Howto clone/replicate BBB servers

[Filip Hermann]

Hello,

 at first I'd like to send many thanks to the BBB team for developing such a great software!
After customizing my BBB 0.81 installation on a dedicated server I was looking for a way how to replicate this installation to other servers. I don't want to go through the whole installation and customization procedure each time I add a new server to our BBB farm. This is what I tried:

1) boot the primary (customized) server from a rescue disk and create an archive of the whole system using:

 tar -cvpz --exclude=proc/* --exclude=sys/* --exclude=mnt/* --exclude=media/* --exclude=run/* --exclude=dev/* . | ssh mystorageserver "cat > bbb_syst.tar.gz"

2) boot the new server from a rescue disk and run a script which creates the partitions, configures software raid, installs the system from the archive created at 1), replaces the IP address in the network configuration, reinstalls grub and sets the new IP address for BBB using bbb-conf --setip ...

This simple "replication" procedure works almost perfectly. I'm able to start the replicated server without any problems, all deamons are running, bbb-conf --check reports no errors, I can connect to the new BBB server and create meetings, users can join the meetings, etc. The only thing which does not work (in opposite to the original installation) is audio. There is no green ("checked") overlay on the headset icon (even when I try to push the headset icon again after joining the meeting).

After joining the conference, the following comes from bbb-conf --debug:

/usr/share/red5/log/error.log:2014-10-24 20:39:04,830 [RTMPMessageExecutor-1] ERROR o.r.server.service.ServiceInvoker - Error executing call: Service: voiceconf Method: call Num Params: 3 0: default 1: 1-bbbID-fidla 2: 51282
/usr/share/red5/log/red5.log:2014-10-24 20:39:04,830 [RTMPMessageExecutor-1] ERROR o.r.server.service.ServiceInvoker - Error executing call: Service: voiceconf Method: call Num Params: 3 0: default 1: 1-bbbID-fidla 2: 51282

   -- Exceptions found in /usr/share/red5/log/* --
/usr/share/red5/log/error.log:java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException: null
/usr/share/red5/log/error.log:Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.bigbluebutton.voiceconf.red5.media.CallStreamObserver
/usr/share/red5/log/red5.log:java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException: null
/usr/share/red5/log/red5.log:Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.bigbluebutton.voiceconf.red5.media.CallStreamObserver

Do you have any idea what the problem could be? Is there a better/cleaner way how to clone/replicate BBB installations (except VM) ?

Thank You in advance for any hint or comment

Filip Hermann

[HostBBB.com]

Filip  depending on how your network interface(s) and external public IPS are configured you will need to set

1) bigbluebutton sip.properties.

2) freeswitch vars,xml and sip_profiles/external.xml

for each instance these need to be set specific to internal and external addresses.

should be easy to automate once you look at the working reference config.

regards,

Stephen

hostbbb.com

[Filip Hermann]

Hi Stephen,

 thank you for your response. I checked the config files you mentined and couldn't find any problem there. Several hours later I saw, that even the original server didn't work well after reinstalling from the archive. This braught me to the solution ... the problem was in the archiving command, which excluded too many directories. The corrected Version looks as follows:

tar -cvpz --exclude=proc/* --exclude=sys/* --exclude=dev/pts/* --exclude=/var/run/* . | ssh mystorageserver "cat > bbb_syst.tar.gz"

Now everything works just fine!

Thanks again & Adios,

Filip