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Version: 3.0

Troubleshooting Guide

If you encountered any problems with the installation of BigBlueButton, this section covers how to resolve many of the common issues.

If you have not already done so, read through the getting help section.

Introduction​

Start here: run sudo bbb-conf --check

We've built in a BigBlueButton configuration utility, called bbb-conf, to help you configure your BigBlueButton server and troubleshoot your setup if something doesn't work right.

If you think something isn't working correctly, the first step is enter the following command.

$ sudo bbb-conf --check

This will check your setup to ensure the correct processes are running, the BigBlueButton components have correctly started, and look for common configuration problems that might prevent BigBlueButton from working properly.

If you see text after the line ** Potential problems described below **, then it may be warnings (which you can ignore if you've change settings) or errors with the setup.

bbb-webrtc-sfu and mediasoup​

Audio/webcams/screen sharing aren't working​

Certify that appropriate external addresses have been set for mediasoup. When installed via packages, mediasoup IPs are normally misconfigured. If installed via bbb-install, then IPv4 is generally correct, but IPv6 might be absent.

Nonetheless, we recommend double-checking the instructions in Updating mediasoup.

If the aforementioned looks correct, this might be a network connectivity issue. The default installation of BigBlueButton should work in most network configurations; however, if your users are behind a restrictive network that blocks UDP connections, they may encounter issues.

If you get reports of these errors, set up a TURN server to help their browsers traverse those restrictive networks. See Configure TURN.

Configure mediasoup to use IPv6​

mediasoup (bbb-webrtc-sfu) does not come with a IPv6 enabled by default when installed either via packages or bbb-install.

To configure IPv6, bbb-webrtc-sfu's override configuration file (located in /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-webrtc-sfu/production.yml) should be used.

See Updating mediasoup for instructions and examples on how to do so.

I'm having troubles seeing webcams or screen sharing in Firefox​

That's usually the symptom of a known Firefox issue where it doesn't comply with ICE-lite implementations (and mediasoup is one).

This issue can be worked around by forcing TURN usage in Firefox user agents. To achieve that, set the public.kurento.forceRelayOnFirefox configuration to true in /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-html5.yml. For example:

public:
  media:
    forceRelayOnFirefox: true

How often does this Firefox issue happens?​

Short (non) answer: that's difficult to measure.

Every Firefox installation is prone to the lack of ICE-lite spec compliance. However, the issue doesn't manifest itself on all Firefox installations as it is dependent on how the end user's network topology is organized. It's generally a small subset of Firefox users, but that can vary depending on the user base.

Where can I track progress on a definitive solution or better workaround?​

This is a Firefox bug, so the best place to get an overview on progress and what the issue is about is Mozilla's issue.

You can also track BigBlueButton's issue for updates on additional workarounds.

Why isn't forceRelayOnFirefox enabled by default?​

It's not on by default because bigbluebutton does not come with a TURN server by default, and that's what versioned-in-code setting presumes.

How do I know if mediasoup is being used?​

The most direct and precise way to figure out whether mediasoup is being used is checking about:webrtc (Firefox) or chrome://webrtc-internals. For example: open one of those, share a camera. Look for the remote description (SDP); see if it contains mediasoup-client in the SDP header. If it does, you're using mediasoup.

Regardless of that: mediasoup is the default in 2.5 and should always be used unless default settings were explicitly changed.

Is single-core performance still important with mediasoup?​

Yes.

How can I control the number of mediasoup workers?​

To control the number of mediasoup workers, bbb-webrtc-sfu's override configuration file (located in /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-webrtc-sfu/production.yml) should be used.

There are a couple of configurations of interest here:

mediasoup.workers​

This configuration controls the number of mediasoup workers intended for general use (media type agnostic, shared pool).

Accepted values are:

  • "auto" (default): creates ceil((min(nproc,32) * 0.8) + (max(0, nproc - 32) / 2)) workers;
  • "cores": creates workers up to the host's core count (as provided by os.cpus().length);
  • <Number>: overrides the number of workers with a fixed value;
  • The default and fallback values are auto.

