Version: 3.0

Configuration Files

Overview

This document gives an overview of the BigBlueButton configuration files.

We recommend you make changes only to the override files (/etc/bigbluebutton) so that when you update to a newer version of BigBlueButton your configuration changes are not overwritten by the new packages.

Local overrides for configuration settings

Starting with BigBlueButton 2.3 many of the configuration files have local overrides so the administrator can specify the local equivalents. We recommend you make changes only to the override files (/etc/bigbluebutton) so that when you update to a newer version of BigBlueButton your configuration changes are not overwritten by the new packages.

Package	Override	Notes
/usr/share/bbb-web/WEB-INF/classes/bigbluebutton.properties	/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-web.properties	Minimum containing general configuration (`securitySalt` and `serverURL`)
/usr/share/bbb-apps-akka/conf/application.conf	/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-apps-akka.conf
/usr/share/bbb-fsesl-akka/conf/application.conf	/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-fsesl-akka.conf
/usr/share/bigbluebutton/html5-client/private/config/settings.yml	/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-html5.yml	Arrays are merged by replacement (as of 2.4-rc-5)
/etc/default/bbb-graphql-server	/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-graphql-server.env	It can replace any Hasura config but HASURA_GRAPHQL_ADMIN_SECRET
/usr/share/bbb-graphql-server/admin-secret		Stores Hasura admin password (HASURA_GRAPHQL_ADMIN_SECRET), it can be edited
/usr/share/bbb-graphql-middleware/config.yml	/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-graphql-middleware.yml
/usr/share/bbb-web/WEB-INF/classes/spring/turn-stun-servers.xml	/etc/bigbluebutton/turn-stun-servers.xml	Replaces the original file
/usr/local/bigbluebutton/bbb-webrtc-sfu/config/default.yml	/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-webrtc-sfu/production.yml	Arrays are merged by replacement
/usr/local/bigbluebutton/bbb-pads/config/settings.json	/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-pads.json	Arrays are merged by replacement
/usr/share/bbb-shared-notes-server/config/default.yml	/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-shared-notes-server.yml
/usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/bigbluebutton.yml	/etc/bigbluebutton/recording/recording.yml
/usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/presentation.yml	/etc/bigbluebutton/recording/presentation.yml
/etc/cron.daily/bigbluebutton	/etc/default/bigbluebutton-cron-config	Only variables allowed in the override

For bbb-web.properties, the settings are name/value pair. For example, the following bbb-web.properties overrides the settings for bigbluebutton.web.serverURL and securitySalt (shared secret).

#
# Use this file to override default entries in /usr/share/bbb-web/WEB-INF/classes/bigbluebutton.properties
#

bigbluebutton.web.serverURL=https://droplet-7162.meetbbb.com
securitySalt=UsanRxRk938d02cTWfAqSM9Cvin7bnzsREfqFfzpf2U

This override will ensure that bbb-web uses the above values regardless of changes the packaging scripts make to the upgrade.

For bbb-apps-akka and bbb-fsesl-akka, the settings file are formatted as shown below. For example, the file bbb-apps-akka.conf overrides the settings for /usr/share/bbb-apps-akka/conf/application.conf.

// include default config from upstream
include "/usr/share/bbb-apps-akka/conf/application.conf"

// you can customize everything here. API endpoint and secret have to be changed
// This file will not be overridden by packages

services {
  bbbWebAPI="https://bbb.example.com/bigbluebutton/api"
  sharedSecret="UsanRxRk938d02cTWfAqSM9Cvin7bnzsREfqFfzpf2U"
}

HTML5 Client

Configuration files

For bbb-html5.yml the settings file are YAML formatted. Any setting in this file overrides the corresponding setting in /usr/share/bigbluebutton/html5-client/private/config/settings.yml. For example, the following bbb-html5.yml overrides the values for public.kurento.screenshare.constraints.audio to true.

public:
  kurento:
    screenshare:
      constraints:
        audio: true

Log files

Log monitoring for server logs (bbb-html5)

In BigBlueButton 3.0 we modified the architecture to shift the load away from the old frontend and backend bbb-html5 pools of services. Logs for the new services can be foud via:

journalctl -f -u bbb-html5.service

Akka-apps is responsible for most of the logic, so key info can be obtained via

journalctl -f -u bbb-apps-akka.service

SYSTEMD_LESS=FRXMK journalctl -u bbb-graphql-middleware.service -f can also be useful.

