howto setup bbb-android mobile (protecting demo package with .htpasswd right now)

[Xavier de Pedro]

Hi:

I wanted to test the bbb-android package to access a bbb meeting from an
android-based smartphone.
I did read at the documentation that I need to use (after edition, if
needed) the password foind in:

/var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/demo/mobile_conf.jsp

However, I can't access my bbb server side with that password (I can't
get the list of rooms). Maybe because I was preventing anonymous access
to the demo pages through .htpasswd in that folder
/var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/demo/. We are using bbb through Tiki, and we
don't want robots and spammers to consume server resources by randomly
entering some of the rooms, etc.

How can I use the mobile, while preventing anonymous usage of the other
jps pages in the demo folder?

Thanks for hints.

Xavi

--

[Leonardo Daronco]

Hi Xavier,

If you're not using the demo pages, can't you just remove them?

You can't remove the package, I guess it would remove mobile_conf.jsp as well. But you could remove all files except mobile_conf.jsp.

Or maybe even just remove read permissions from them, so you'll still have the files where they should be. And you won't need a .htaccess file anymore.

Yet another idea is to move the demo files except mobile_conf.jsp to another folder, e.g. "demo2", and protect "demo2" only, leaving "demo" accessible to anonymous users.

Just throwing some ideas, I haven't tried any of them.

Regards,

--

Leonardo Crauss Daronco

--


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[Xavier de Pedro]

Thanks for your feedback, Leonardo.
In fact I was using one of the demo jsp files, hacked, to manage my recordings from my specific channels we are using.
I was afraid of moving the demo jsp files else where, in case there were some paths broken, maybe, etc. But I'll give it a try, maybe to a sister folder (demoN), and leaving the demo with the mobile jsp without htpasswd.

So thanks for your tips!

Xavier

[Xavier de Pedro]

Ok, I finally removed the demo*.jsp and create.jsp files from the demo folder, removed the .htpasswd removed the lines in the config file that requested authentication with .htpasswd.

I can now acess our bbb installation through bbb-android, which is nice. But, I realized that I can't hear the audio on the bbb-android client, due to "Voice connection timeout" issue: http://dev.mconf.org/redmine/issues/121

And one comment points here: http://code.google.com/p/mconf/wiki/MconfFAQ#Voice_connection_timeout

-----------

Voice connection timeout

Related to this issue.

Recently the default FreeSWITCH configuration on BigBlueButton has changed in order to deny any attempt of connection from an external IP to FreeSWITCH directly. Unfortunetly it generated a side-effect for the Mconf-Mobile apps, since they connect to the voice conference directly through FreeSWITCH. It doesn't affect the web client because it joins the voice conference through a Red5 application.

So, basically you will not be able to connect to the voice conference on http://demo.bigbluebutton.org, but we have this default configuration ignored on https://mconf.org, so you will still be able to do it on the Mconf server.

Soon we will implement the voice handling on Mconf-Mobile to work under RTMP, so it will remove this inconvenient.
-----------

So, any news on this topic after one year?

In the mean time, I did test the tips to revert-back the restriction temporarily, added by Fred here:
https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/issues/detail?id=1133#c8

Adn I managed to get voice apparently working in the bbb-android client. However, I can't hear the voice from the web client on a computer. And that user connected through the computer, don't get himself listed under the listeners window, even if the test for speakers and microphone worked well.

Restarting the bbb server (bbb-conf --restart) shows that FRESWITCH didn't wan't to start.

" ...... Error: FreeSWITCH SIP 127.0.0.1 didn't start "

Any hints of what can have gone wrong with my installation of bbb?

In case it helps, the messages saying that the ip from ifconfig 127.0.0.2 didn't match the API URL IP didn't seem to prevent bbb to work well over web browsers.