For example:

  • To set the number of workers to cores: yq e -i '.mediasoup.workers = "cores"' /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-webrtc-sfu/production.yml

mediasoup.dedicatedMediaTypeWorkers​

This configuration controls the number of mediasoup workers to be used by specific media types. If a dedicated pool is set, streams of its media type will always land on it. Otherwise, they will use the shared pool.

The configuration is an object of the following format:

mediasoup.dedicatedMediaTypeWorkers:
   audio: "auto"|"cores"|<Number>
   main: "auto"|"cores"|<Number>
   content: "auto"|"cores"|<Number>

The semantics of auto, cores and Number are the same as in the mediasoup.workers configuration. Default values for all media types are 0 (no dedicated workers).

The media types semantics are:

  • audio: audio (listen only, microphone) streams;
  • main: webcam video streams;
  • content: screen sharing streams (audio and video).

For example:

  • To set the number of dedicated audio workers to auto: yq e -i '.mediasoup.dedicatedMediaTypeWorkers.audio = "auto"' /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-webrtc-sfu/production.yml

Can I scale the number of streams up indefinitely with mediasoup?​

No. Scalability improves a lot with mediasoup, but there are still a couple of bottlenecks that can be hit as far as far as the media stack is concerned. Namely:

  • The signaling server (bbb-webrtc-sfu): it does not scale vertically indefinitely.
  • The mediasoup worker balancing algorithm implemented by bbb-webrtc-sfu is still focused on multiparty meetings with a restrained number of users. If your goal is thousand-user 1-N (streaming-like) meetings, you may max out CPU usage on certain mediasoup workers even though there are other idle workers free.

bbb-webrtc-sfu fails to start with a SETSCHEDULER error​

bbb-webrtc-sfu runs with CPUSchedulingPolicy=fifo. In systems without appropriate capabilities (SYS_NICE), the application will fail to start. The error can be verified in journalctl logs as 214/SETSCHEDULER.

Similar to bbb-html5, you can override this by running

mkdir /etc/systemd/system/bbb-webrtc-sfu.service.d

and creating /etc/systemd/system/bbb-webrtc-sfu.service.d/override.conf with the following contents

[Service]
CPUSchedulingPolicy=other
Nice=-10

Then do systemctl daemon-reload and restart BigBlueButton.

FreeSWITCH​

Configure BigBluebutton/FreeSWITCH to support IPV6​

The HTML5 client now enables users on mobile devices to connect to a BigBlueButton server. However, on some cellular networks iOS devices only receive an IPV6 address.

To enable BigBlueButton (FreeSWITCH) to accept incoming web socket connections on IPV6, the BigBlueButton server must have an IPV6 address. You also need to make the following changes to the server.

First, create the file /etc/nginx/conf.d/bigbluebutton_sip_addr_map.conf with this content:

map $remote_addr $freeswitch_addr {
    "~:"    [2001:db8::1];
    default    192.0.2.1;
}

replacing the ip addresses 192.0.2.1 with the system's external IPV4 addresses, and replace 2001:db8::1 with the system's external IPV6 address. Next, edit the file /etc/bigbluebutton/nginx/sip.nginx to have the following:

proxy_pass https://$freeswitch_addr:7443;

Next, ensure all of the following params are present in freeswitch's sip_profiles/external-ipv6.xml:

  • ws-binding
  • wss-binding
  • rtcp-audio-interval-msec
  • rtcp-video-interval-msec
  • dtmf-type
  • liberal-dtmf
  • enable-3pcc

If any are missing, copy them from sip_profiles/external.xml, then restart BigBlueButton (sudo bbb-conf --restart).

FreeSWITCH fails to bind to IPV4​

In rare occasions after shutdown/restart, the FreeSWITCH database can get corrupted. This will cause FreeSWITCH to have problems binding to IPV4 address (you may see error 1006 when users try to connect).

To check, look in /opt/freeswitch/var/log/freeswitch/freeswitch.log for errors related to loading the database.

