example.com -e [email protected]

The bbb-install.sh script will also install a cron job that automatically news the Let's Encrypt certificate so it doesn't expire. Cool.

To try out the latest build of the latest build of the HTML5 client, add the -t option along with the options to install an SSL certificate (the HTML5 client needs SSL certificate installed on the server).

wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- -v xenial-200 -s bbb.example.com -e [email protected] -t

After a few minutes, you'll have the HTML5 client installed. Use an Android (6.0+) or iOS (iOS 11+) mobile phone or tablet to access your BigBlueButton. The BigBlueButton server will detect when you are connecting from a mobile browser and automatically load the HTML5 client instead of the default Flash client.

Note: the HTML5 client is under active development and is not ready (yet) for production.

If you want to add a front-end to your BigBlueButton server where users can easily create meetings and invite others, you can install GreenLight by adding the -g option along with the options to install an SSL certificate (Green Light needs SSL installed on the server).

wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- -v xenial-200 -s bbb.example.com -e [email protected] -g

You can go to https://bbb.example.com/ to launch the Green Light interface. To give users the ability to create and manage recorded meetings, See the Green Light documentation for setting up OAuth2 authentication.

If you have a server with a FQDN you can install everything with a single command:

wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- -v xenial-200 -s bbb.example.com -e [email protected] -t -g

If after the initial installation Green Light does not run (you get a 500 error when accessing it), you can restart Green Light with the commands here.

If you have feedback on the script, or need help using it, please post to the BigBlueButton Setup mailing list and we'll help you there.

If you encounter an error with this script, please open GitHub issue and provide steps to reproduce the issue.

If you are running your BigBlueButton behind a firewall, such as on EC2, this script will not configure your firewall.