Problems connecting Moodle BigBlueButtonBN to BBB v1.0 beta over SSL

[Mike Kelly]

Hi there,

I'm in the process of setting up a BigBlueButton 1.0-beta server and I've run into a problem getting Moodle to talk to it over SSL. I'm stuck and would appreciate any/all help. I'm wondering if the Moodle plugin just isn't able to communicate over SSL?

First off, software versions:

BigBlueButton Server 1.0.0-beta (991)

Moodle 2.9

BigBlueButtonBN plugin 2.0.2 version 2015080609

I've enabled SSL on the BBB server per the documentation, and by all appearances it seems to be working as expected. The correct certificates are being used, netstat shows the various daemons listening on the correct ports, Chrome establishes secure webRTC connections, etc.

However, our security folks would prefer it if the BigBlueButtonBN Moodle plugin would communicate with the BBB server over SSL too. I changed the bigbluebuttonbn_server_url setting in the plugin to point at the https url of the server, but when adding a BigBlueButtonBN activity in a course, I get the following error:

2016/02/21 11:54:14 [error] 14651#0: *37986845 FastCGI sent in stderr: "PHP message: The XML response is not correct on wrap_simplexml_load_file: String could not be parsed as XML

PHP message: Default exception handler: Unable to connect. Please check the url of the BigBlueButton server AND check to see if the BigBlueButton server is running. Debug:

Error code: general_error_unable_connect

* line 481 of /lib/setuplib.php: moodle_exception thrown

* line 55 of /mod/bigbluebuttonbn/mod_form.php: call to print_error()

* line 195 of /lib/formslib.php: call to mod_bigbluebuttonbn_mod_form->definition()

* line 86 of /course/moodleform_mod.php: call to moodleform->moodleform()

* line 252 of /course/modedit.php: call to moodleform_mod->moodleform_mod()

Connecting directly to https://some.server.ca/bigbluebutton/ with a browser returns what looks to be a proper response:

<response>

<returncode>SUCCESS</returncode>

<version>0.9</version>

</response>

and finally, here's the output of bbb-conf --check (server name changed to protect the innocent sysadmin :) 

BigBlueButton Server 1.0.0-beta (991)

                    Kernel version: 3.19.0-42-generic

                      Distribution: Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS (64-bit)

                            Memory: 32127 MB

/var/www/bigbluebutton/client/conf/config.xml (bbb-client)

  Port test (tunnel): some.server.ca

                              Red5: some.server.ca

              useWebrtcIfAvailable: true

/opt/freeswitch/conf/sip_profiles/external.xml (FreeSWITCH)

                    websocket port: 5066

                    WebRTC enabled: true

/etc/nginx/sites-available/bigbluebutton (nginx)

                       server name: some.server.ca

                              port: 80

443 ssl

                    bbb-client dir: /var/www/bigbluebutton

/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/bigbluebutton/WEB-INF/classes/bigbluebutton.properties (bbb-web)

                      bbb-web host: some.server.ca

/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/lti/WEB-INF/classes/lti.properties (LTI integration)

                           api url: some.server.ca

/var/www/bigbluebutton/check/conf/config.xml (client check)

                      client check: some.server.ca

/usr/share/red5/webapps/bigbluebutton/WEB-INF/red5-web.xml (red5)

                  voice conference: FreeSWITCH

                     capture video: true

                   capture desktop: true

/usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/bigbluebutton.yml (record and playback)

                     playback host: some.server.ca

** Potential problems described below **

# Warning: The client self check is installed and accessible from:

#

#    http://some.server.ca/check

#

# Warning: The IMS Learning Tools Integration (LTI) is accessible from:

#

#    http://some.server.ca/lti/tool

#

# To get the access parameters for LTI, run the command

#

#    bbb-conf --lti

Any and all help appreciated!

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Mike,

Can you login to your Moodle server via ssh and try the following command

   wget -O - --quiet https://demo.bigbluebutton.org/bigbluebutton/api; echo

You should see

  <response><returncode>SUCCESS</returncode><version>0.9</version></response>

Next, try the wget command with the https URL for your BigBlueButton server and let us know if you get the same response.

Regards,... Fred

P.S.  We'll be updating the <version> to 1.0 shortly, but that won't affect the Moodle plugin.

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[Mike Kelly]

Hi Fred,

Well thanks to your suggestion, I figured out the problem. The server in question had an old openssl library. Got nothing from either wget attempt. Once I upgraded openssl, everything worked as expected :)

(a little embarrassed that I didn't bother to run a test with wget in the first place!)

Thanks

- Mike K.