2018-10-25 11:05:11.444727 [ERR] switch_core_db.c:108 SQL ERR [unsupported file format]
2018-10-25 11:05:11.444737 [ERR] switch_core_db.c:223 SQL ERR [unsupported file format]
2018-10-25 11:05:11.444759 [NOTICE] sofia.c:5949 Started Profile internal-ipv6 [sofia_reg_internal-ipv6]
2018-10-25 11:05:11.444767 [CRIT] switch_core_sqldb.c:508 Failure to connect to CORE_DB sofia_reg_external!
2018-10-25 11:05:11.444772 [CRIT] sofia.c:3049 Cannot Open SQL Database [external]!

If you see these errors, clear the FreeSWITCH database (BigBlueButton doesn't use the database and FreeSWITCH will recreate it on startup).

$ sudo systemctl stop freeswitch
$ rm -rf /opt/freeswitch/var/lib/freeswitch/db/*
$ sudo systemctl start freeswitch

Forward calls from an Asterisk server to FreeSWITCH​

Let's assume the following:

asterisk server ip:          192.168.1.100
bigbluebutton/freeswitch ip: 192.168.1.200

Changes to your Asterisk server​

Setup your gateway to BigBlueButton/FreeSWITCH. in /etc/asterisk/sip.conf add

[fs-gw]
type=peer
username=fs-gw
insecure=very
contactpermit=192.168.1.200/255.255.255.255
qualify=no
nat=yes
host=192.168.1.200
canreinvite=no
disallow=all
allow=ulaw

Route the calls to the gateway. In /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf context where your calls are being handled, forward the calls to the gateway. Here, when someone dials 85001, the call is sent to the fs-gw defined above.

exten => 85001,1,Dial(SIP/fs-gw/${EXTEN})
exten => 85001,2,Hangup

Changes to your BigBlueButton/FreeSWITCH server​

In BigBlueButton/FreeSWITCH, make the following changes:

Lock down so that only Asterisk can forward calls to FreeSWITCH. In /opt/freeswitch/conf/autoload_configs/acl.conf.xml, add the following ACL. We also need to allow BigBlueButton to call into FreeSWITCH, that's why we add the IP of BigBlueButton/FreeSWITCH into the ACL.

    <list name="asterisk-gw" default="deny">
       <node type="allow" cidr="192.168.1.200/32"/>
       <node type="allow" cidr="192.168.1.100/32"/>
       <node type="allow" cidr="127.0.0.1/32"/>
    </list>

Then we apply the ACL into the profile that receives the calls from external gateways. In /opt/freeswitch/conf/sip_profiles/external.xml, add the ACL under <settings>

  <settings>
    <!-- Apply ACL from asterisk-gw -->
    <param name="apply-inbound-acl" value="asterisk-gw"/>
...
</settings>

To debug, try connecting to FS CLI and increase logging level. Once connected, make your call and see what the logs say.

$ /opt/freeswitch/bin/fs_cli -p $(xmlstarlet sel -t -m 'configuration/settings/param[@name="password"]' -v @value /opt/freeswitch/etc/freeswitch/autoload_configs/event_socket.conf.xml)

  Once connected:
  help -- shows the available commands
  console loglevel <level> -- change log level

  Ctrl-D to exit

FreeSWITCH fails to bind to port 8021​

FreeSWITCH supports both IPV4 and IPV6. However, if your server does not support IPV6, FreeSWITCH will be unable to bind to port 8021. If you run sudo bbb-conf --check and see the following error

# Error: Found text in freeswitch.log:
#
#    Thread ended for mod_event_socket
#
# FreeSWITCH may not be responding to requests on port 8021 (event socket layer)
# and users may have errors joining audio.
#

it might be that your server has IPV6 disabled (or does not support it). You can check this by running the following command

$ sudo ip addr | grep inet6
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
...

