Changing Big Blue Button Port from 80 to another port.

[Donald Slagle]

First off I would like to start with I know the team at Big Blue Button recommend against running the server on any other port besides port 80. My problem that I am having right now running on 80 is that I have around 6-7 websites that I am hosting for my development team (redmine, gitorious, various development projects). I only have one dedicated static IP address so I can only port forward 80 to one server. What I have done is setup a gateway with IIS so that it determines which web server to present based on the subdomain, so my gateway server has port 80 forwarded to it. When I try to access BBB through my public domain using the gateway server I am unable to get it to work at all. If I temporarily set port 80 to the BBB server, which takes down all my other web servers I am able to access it without any problems.

So I am needing to change the port so that I can make the BBB VM accessible directly by the public domain instead of trying to present it through my IIS gateway. I am the server admin and lead developer with my company so I have tried to take some steps myself to accomplish this but after the changes I have made I can't get the server to start. Below are the changes that I have made:

- Changed the default listening port of nginx from 80 to 8080.

- Ran bbb-conf --setip sub.domain.com:8008

- Updated the bigbluebutton.properties file to have the bigbluebutton.web.serverURL variable set to http://sub.domain.com:8080

- Updated the config.xml file in /var/www/bigbluebutton/client/conf to have all the http protocol values to have :8080 set as the port so the host attributes = http://sub.domain.com:8080/...

After these changes I run bbb-conf --clean and on the last step it cannot connect to the server. When I view the url http://sub.domain.com:8080/bigbluebutton/api I recieve a 400 status code that says the content length and the length that was sent in the headers do not match. Any help to be able to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated.

[Scott Morrison]

If those were the lines you used to bbb-setip then you had a typo:

- Ran bbb-conf --setip sub.domain.com:8008

And there's the firewall right. There's more ports to open, in haste one could overlook having to open port 9123 and port 1935. I've seen it happen.

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[Donald Slagle]

I have ports 9123 and 1935 both forwarded to the BBB server. Also that was a typo only on the forum. I did do 8080 for the port when running the command on the server.

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[Mathieu Pelletier]

I also had this though initially (i.e. changing bbb port since it is often already in use).  I was, however, able to get around it by using the proxy_pass option in nginx.  I am running apache and tomcat on the same server which hosts BBB.  I have multiple websites on those web engines as well.  I have simply used VirtualHosts in Apache listening on alternative ports (e.g. 85, 86, etc).  Then from nginix bigbluebutton file, I have:

server {
       listen   80;
       server_name subdomain1.example.com;

       location / {
              proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:86;
              proxy_set_header Host $host;
              }
}

server {
       listen   80;
       server_name subdomain2.example.com;

       location / {
              proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:85;
              proxy_set_header Host $host;
              }

Of course you will need the appropriate A or CNAME record in your DNS in order for it to resolve.  I suppose you could also use this method for different domains rather than subdomains if you need it to.  I just noticed you are using IIS... I have not used that in a long time, so I do not know what options are available or if you can do the same as above.  Hopefully, though, the above might give you some ideas.

~Good Luck!

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Matthieu,

Years ago, we had developed BigBlueButton so it could run on different ports besides port 80, but doing so was requiring an increasing amount of effort for the core developers to resolve subtle configuration and conflict issues with other applications running on the same server, hence our recommendation to the community that you now run BigBlueButton on port 80.

   http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#We_recommend_running_BigBlueButton_on_port_80

I know that isn't going to help you at the moment.  BigBlueButton is open source, and you are *more than* welcome to setup any configuration you wish; however, I want to again emphasize to the rest of the community that we recommend you setup BigBlueButton on its own dedicated server using port 80.  Doing so minimizes any configuration issues.

