BigBlueButton 2.6.0-rc.1 released!

[Anton Georgiev]

We are pleased to announce BigBlueButton 2.6.0-rc.1!

This release candidate iteration of BigBlueButton 2.6 contains multiple whiteboard improvements and other updates to existing features. Note that we included upgrades of components' dependencies (check for fix(sec) in the release notes).

We are also in the bug-fixing/documentation phase for enabling video format of recordings - there is a new optional package bbb-playback-video and the video format that can be added in /usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/bigbluebutton.yml. We are aware of several issues still in this area, so we are not yet announcing it as complete but you can see evidence of the activity in this iteration.

Also note that we have recently merged the sizeable changes in bbb-install-2.6.sh "Always install a local TURN server and share port 443 #579" bigbluebutton/bbb-install#579 -- so this is likely going to be your first time with this specific setup. Feedback is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks to the community members who provided feedback to the earlier 2.6 releases!

The full release notes are here:

https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton/releases/tag/v2.6.0-rc.1

To try out this release, visit
https://test26.bigbluebutton.org/

Or, better yet, grab a Ubuntu 20.04 64-bit server and install the latest version yourself (it will take only a few minutes):
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/2.6/new.html

If you want to report any potential security issues with BigBlueButton, please e-mail us at secu...@bigbluebutton.org

As always, we welcome feedback on this latest update.
Anton and team

[Hiroshi Suga]

Are we sure that -c externalturnserver:secret option would still be respected (as is written in the bbb-install.sh)? On my site, a local turn server is anyway installed and running, and /etc/bigbluebutton/turn-stun-servers.xml is set to use the local turn, not the external turn.

[Hiroshi Suga]

After the upgrade, the access to the server is forwarded to port 82 and the server (Greenlight v2) refuses the access. 

It added the line "listen 127.0.0.1:82 http2 proxy_protocol;" in /etc/nginx/sites-available file, which seems to account for the problem...

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Hiroshi,

> Are we sure that -c externalturnserver:secret option would still be respected (as is written in the bbb-install.sh)?

We'll be modifying bbb-install-2.6.sh so that if you do pass this, it won't install the local TURN server.

> After the upgrade, the access to the server is forwarded to port 82 and the server (Greenlight v2) refuses the access. 

> It added the line "listen 127.0.0.1:82 http2 proxy_protocol;" in /etc/nginx/sites-available file, which seems to account for the problem...

Was this an upgrade from a 2.5 or a previous version of 2.6-beta?

Regards,... Fred

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[Hiroshi SUGA]

Was this an upgrade from a 2.5 or a previous version of 2.6-beta?

 I upgraded from the previous beta version of 2.6.

[Fred Dixon]

Thanks Hiroshi,

Thanks. We're thinking we'll modify the logic so that you can't use bbb-install-2.6.sh to create stand-alone TURN server; instead, adding the credentials 

  -c externalturnserver:secret

will cause bbb-install-2.6.sh to not install a local TURN server and use the above credentials instead.  Sounds good?

Regards,... Fred

On Sat, Jan 28, 2023 at 7:21 AM Hiroshi SUGA <suga...@gmail.com> wrote:

Was this an upgrade from a 2.5 or a previous version of 2.6-beta?

 I upgraded from the previous beta version of 2.6.

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[Hiroshi SUGA]

Yes, sounds good!

2023年1月28日(土) 21:45 Fred Dixon <ffd...@gmail.com>:

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[sd...@distancelearning.cloud]

Users wanting to install an external coturn would manually have to install and configure one moving forward?  Or is there a helper script to build external turn configured to work with BBB ?

 

Assuming this would only by larger deployments, maybe manual documentation is sufficient and it does not confuse the install for first time users which is main purpose of bbb-install

 

Regards,

Stephen

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[Ali Alhaidary]

Yes, this is much better...

Ali

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[Fred Dixon]

Hi H

Added back the -c hostname:secret to bbb-install-2.6.sh to configure BigBlueButton to use an externally provided TURN server.  Setting this option will not install coturn or haproxy.

    https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bbb-install/commit/583f868a397a8310b2fc8f9f058d2bd3ce64b51d

Give it a try and let me know if this works for you.

Regards,... /Fred

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[Daniel Schreiber]

Hi,

IMHO there is no good reason to run an external TURN Server. In BBBs
context the TURN Server serves only two purposes:

1. allow clients with strong firewall restrictions to connect
2. work around Firefox' broken ICE implementation which requires a TURN
server to reliably work with mediasoup.

For purpose 1 it is required that the TURN Server is reachable on port
443 TCP because that port is usually not blocked. For purpose 2 a TURN
connection to any port is required. TCP connections have the risk of
stalling in case of heavy packet loss. That's why the TURN server is
also reachable on port 3478 UDP. The clients can choose either of those,
whichever works best for them.

Running the TURN server on a different machine has operational
disadvantages in contrast to running it on the BBB server:

- you have to pay for an extra machine
- you probably have to pay for extra traffic between the TURN server and
the BBB server
- that extra network traffic is waste of energy
- if you share one TURN server for multiple BBB servers, a reboot or
crash of the TURN server will affect all assigned BBB servers -> more
complex management

Running the TURN server on the BBB machine adds little extra CPU
requirement on the BBB server and adds the complexity of protocol
switching in HAproxy. In my observations coturns CPU usage is
negligible. Other components of BBB (namely freeswitch) require much more.