If you do not see the line inet6 ::1/128 scope host, then your server has IPV6 disabled. In this case, we need to disable FreeSWITCH's support for IPV6. First, edit /opt/freeswitch/etc/freeswitch/autoload_configs/event_socket.conf.xml and change the line

    <param name="listen-ip" value="::"/>

to

    <param name="listen-ip" value="127.0.0.1"/>

This tells FreeSWITCH that instead of binding port 8021 to the local IPV6 address, bind to the IPV4 address 127.0.0.1. Next, execute the following two commands

$ sudo mv /opt/freeswitch/etc/freeswitch/sip_profiles/internal-ipv6.xml /opt/freeswitch/etc/freeswitch/sip_profiles/internal-ipv6.xml_
$ sudo mv /opt/freeswitch/etc/freeswitch/sip_profiles/external-ipv6.xml /opt/freeswitch/etc/freeswitch/sip_profiles/external-ipv6.xml_

and then restart BigBlueButton with the commands

$ sudo bbb-conf --clean
$ sudo bbb-conf --check

FreeSWITCH fails to start with a SETSCHEDULER error​

When running in a container (like a chroot, OpenVZ, LXC or LXD), it might not be possible for FreeSWITCH to set its CPU priority to real-time round robin. If not, it will result in lower performance compared to a non-virtualized installation.

If you running BigBlueButton in a container and an error starting FreeSWITCH, try running systemctl status freeswitch.service and see if you see the error related to SETSCHEDULER

$ systemctl status freeswitch.service
● freeswitch.service - freeswitch
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/freeswitch.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2017-10-02 16:17:29 UTC; 18s ago
  Process: 10967 ExecStart=/opt/freeswitch/bin/freeswitch -u freeswitch -g daemon -ncwait $DAEMON_OPTS (code=exited, status=214/SETSCHEDULER)
 Main PID: 3327 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Oct 02 16:17:29 scw-9e2305 systemd[1]: Failed to start freeswitch.
Oct 02 16:17:29 scw-9e2305 systemd[1]: freeswitch.service: Unit entered failed state.
Oct 02 16:17:29 scw-9e2305 systemd[1]: freeswitch.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Oct 02 16:17:29 scw-9e2305 systemd[1]: freeswitch.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Oct 02 16:17:29 scw-9e2305 systemd[1]: Stopped freeswitch.
Oct 02 16:17:29 scw-9e2305 systemd[1]: freeswitch.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Oct 02 16:17:29 scw-9e2305 systemd[1]: Failed to start freeswitch.

If you see SETSCHEDULER in the error message, edit /lib/systemd/system/freeswitch.service and comment the following:

#LimitRTPRIO=infinity
#LimitRTTIME=7000000
#IOSchedulingClass=realtime
#IOSchedulingPriority=2
#CPUSchedulingPolicy=rr
#CPUSchedulingPriority=89

Save the file, run systemctl daemon-reload, and then restart BigBlueButton. FreeSWITCH should now startup without error.

Users not able to join Listen Only mode​

When doing sudo bbb-conf --check, you may see the warning

voice Application failed to register with sip server

This error occurs when bbb-apps-sip isn't able to make a SIP call to FreeSWITCH. You'll see this in BigBlueButton when users click the headset icon and don't join the voice conference.

One possible cause for this is you have just installed BigBlueButton, but not restarted it. The packages do not start up the BigBlueButton components in the right order. To restart BigBlueButton, do the following:

$ sudo bbb-conf --restart
$ sudo bbb-conf --check

If you don't want FreeSWITCH to bind to 127.0.0.1, you need to figure out which IP address its using. First, determine the IP address FreeSWITCH is monitoring for incoming SIP calls with the following command:

$ netstat -ant | grep 5060

You should see an output such as

tcp        0      0 234.147.116.3:5060    0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN

In this example, FreeSWITCH is listening on IP address 234.147.116.3. The IP address on your server will be different.

Next, edit /usr/share/red5/webapps/sip/WEB-INF/bigbluebutton-sip.properties and set the value for sip.server.host to the IP address returned from the above command. Save the changes (you'll need to edit the file as root to save changes).

Restart BigBlueButton using the commands and run the built-in diagnostics checks.