------------------------------
** Potential problems described below **
# IP does not match:
#                           IP from ifconfig: 127.0.0.2
#   /etc/nginx/sites-available/bigbluebutton: bbb.mydomain.com
# Warning: API URL IPs do not match host:
#
#                                IP from ifconfig: 127.0.0.2
#  /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/demo/bbb_api_conf.jsp: bbb.mydomain.com

# Error: The voice application failed to register with the sip server.
#   Try running:
#
#      sudo bbb-conf --clean
#
------------------------------

I did run bb-conf --clean, but no more luck than before.

In case it helps, that's the output of bbb-conf --check:

-------------------------------
BigBlueButton Server 0.8-beta-4 (924)
                    Kernel version: 2.6.32-6-pve
                      Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS (64-bit)
                            Memory: 4096 MB

/var/www/bigbluebutton/client/conf/config.xml (bbb-client)
          Port test (tunnel): bbb.mydomain.com
                              Red5: bbb.mydomain.com

/etc/nginx/sites-available/bigbluebutton (nginx)
                       server name: bbb.mydomain.com
                              port: 80
                    bbb-client dir: /var/www/bigbluebutton

/var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/bigbluebutton/WEB-INF/classes/bigbluebutton.properties (bbb-web)
                      bbb-web host: bbb.mydomain.com

/var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/demo/bbb_api_conf.jsp (API demos)
                           api url: bbb.mydomain.com

/usr/share/red5/webapps/bigbluebutton/WEB-INF/red5-web.xml (red5)
                  voice conference: FreeSWITCH

/usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/slides.yml (record and playback)
                     playback host: bbb.mydomain.com


** Potential problems described below **
# IP does not match:
#                           IP from ifconfig: 127.0.0.2
#   /etc/nginx/sites-available/bigbluebutton: bbb.mydomain.com
# Warning: API URL IPs do not match host:
#
#                                IP from ifconfig: 127.0.0.2
#  /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/demo/bbb_api_conf.jsp: bbb.mydomain.com

# Error: The voice application failed to register with the sip server.
#   Try running:
#
#      sudo bbb-conf --clean
#

# Warning: The value (bbb.mydomain.com) for playback_host in
#
#    /usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/slides.yml
#
# does not match the local IP address (127.0.0.2).
-------------------------------------

And the log from freeswitch says:
------------------------------
tail /opt/freeswitch/log/freeswitch.log
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964348 [NOTICE] switch_core.c:1016 Created ip list loopback.auto default (deny)
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964351 [NOTICE] switch_utils.c:248 Adding 127.0.0.0/8 (allow) [] to list loopback.auto
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964354 [NOTICE] switch_core.c:1022 Created ip list localnet.auto default (deny)
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964357 [NOTICE] switch_core.c:1025 Adding 46.105.170.25/255.255.255.255 (allow) to list localnet.auto
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964364 [ERR] switch_utils.c:222 Error Adding 127.0.0.1/255 (allow) [] to list localhost
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964367 [ERR] switch_core.c:1123 Error Adding 127.0.0.1/255 (allow) to list localhost
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964372 [NOTICE] switch_utils.c:248 Adding 192.168.42.0/24 (deny) [] to list lan
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964374 [NOTICE] switch_core.c:1121 Adding 192.168.42.0/24 (deny) to list lan
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964378 [NOTICE] switch_utils.c:248 Adding 192.168.42.42/32 (allow) [] to list lan
2013-05-11 15:18:33.964381 [NOTICE] switch_core.c:1121 Adding 192.168.42.42/32 (allow) to list lan
-------------------------------

I have no clue why I get in config files 127.0.0.2 instead of 127.0.0.1, but my guess is that it doesn't affect since it was working nicely until today. And I have a similar server setup elswwhere, where I didn't tweak anything for bbb-android to work, and freeswitch is stil working, bbb works as expected, etc. 

Where else could I look to see why freeswitch fails to start?

Xavi

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[Felipe Cecagno]

Hi Xavier,

--

   Felipe Cecagno

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 1:03 PM, Xavier de Pedro <xavier....@vhir.org> wrote:

Ok, I finally removed the demo*.jsp and create.jsp files from the demo folder, removed the .htpasswd removed the lines in the config file that requested authentication with .htpasswd.

