setup issues on Debian Squeeze

[Larry G. Wapnitsky]

On a fresh installation of 32-bit Debian Squeeze, I followed the directions posted here verbatim.  Upon "completion" (running bbb-conf --restart), asterisk just attempts to start.  I also had to change the nginx port and can eventually get to the BBB page after a reboot, but can't get any further.

Any advice?  Am I missing something?

[Larry G. Wapnitsky]

Nobody's willing to assist?

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Larry,

Sorry, we're not experts in Squeeze -- our focus is on Ubuntu 10.04
32-bit and 64-bit.

Regards,... Fred

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Larry G. Wapnitsky <la...@kvetsch.com> wrote:
> Nobody's willing to assist?
>

> --
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> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
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> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/bigbluebutton-setup?hl=en.
>

[Denis Zgonjanin]

You might try the author of the document to see if they can give you a hint. BigBlueButton doesn't support Debian explicitly, and the bbb-conf scripts are not tested on it. None of the core developers use BBB on Debian, so we're unable to help you.

You can also try installing on Ubuntu 10.04 instead.

- Denis

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Larry G. Wapnitsky <la...@kvetsch.com> wrote:

Nobody's willing to assist?

[Jörg Maschtaler]

Larry G. Wapnitsky wrote:
> On a fresh installation of 32-bit Debian Squeeze, I followed the directions

> posted here<http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/InstallationBigBlueButtonDebian>verbatim. Upon "completion" (running bbb-conf --restart), asterisk just

> attempts to start. I also had to change the nginx port and can eventually
> get to the BBB page after a reboot, but can't get any further.

What you have written is too less to help you.
Can't you log in the demo? What happened after login? Do the logfiles
say anything about a warning or an error when you did your last
action? What does bbb-conf --check say?

[Larry G. Wapnitsky]

I was curious in checking the groups yesterday and saw my question had gone unanswered for almost a month.  After 2 weeks of no reply, I gave up on attempting to run this under Debian.

If documentation is to be posted on the BBB website for a non-sanctioned Linux-based OS, my opinion is that it should be verified before publication.

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Larry,

Sorry to hear you couldn't get it working! We (the core developers)
didn't write the documentation at

http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/InstallationBigBlueButtonDebian

nor did we test it. It was contributed by Wagner Spirigoni who
graciously put it together. We made it available on our wiki to help
other Debian users install BigBlueButton.

We put a lot of effort into our documentation, and we take pride in
making sure it's correct, but you've pointed out a dilemma. By
allowing others to edit wiki pages and put instructions for other
distributions (such as the FreeBSD), we rely on them to ensure it's
correct. Great when it is, but when it doesn't work, the tendency is
to conclude the maintainers of the BigBlueButton project don't care
about the docs.

We've edited the Debian page to put a big disclaimer at the top. We
were hoping that other Debian users would have read your posts and
chimed into help you get BigBlueButton running.

Is it an option for you to install BigBlueButton on Ubuntu 10.04
32-bit or 64-bit? If so, we'll gladly help you get it running -- it's
the reference platform we know the most, and we focus on it to ensure
the quality of the product.

Regards,... Fred

[Larry G. Wapnitsky]

I can, but right now my time is dedicated to other projects. I can see
if I can find the time to get a system up and running in the next few
weeks. When I do, I'll be sure to come to you for assistance.

Thank you for looking at this and accepting my feedback.

[Yannick]

Hi there,

Given the comment that the Debian doc doesn't work, I decided to start
with the Ubuntu 10.04 doc and this is what I've got:

I've installed (in a VritualBox instance) a Squeeze i386 netinst with
only ssh server option selected (for some reason the amd64 version
didn't start in VirtualBox on my 64bit laptop).
Then:
wget http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bigbluebutton.asc -O- | apt-key
add -
echo "deb http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/ bigbluebutton-lucid
main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list
echo "deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse" | tee
-a /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get install vim python-software-properties
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/freeswitch-drivers/freeswitch-nightly-drivers/ubuntu
lucid main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list
apt-ket adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 451AE93C
apt-get update
apt-get install bbb-freeswitch-config
apt-get install bigbluebutton

Here we have the first problem. bigbluebutton package depends on bbb-
config which depends on bbb-web which depends on swftools-0.9.1 which
depends on libmpfr1ldbl (>=2.3.2.dfsg.1-1ubuntu1) which is not
installable (package does not exist in Debian nor the added
repositories).