If your servers do not have a fast network connection (1 GBit/s or
less), it is not difficult to overload their network connection. 400-500
users with a screenshare are enough to saturate a gigabit connection.
Remember, a dedicated TURN server aggregates a lot of traffic,
especially if you have a lot of Firefox users. If the TURN server runs
on the same machine as BBB, traffic between BBB and coturn is loopback
traffic which costs almost nothing.

Regards,

Daniel

Am 28.01.23 um 14:30 schrieb sd...@distancelearning.cloud:

[Hiroshi SUGA]

Thanks Fred, I will give it a try.

Hello Daniel, I thank you for the clarification. In the future I would be using the turn server running in the same machine running BBB (it is something I have been dreaming!). But for now I want to test other things with all the other things unchanged. 

2023年1月30日(月) 0:40 Daniel Schreiber <dan...@schreiberseits.de>:

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[Hiroshi Suga]

Hi Fred,

Confirmed that -c option is working again, and my GLv2 server is also working as expected. Thanks!

However, in the last process of the script, I got the log:

....

Restarting BigBlueButton 2.6.0-rc.1 ...

Stopping BigBlueButton

Applying updates in /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-conf/apply-config.sh: 

  - Enable Firewall and opening 22/tcp, 80/tcp, 443/tcp and 16384:32768/udp

Skipping adding existing rule

Skipping adding existing rule (v6)

Skipping adding existing rule

Skipping adding existing rule (v6)

Skipping adding existing rule

Skipping adding existing rule (v6)

  - Local turnserver detected -- opening port 3478

Skipping adding existing rule

Skipping adding existing rule (v6)

....

And the ufw status indicated that the port 3478 is open. Systemctl status coturn.service indicated the service is still active actually.

Systemctl status haproxy.service indicated that the service is stopped. 

Can I stop the coturn.service manually?

[Hiroshi Suga]

I realised that the default presentation is not uploaded. The toasts "default presentation is being uploaded" or " default presentation has been uploaded" neither showed up. I got a black presentation area. If I upload a file manually, the presentation appears. 

Not sure if this phenomenon is something to do with the change in bbb-install-2.6.sh..

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Hiroshi,

> Skipping adding existing rule (v6)

>  - Local turnserver detected -- opening port 3478

Will update apply-lib.sh so it doesn't open port 3478 if HAProxy isn't running.

Regards,... Fred

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[Gilou]

Hi,

I agree, fair points. Some of us may however estimate that the
complexity of running haproxy in front of all the remaining, which is
quite easily disturbed because of the variety of clients and protocols
in place.

You kinda avoided (or missed) one alternative: running coturn on the
same server, on another IP. That's as cheap as you describe, but it
requires being able to have more than one, which is not that simple for
some setups, I guess, and it also wastes an IPv4 in that context.

I've seen that Jitsi provides a cheat¹, and let nginx discriminate using
another DNS name. That's cool too, albeit a bit less "elegant" than
protocol detection that haproxy does.


[1] https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/turn/

Regards,

Gilou

[Daniel Schreiber]

Hi Gilou,

Am 30.01.23 um 15:31 schrieb Gilou:

> Hi,
>
> I agree, fair points. Some of us may however estimate that the
> complexity of running haproxy in front of all the remaining, which is
> quite easily disturbed because of the variety of clients and protocols
> in place.
>
> You kinda avoided (or missed) one alternative: running coturn on the
> same server, on another IP. That's as cheap as you describe, but it
> requires being able to have more than one, which is not that simple for
> some setups, I guess, and it also wastes an IPv4 in that context.
>
> I've seen that Jitsi provides a cheat¹, and let nginx discriminate using
> another DNS name. That's cool too, albeit a bit less "elegant" than
> protocol detection that haproxy does.
>
>
> [1] https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/turn/

Both are possible solutions, but they make assumptions on the
environment of the BBB server. You either need another public IP address
(which is expensive or even impossible to get in some parts in the world
if you need an IPv4 address) or expect a second DNS name setup.

The goal was to find a solution that brings a working turn server on the
same machine as the BBB server without further work for the operator.

As far as I understand it, the purpose of bbb-install.sh is to get a BBB
server up and running as quickly as possible and that should just work.
If you are running a large cluster of BBB servers you likely don't use
bbb-install.sh but something like ansible or chef.

If anyone knows a pure nginx solution, I'd be happy to know how. The
latest version of nginx also support alpn but I could not get it working.

Regards,

Daniel

[Anton Georgiev]

Hi @ Emmy

> Three points
> - The "default" (BBB-Original) presentation is shown for me.
> - Our custom "BBB-Default" was at first not shown, reason being, it needs
> now to be in `/var/www/bigbluebutton-default/assets` and not `
> /var/www/bigbluebutton-default`

(I received this via email on the thread but am not seeing it here)

Thanks for reporting this -- I also hit it earlier to and resolved it via https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bbb-install/pull/598

-Anton