$ sudo bbb-conf --clean
$ sudo bbb-conf --check

Unable to connect using fs_cli​

As of BigBlueButton 2.2.18, the packaging now replaces the default ClueCon password for connecting to the FreeSWITCH command line interface (fs_cli) with a random password.

(By default, FreeSWITCH only allowed unauthenticated connections from 127.0.0.1, but it's still good security practice to not use default passwords).

To connect to fs_cli, use the following command which supplies the password for authenticating.

/opt/freeswitch/bin/fs_cli -p $(xmlstarlet sel -t -m 'configuration/settings/param[@name="password"]' -v @value /opt/freeswitch/etc/freeswitch/autoload_configs/event_socket.conf.xml)

We also added /usr/local/bin/fs_clibbb with the contents

#!/bin/bash

/opt/freeswitch/bin/fs_cli -p $(xmlstarlet sel -t -m 'configuration/settings/param[@name="password"]' -v @value /opt/freeswitch/etc/freeswitch/autoload_configs/event_socket.conf.xml)

that will let you type fs_clibbb at the command prompt to get into FreeSWITCH console.

FreeSWITCH using default stun server​

For many years, in BigBlueButton's FreeSWITCH configuration file /opt/freeswitch/etc/freeswitch/vars.xml, the default value for external_rtp_ip was stun.freeswitch.org

  <X-PRE-PROCESS cmd="set" data="external_rtp_ip=stun:stun.freeswitch.org"/>

However, this is not a reliable choice for stun server. Recommend either changing it to your servers external IP address or setup your own stun/turn server. For example, if your server has an external IP at 234.32.3.3

  <X-PRE-PROCESS cmd="set" data="external_rtp_ip=234.32.3.3"/>

You can add a line in /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-conf/apply-conf.sh to always apply this value even if the FreeSWITCH package upgrades.

xmlstarlet edit --inplace --update '//X-PRE-PROCESS[@cmd="set" and starts-with(@data, "external_rtp_ip=")]/@data' --value "external_rtp_ip=234.32.3.3" /opt/freeswitch/conf/vars.xml

Note: If your server has an internal/external IP address, such as on AWS EC2 server, be sure to set it to the external IP address configure a dummy network interface card (see Update FreeSWITCH).

Installation and packages​

The following packages have unmet dependencies​

When installing the latest build of BigBlueButton, the package bbb-conf now uses yq to manage YAML files.

You need to add the repository ppa:rmescandon/yq to your server. For steps on how to do this, see https://launchpad.net/~rmescandon/+archive/ubuntu/yq?field.series_filter=jammy.

Alternatively, if you have not made any customizations to BigBlueButton (outside of using bbb-conf), you can use bbb-install.sh to install/upgrade to the latest version (the bbb-install.sh script will automatically install the repository for yq).

If you've installed/uninstalled BigBlueButton packages, you may get a No Symbolic Link warning from bbb-conf --check:

** Potential Problems **
    nginx (conf): no symbolic link in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled for bigbluebutton

To solve this, add a symbolic link to nginx for the BigBlueButton site:

$ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/bigbluebutton /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/bigbluebutton
$ sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

WebRTC errors (1001, 1002,...)​

WebRTC offers very high-quality audio. However, the user's network settings (or firewall) may not allow WebRTC to connect (or keep connected).

Here are the following lists the possible WebRTC error messages that a user may encounter:

  • 1001: WebSocket disconnected - The WebSocket had connected successfully and has now disconnected. Possible Causes:
    • Loss of internet connection
    • Nginx restarting can cause this
  • 1002: Could not make a WebSocket connection - The initial WebSocket connection was unsuccessful. Possible Causes:
    • Firewall blocking ws protocol
    • Server is down or improperly configured
    • See potential solution here.
  • 1003: Browser version not supported - Browser doesn’t implement the necessary WebRTC API methods. Possible Causes:
    • Out of date browser
  • 1004: Failure on call - The call was attempted, but failed. Possible Causes:
    • For a full list of causes refer here
    • There are 24 different causes so I don’t really want to list all of them
    • Solution for this issue outlined here.
  • 1005: Call ended unexpectedly - The call was successful, but ended without user requesting to end the session. Possible Causes:
    • Unknown
  • 1006: Call timed out - The library took too long to try and connect the call. Possible Causes:
    • Previously caused by Firefox 33-beta on Mac. We've been unable to reproduce since release of FireFox 34
  • 1007: ICE negotiation failed - The browser and FreeSWITCH try to negotiate ports to use to stream the media and that negotiation failed. Possible Causes:
    • NAT is blocking the connection
    • Firewall is blocking the UDP connection/ports
  • 1008: Call transfer failed - A timeout while waiting for FreeSWITCH to transfer from the echo test to the real conference. This might be caused by a misconfiguration in FreeSWITCH, or there might be a media error and the DTMF command to transfer didn't go through (In this case, the voice in the echo test probably didn't work either.)
  • 1009: Could not fetch STUN/TURN server information - This indicates either a BigBlueButton bug (or you're using an unsupported new client/old server combination), but could also happen due to a network interruption.
  • 1010: ICE negotiation timeout - After the call is accepted the client's browser and the server try and negotiate a path for the audio data. In some network setups this negotiation takes an abnormally long time to fail and this timeout is set to avoid the client getting stuck.
  • 1020: Media cloud could not reach the server - See how to solve this here.

Networking​

Server running behind NAT​

The following issue might be helpful in debugging if you run into errors and your server is behind NAT.

The browser is not supported​

When you attempt to join a BigBlueButton session, the client looks for supported browsers before fully loading. The client gets its list of supported browsers from /usr/share/bigbluebutton/html5-client/private/config/settings.yml. You can see the list of supported browsers at the bottom. For example,

- browser: mobileSafari
  version:
    - 11
    - 1

states that Mobile Safari version 11.1 or later is supported (notice the first letter is lower case and concatenated with the remainder of the browser name).

To add a browser to the list, first find your browser's useragent. You could use a tool like https://wtools.io/check-my-user-agent as well. For example, with the Vivaldi browser you might see

Vivaldi 2.8.1664 / Linux 0.0.0

Next, to add this as a supported browser, append to settings.yml

- browser: vivaldi
  version:
    - 2
    - 8

save the updated settings.yml file, and then restart your BigBlueButton server with sudo bbb-conf --restart. Note any browser you add must support WebRTC libraries (not all do), so be sure to check it first with https://test.webrtc.org/.

nginx not running​

The common reasons for nginx not running are inability to bind to port 80 and configuration errors. To check if port 80 is already in use, use

$ sudo netstat -ant

to see if any process is currently bound to port 80. If so, check to see if another web server is installed. If so, then stop the web server and try to restart nginx. One of the server requirements before you install BigBlueButton is that port 80 is not in use by another application (such as Apache). For details on why this is a requirements, see We recommend running BigBlueButton on port 80.

If port 80 is free, check if your nginx configuration file has errors. Try a restart of nginx

$ sudo systemctl restart nginx

and look for the output of

   [ OK ]

If you see [ Fail ], then your nginx configuration files might have a syntax error. Check the syntax of the nginx configuration files using the command

$ sudo nginx -t

and see if it reports any errors. You can also check the error.log file for nginx to see what errors it gives on startup

$ sudo cat /var/log/nginx/error.log

"Welcome to nginx"​

During installation of BigBlueButton the packaging scripts attempt to assign the correct IP address during setup. However, if the IP address changes (such as when rebooting a VM), or the first IP address was not the correct IP address for the server, you may see a "Welcome to nginx" page.

To reconfigure the BigBlueButton to use the correct IP address or hostname, see BigBlueButton does not load.

bbb-web​

Blank presentation area on create or upload​

If you join a meeting and the default presentation is not visible or your uploaded presentation doesn't display, then this is most likely due to a permissions error. To solve this, ensure that /var/bigbluebutton/ is owned by bigbluebutton rather than root or any other account. See this issue for more explanation.