Given the swftools package apparently comes from the bigbluebutton.org
server, could anyone give me a hint as to whether libmpfr4 or libmpfr-
dev could be safe replacements for libmpfr1ldbl? This would then only
boil down to re-packaging swftools-0.9.1 to change its dependencies...

Yannick

On Apr 20, 2:09 pm, "Larry G. Wapnitsky" <la...@kvetsch.com> wrote:
> I can, but right now my time is dedicated to other projects.  I can see
> if I can find the time to get a system up and running in the next few
> weeks.  When I do, I'll be sure to come to you for assistance.
>
> Thank you for looking at this and accepting my feedback.
>
> On 4/20/2011 2:59 PM, Fred Dixon wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi Larry,
>
> > Sorry to hear you couldn't get it working!  We (the core developers)
> > didn't write the documentation at
>

> >  http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/InstallationBigBlueButton...

[Yannick]

swftools can be downloaded and installed manually pretty easily:

wget http://www.swftools.org/swftools-0.9.1.tar.gz
tar zxf swftools-0.9.1.tar.gz
cd swftools-0.9.1
apt-get install zlib1g-dev giflib-tools libgif-dev libjpeg8-dev g++
./configure
make
make install

The real problem is the fact that the www-web package doesn't detect
the presence of swftools when installed that way.

By the way, apt-get source bbb-web and swftools return a message
"Can't find sources for this package" (making it difficult to find the
source of the package in order to modify it).

Yannick

On Jun 5, 10:44 pm, Yannick <ywarn...@beeznest.org> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> Given the comment that the Debian doc doesn't work, I decided to start
> with the Ubuntu 10.04 doc and this is what I've got:
>
> I've installed (in a VritualBox instance) a Squeeze i386 netinst with
> only ssh server option selected (for some reason the amd64 version
> didn't start in VirtualBox on my 64bit laptop).
> Then:
> wgethttp://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bigbluebutton.asc-O- | apt-key
> add -
> echo "debhttp://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/bigbluebutton-lucid
> main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list

> echo "debhttp://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/lucid multiverse" | tee

> -a /etc/apt/sources.list
> apt-get install vim python-software-properties

> echo "debhttp://ppa.launchpad.net/freeswitch-drivers/freeswitch-nightly-driver...

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Yannick,

One options is to build/install swftools yourself from source (which
should bypass any ubuntu-specific dependencies) and then install
bbb-conf with ignore the dependency on swftools-0.9.1. Haven't tried
this myself, but I found this thread on ignoring dependencies after a
bit of googling

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/dpkg-please-ignore-dependencies-364608/

Regards,... Fred

[Yannick]

Thanks Fred,
I'm not good at guessing the url of a specific package or only
download it. Could you pass me the link to the bbb-web package for
ubuntu 10.04 on ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org please?

On Jun 6, 6:23 am, Fred Dixon <ffdi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Yannick,
>
> One options is to build/install swftools yourself from source (which
> should bypass any ubuntu-specific dependencies) and then install
> bbb-conf with ignore the dependency on swftools-0.9.1.  Haven't tried
> this myself, but I found this thread on ignoring dependencies after a
> bit of googling
>

>    http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/dpkg-please-ignore-...

>
> Regards,... Fred
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 11:44 PM, Yannick <ywarn...@beeznest.org> wrote:
> > Hi there,
>
> > Given the comment that the Debian doc doesn't work, I decided to start
> > with the Ubuntu 10.04 doc and this is what I've got:
>
> > I've installed (in a VritualBox instance) a Squeeze i386 netinst with
> > only ssh server option selected (for some reason the amd64 version
> > didn't start in VirtualBox on my 64bit laptop).
> > Then:

> > wgethttp://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bigbluebutton.asc-O- | apt-key
> > add -
> > echo "debhttp://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/bigbluebutton-lucid
> > main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list

> > echo "debhttp://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/lucid multiverse" | tee

> > -a /etc/apt/sources.list
> > apt-get install vim python-software-properties

> > echo "debhttp://ppa.launchpad.net/freeswitch-drivers/freeswitch-nightly-driver...