Regards,... Fred

-- 
BigBlueButton Developer

http://bigbluebutton.org/
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton

BigBlueButton on twitter: @bigbluebutton

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[Donald Slagle]

I understand it is not recommended but the reasons it is not recommended do not seem very viable. It seems this functionality was removed to keep non server admins/IT admins from being able to have a conflict in the configuration or a port change. In a business scenario the right people with the right know how will know what ports are in use and know how to test ports easily to know what needs to be done. Also following the installation instructions it recommends that BBB be installed on its own dedicated server which means that changing the port to a common port shouldn't be an issue such as 8080/90/9090. I run many web servers and I setup phpmyadmin for the mysql administration and run it under 8080 for all my web servers because I know 8080 is not in use. Closing the functionality on being able to change the port seems to only limit how this server can be used, such as my scenario. I am behind a gateway for all of my web servers. BBB will not run behind this gateway so changing the port to 8080 and giving direct public access to this server would fix all my issues, however since the updated limited me to port 80 I am at a stand still and cannot continue to try to integrate BBB into my company unless I purchase another static dedicated IP address or buy a different router hardware that will forward ports based on the host name. I have been using team viewer to meet with clients and contractors and would love to move to the web based BBB server so no client software needs to be installed but these limitations are making it hard.

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[Stéphan]

I would like to be able to do exactly the same (changing the default port) for exactly the same reasons.
I did what donald suggest and I of course had the same result (it does not work).

Did you have have progress you would like to share ?

[Stéphan]

Il finally was able to make it start with another port number but the desktop share module does not work (the shared image stay blank)
bad luck, this is specifically the feature I want to implement.

So may be I did not ask my question properly.

My question to Fred Dixon would be:

If bbb should run with the port 80.
how I should configure my system to access the VM from the web ?(since in my case bbb run inside a virtual machine)

Actually, I have several virtuals (and real) machines running behind a router and to acces each of them individually I use port forwarding.

my_domain.com:81 is forwarded to 192.168.0.X:80 for example

I tried to do the same with bbb but it does not work

May be there is another (better solution).

Could you advice me ? (who have a very little knowledge on network management)

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Stephan,

You can see

   

   http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#Can_I_provide_external_access_to_a_BigBlueButton_server_behind_m

But to calibrate your expectations, these instructions are for the external hostname is listening for BigBlueButton requests on port 80.  The do not account for an external reference on my_domain.com:81 is forwarded to 192.168.0.X:80.

Regards,... Fred

-- 

BigBlueButton Developer

http://bigbluebutton.org/
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton

BigBlueButton on twitter: @bigbluebutton

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[HostBBB.com]

Stephan,

from an external computer see if you can access port 1935, 9123.
these both should "port forward" from your router to the BBB box.

telnet x.x.x.x 9123 (this is static ip or dns name external)
termet x.x.x.x 1935

if they connect, then deskshare should have no problems publishing

regards,
Stephen
hostbbb.com

[Trọng Trần Đình]

 Today, i must install BBB on my server (run Apache at port 80). I tried change port other 80. I access http://myhost:3000 is ok. But i can't call my API :

 http://myhost:3000/bigbluebutton/api/join?fullName=accounts123.....

I know, bbb recommended port 80. But i can not change Apache port, and i don't have two server....
BBB is great, but it is great very much if we can use another port 80.
I hope may be in next version.
Thanks

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Trọng,

Just to set expectations, our recommendation to always run BigBlueButton on port 80 will stay in effect for future version.  For the benefit of others, the following FAQ entry gives the details on how we reached this conclusion:

  https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#We_recommend_running_BigBlueButton_on_port_80

Regards,... Fred

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[Wilson Chan]

Hi Fred

   How i can change port in BBB 0.81RC5? the old path have deleted ! could you give me a step?Thanks!

Wilson

Donald Slagle於 2013年1月8日星期二UTC+8上午3時18分07秒寫道：

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Wilson,

We recommend running BigBlueButton on port 80.  This recommendation applies to 0.81 as well.   For more information, see

  https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#We_recommend_running_BigBlueButton_on_port_80

Regards,... Fred

-- 
BigBlueButton Developer

http://bigbluebutton.org/
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton

BigBlueButton on twitter: @bigbluebutton

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[Dirk Verboom]

If you wouldnt mind explaining how you managed to get it to start with a different port number. I currently have a server in China where they have blocked port 80 so need to find a work around to run it on a different port.