Unable to create presentation​

If you see the following error in /var/log/bigbluebutton/bbb-web.log

  failed to map segment from shared object: Operation not permitted

use the command mount to check that the /tmp director does not have noexec permissions (which would prevent executables from running in the /tmp directory). If you see noexec for /tmp, you need to remount the directory with permissions that enable processes (such as the slide conversion) to execute in the /tmp directory.

Too many open files​

On servers with greater than 8 CPU cores, bbb-web log (/var/log/bigbluebutton/bbb-web.log) may throw an error of Too many open files

Caused by: java.io.IOException: Too many open files

To resolve, create an override file that increases the number of open files for bbb-web

$  sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/bbb-web.service.d/
$  sudo cat > /etc/systemd/system/bbb-web.service.d/override.conf << HERE
[Service]
LimitNOFILE=
LimitNOFILE=8192
HERE
$  sudo systemctl daemon-reload

bbb-web takes a long time to startup​

bbb-web relies on the SecureRandom class (which uses available entropy) to provide random values for its session IDs. On a virtualized server, however, the available entropy can run low and cause bbb-web to block for a long period before it finishes it's startup sequence (see Slow startup of tomcat).

To provide bbb-web with more entropy, you can install haveged

$ sudo apt-get install haveged

For more information see How to Setup Additional Entropy for Cloud Servers Using Haveged.

Other errors​

Root partition too small​

If the root partition on your BigBlueButton server is too small (for disk space requirements see Before you install), we recommend moving the following directories to an external partition with sufficient disk space.

BigBlueButton processing and storage of recordings:

Location of all media directories on disk available here.

To make the move, we'll first stop BigBlueButton, then move the above directories to a new location on the external partition, create symbolic links from the original locations to the new locations, and restart BigBlueButton.

In the following example, the external partition is mounted on /mnt.

$ sudo bbb-conf --stop

$ sudo mv /var/freeswitch/meetings /mnt
$ sudo ln -s /mnt/recordings /var/freeswitch/meetings

$ sudo mv /usr/share/red5/webapps/video/streams /mnt
$ sudo ln -s /mnt/streams /usr/share/red5/webapps/video/streams

$ sudo /var/bigbluebutton /mnt
$ sudo ln -s /mnt/bigbluebutton /var/bigbluebutton

$ sudo bbb-conf --start

BigBlueButton does not load​

If your has changed it's network connection (such as on reboot), you can clean most of BigBlueButton's configuration files with the following steps.

$ sudo bbb-conf --setip <ip_address_or_hostname>

$ sudo bbb-conf --clean
$ sudo bbb-conf --check

For more information see bbb-conf options.

Running within an LXD Container​

LXD is a very powerful container system for Ubuntu lets you run full Ubuntu 16.04 servers within a container. Because you can easily clone and snapshot LXD containers, they are ideal for development and testing of BigBlueButton.

However, if you install BigBlueButton within an LXD container, you will get the following error from sudo bbb-conf --check

** Potential problems described below **

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# Error: Unable to connect to the FreeSWITCH Event Socket Layer on port 8021

If you check the output of sudo bbb-conf --status, you'll be able to identify that three different applications failed to start: FreeSWITCH, bbb-webrtc-sfu and bbb-html5. Optionally, check their errors via systemctl status <service-name>.service and verify that their boot sequence failed due to a SETSCHEDULER error.

This error occurs because the default systemd unit scripts for FreeSWITCH, bbb-html5 and bbb-webrtc-sfu try to run with permissions not available to the LXD container. To get them working within an LXD container, follow the steps outlined in the following sections:

You can now run BigBlueButton within a LXD container.

500 Internal Server Error​

It is most likely an error on GreenLight. Check the log file according to Troubleshooting Greenlight.

If this error occurs on just a small number of PCs accessing a BigBlueButton server within a LAN through a proxy server and you find the description "Error::Unsafe Host Error (x.x.x.x is not a safe host)" (where x.x.x.x is an IP address) in the log file, check if the "Don't use the proxy server for local (intranet) addresses" (in the Windows proxy setting) is ticked.