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Yannick,

If you do

sudo apt-get install --download-only bbb-web

you'll have the latest package in

/var/cache/apt/archives

Regards,... Fred

[Yannick]

I think you're going to laugh at this, but... apt-get install --
download-only actually checks the dependencies of the package, so it
doesn't even allow you to download the package.

It's a chicken-and-egg situation.

apt-cache showpkg bbb-web tells me something that makes me think it
would be in http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/dists/bigbluebutton-lucid/main/binary-i386/Packages/,
but I can't navigate that directory and I don't know the exact name of
the file (which is why I was asking if you knew it, just to make sure
I don't spend two long searching while I could be writing
documentation on the process ;-))

Yannick

On Jun 6, 9:21 pm, Fred Dixon <ffdi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Yannick,
>

> >> > echo "debhttp://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/lucidmultiverse" | tee

[Fred Dixon]

http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/pool/main/b/bbb-web/bbb-web_0.71ubuntu29_all.deb

Regards,... Fred

[Yannick]

Yesterday night I went a bit further through the Debian install. I'll
comment on this later with a full guide (once I've tried it and seen
if it works), but the big deal (instead of ignoring dependencies,
which was only going to lead to a problem at some point even if only
when uninstalling or upgrading) was to "fake" a Debian package for
swftools 0.9.1. This was done through manual installing of swftools
0.9.1 from source, then using the Debian "equivs" command, which
creates an empty package from only a description (control) file.

This meant that I was then able to do a simple dpkg -i
swftools-0.9.1.deb and then I could launch my apt-get install bbb-web,
which in turns let me apt-get install bigbluebutton, which apart from
a little error in the nginx package let me run the installer
completely. I just need to try it now (it takes some time because it's
in a non-graphical virtual machine and I have to figure out the IPs
I'm going to use).

Anyway, I got everything written down so far, will update the Debian
installer guide soon (the fact it uses the Ubuntu packages is
simplifying a great deal the overall installation).

Yannick

On Jun 7, 6:03 am, Fred Dixon <ffdi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/pool/main/b/bbb-web/bbb-web_0.7...

>
> Regards,... Fred
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 4:55 AM, Yannick <ywarn...@beeznest.org> wrote:
> > I think you're going to laugh at this, but... apt-get install --
> > download-only actually checks the dependencies of the package, so it
> > doesn't even allow you to download the package.
>
> > It's a chicken-and-egg situation.
>
> > apt-cache showpkg bbb-web tells me something that makes me think it

> > would be inhttp://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/dists/bigbluebutton-lucid/main/...,

[ke qing]

just follow the instructions for 'Inasll from source' , get all the needed software installed ,then delpoy the packages

i guess it will run welll.

by the way ,i guess the only problem would be the  use of script bbb-conf.

 

2011/6/8 Yannick <ywar...@beeznest.org>

[Yannick]

I'm happy to report that the mentionned method works perfectly
(although the .odp file upload seems not to work, just as a bug report
indicates with uploading from Ubuntu).

I'm now proceeding to update the Debian installation guide for Debian
Squeeze. My brother (Jérôme) tells me he's managed quite easily to
package swftools for Squeeze from the swftools sources, so it could be
installed this way instead of using the fake package. I want to make
BBB work on a different port (already have an Apache instance on the
final server), so I'm not entirely done with my own install, but I'm
already quite happy.

[Yannick]

Uups, I didn't realize I can't edit a wiki page. Can someone allow me
to edit? (you can remove the permission afterwards, it's just gonna be
a one-shot change I think)

On Jun 7, 11:01 am, Yannick <ywarn...@beeznest.org> wrote:

[Richard Alam]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 11:43 AM, Yannick <ywar...@beeznest.org> wrote:
> Uups, I didn't realize I can't edit a wiki page. Can someone allow me
> to edit? (you can remove the permission afterwards, it's just gonna be
> a one-shot change I think)
>

Added you so you can edit the wiki.

Richard

[Yannick]

Thanks, I've just edited the page. I should mention here as well that
I'm still having issues with documents conversion, but I'm first going
to try on a 64bit install before I go further with the documents
stuff.