I can now acess our bbb installation through bbb-android, which is nice. But, I realized that I can't hear the audio on the bbb-android client, due to "Voice connection timeout" issue: http://dev.mconf.org/redmine/issues/121

And one comment points here: http://code.google.com/p/mconf/wiki/MconfFAQ#Voice_connection_timeout

-----------

Voice connection timeout

Related to this issue.

Recently the default FreeSWITCH configuration on BigBlueButton has changed in order to deny any attempt of connection from an external IP to FreeSWITCH directly. Unfortunetly it generated a side-effect for the Mconf-Mobile apps, since they connect to the voice conference directly through FreeSWITCH. It doesn't affect the web client because it joins the voice conference through a Red5 application.

So, basically you will not be able to connect to the voice conference on http://demo.bigbluebutton.org, but we have this default configuration ignored on https://mconf.org, so you will still be able to do it on the Mconf server.

Soon we will implement the voice handling on Mconf-Mobile to work under RTMP, so it will remove this inconvenient.
-----------

So, any news on this topic after one year?

The improvement isn't finished yet - it's being implemented on https://github.com/mconf/mconf-mobile/tree/new-audio-service.

Currently we are using our servers configured as described below.

In the mean time, I did test the tips to revert-back the restriction temporarily, added by Fred here:
https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/issues/detail?id=1133#c8

Adn I managed to get voice apparently working in the bbb-android client. However, I can't hear the voice from the web client on a computer. And that user connected through the computer, don't get himself listed under the listeners window, even if the test for speakers and microphone worked well.

Restarting the bbb server (bbb-conf --restart) shows that FRESWITCH didn't wan't to start.

" ...... Error: FreeSWITCH SIP 127.0.0.1 didn't start "

Any hints of what can have gone wrong with my installation of bbb?

Did you change /usr/share/red5/webapp/sip/WEB-INF/bigbluebutton-sip.properties to point to your IP address instead of localhost? 

Do you have the port UDP 5060 opened? Are your server behind NAT?

[Xavier de Pedro]

Thanks for the pointers, Felipe. Yesterday evening I got some other issues, and decided to remove everything and restart clean. So purging & a brand new installation of bbb brought back the standard behavior of bbb.

I'll give it another go sometime in the future, and I'll ensure to modify

 /usr/share/red5/webapp/sip/WEB-INF/bigbluebutton-sip.properties

to point to our  IP address ( bbb.ourdomain.org  in our setup), which I reckon that I forgot to do this last weekend.

And about port UDP 5060 opened & server behind NAT: I guess yes, port is opened (I didn't close any special port, and bbb works fine; that setup is not behind a  proxy, and not behind a NAT, as far as I know).
How can I double check these two settings?

Thanks for your feedback!

Xavier

[Felipe Cecagno]

Hi Xavier,

--

   Felipe Cecagno

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:02 AM, Xavier de Pedro <xavier....@vhir.org> wrote:

Thanks for the pointers, Felipe. Yesterday evening I got some other issues, and decided to remove everything and restart clean. So purging & a brand new installation of bbb brought back the standard behavior of bbb.

I'll give it another go sometime in the future, and I'll ensure to modify

 /usr/share/red5/webapp/sip/WEB-INF/bigbluebutton-sip.properties

to point to our  IP address ( bbb.ourdomain.org  in our setup), which I reckon that I forgot to do this last weekend.

On bigbluebutton-sip.properties you should use the IP address, not the server domain name.

 

And about port UDP 5060 opened & server behind NAT: I guess yes, port is opened (I didn't close any special port, and bbb works fine; that setup is not behind a  proxy, and not behind a NAT, as far as I know).
How can I double check these two settings?

You can try to call to your server using a SIP phone like Ekiga or X-lite. On Ekiga, you just need to call 

sip:<voice_bridge_number>@<your_server_address>

If it works, then it will work on BBB-Android as well.