Updated http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/InstallationBigBlueButtonDebian

On Jun 13, 10:46 am, Richard Alam <ritza...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Yannick]

Hi all, it seems like the bigbluebutton repositories indicated in the
Ubuntu installation docs are not responding to me anymore. Anyone has
the same problem (I'm trying to get it to work on Debian 64bit but the
bbb-* packages cannot be found although the repositories have been
added...
Yannick

On Jun 13, 1:13 pm, Yannick <ywarn...@beeznest.org> wrote:
> Thanks, I've just edited the page. I should mention here as well that
> I'm still having issues with documents conversion, but I'm first going
> to try on a 64bit install before I go further with the documents
> stuff.
>

> Updatedhttp://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/InstallationBigBlueButton...

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Yannick,

I just when through an install on Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit using the repository at

deb http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/ bigbluebutton-lucid main

and it worked for me. Could it be on debian it's looking for 64-bit
packages with different names ... have you gotten the 64-bit install
to work on debian before?

Regards,... Fred

[Yannick]

Hi Fred,

No, not yet (that's what I'm trying to do) but I have tried accessing
the repos yesterday from a fresh Ubuntu 32bit and I couldn't either.
The fact you can make use of them makes me think the problem is on my
side (I tried it from two different locations though).

I suppose the public key for these repos hasn't changed or something
like that...

Thanks,

Yannick

On Jun 22, 5:22 am, Fred Dixon <ffdi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Yannick,
>
> I just when through an install on Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit using the repository at
>

>    debhttp://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/bigbluebutton-lucid main

[Fred Dixon]

Hmmm ... nothing has changed. Here's a direct link to the Packages file

http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/dists/bigbluebutton-lucid/main/binary-amd64/Packages

Does this work for you?

Regards,... Fred

[Yannick]

Following up on this, apparently I had generated a duplicated
bigbluebutton package repository entry in my sources.list, which
somehow triggered the ignoring of this source (still a mystery to me,
but I don't really care right now).

In the end, I was able to install the whole bigbluebutton on a Debian
Squeeze amd64 with the procedure described on the wiki now, with only
a few alterations (that I will be writing down on the wiki soon). In
the process, nginx was a little bit of a pain when trying to changing
the port (the virtual host was trying to set an ipv6 connection on
port 80) and I had to fi it manually because the last patched bbb-conf
script didn't deal with that when changing the port.

On Jun 22, 2:14 pm, Fred Dixon <ffdi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmmm ... nothing has changed.  Here's a direct link to the Packages file
>

>    http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid/dists/bigbluebutton-lucid/main/...

[Yannick]

Fred, in bbb-conf, the latest version you mentioned in another post
(https://raw.github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton/master/
bigbluebutton-config/bin/bbb-conf), it seems like the freeswitch
script that it is trying to start is /etc/init.d/bbb-freeswitch, while
the init script for me (on Debian, but considering freeswitch comes
from the ppa, I don't think that's a Debian thing).

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Yannick,

Really good work on getting BigBlueButton running on Debian!

In BigBlueButton 0.8 we need FreeSWITCH 1.0.7 for the extra events to
implement start/stop recording of audio. However, the PPA for
FreeSWITCH on Ubuntu 10.04 only install FreeSWITCH 1.0.6, so we had to
create our own FreeSWITCH package for 1.0.7.

We didn't want to conflict with the existing FreeSWITCH package called
'freeswitch', so we called the package 'bbb-freeswitch'. We haven't
updated http://hudson.bigbluebutton.org or the development repository
as we're still working on the packaging for the upcoming beta for
BigBlueButton 0.8.

Regards,... Fred

[Yannick]

Oh OK, so I'm having the error *because* I'm using your latest bbb-
conf version. That makes sense. I'll make that info part of the
install guide, then.

On Jun 30, 5:54 am, Fred Dixon <ffdi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Yannick,
>

> Really good work on getting BigBlueButton running on Debian!
>
> In BigBlueButton 0.8 we need FreeSWITCH 1.0.7 for the extra events to
> implement start/stop recording of audio.  However, the PPA for
> FreeSWITCH on Ubuntu 10.04 only install FreeSWITCH 1.0.6, so we had to
> create our own FreeSWITCH package for 1.0.7.
>
> We didn't want to conflict with the existing FreeSWITCH package called
> 'freeswitch', so we called the package 'bbb-freeswitch'.  We haven't

> updatedhttp://hudson.bigbluebutton.orgor the development repository