Logs sent directly from the client

To assist with monitoring and debugging, the HTML5 client can send its logs to the BigBlueButton server via the logger function. Here's an example of its use:

The client logger accepts two targets for the logs: console and external.

Name	Default Value	Accepted Values	Description
target	"console"	"console", "external",	Where the logs will be sent to.
level	"info"	"debug", "info", "warn", "error"	The lowest log level that will be sent. Any log level higher than this will also be sent to the target.
url	-	-	The end point where logs will be sent to when the target is set to "external".
method	-	"POST", "PUT"	HTTP method being used when using the target "external".
enableRuntimeErrorLogging	false	true / false	When true, the client installs global listeners to capture runtime errors, unhandled rejections, and resource load failures.

The default values are:

clientLog:
  console:
    {
      enabled: true,
      level: debug,
      enableRuntimeErrorLogging: false,
    }
  external:
    {
      enabled: false,
      level: info,
      url: https://LOG_HOST/html5Log,
      method: POST,
      throttleInterval: 400,
      flushOnClose: true,
    }

Notice that the external option is disabled by default - you can enable it on your own server after a few configuration changes.

When enabling the external logging output, the BigBlueButton client will POST the log events to the URL endpoint provided by url. To create an associated endpoint on the BigBlueButton server for the POST request, create a file /etc/bigbluebutton/nginx/html5-client-log.nginx with the following contents:

location /html5Log {
    access_log /var/log/nginx/html5-client.log postdata;
    echo_read_request_body;
}

Then create a file in /etc/nginx/conf.d/html5-client-log.conf with the following contents:

log_format postdata '$remote_addr [$time_iso8601] $request_body';

Next, install the full version of nginx.

$ sudo apt-get install nginx-full

You may also need to create the external output file and give it the appropriate permissions and ownership:

$ sudo touch /var/log/nginx/html5-client.log
$ sudo chown www-data:adm /var/log/nginx/html5-client.log
$ sudo chmod 640 /var/log/nginx/html5-client.log

Restart BigBlueButton with sudo bbb-conf --restart and launch the BigBlueButton HTML5 client in a new session. You should see the logs appearing in /var/log/nginx/html5-client.log as follows

99.239.102.0 [2018-09-09T14:59:10+00:00] [{\x22name: .. }]

You can follow the logs on the server with the command

$ tail -f /var/log/nginx/html5-client.log | sed -u -e 's/\\x22/"/g' -e 's/\\x5C/\\/g'

Here's a sample log entry

      "requesterUserId":"w_klfavdlkumj8",
      "fullname":"Ios",
      "confname":"Demo Meeting",
      "externUserID":"w_klfavdlkumj8"
   },
   "url":"https://demo.bigbluebutton.org/html5client/users",
   "userAgent":"Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 11_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/11.0 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1",
   "count":1
}

nginx

Configuration files

Located in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/bigbluebutton

This configures nginx to use /var/www/bigbluebutton-default/assets as the default site. (src)

Log files

Log	Description
/var/log/nginx/bigbluebutton.access.log	Web log of access to BigBlueButton HTML pages.
/var/log/nginx/error.log	Web log of errors generated by nginx based on browser requests.

bbb-web

Configuration files

 /usr/share/bbb-web/WEB-INF/classes/bigbluebutton.properties
 /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-web.properties

This is one of the main configuration files for BigBlueButton applications.

https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton/blob/main/bigbluebutton-web/grails-app/conf/bigbluebutton.properties

Log files

Located in /var/log/bigbluebutton/bbb-web

Log	Description
catalina.yyyy-mm-dd.log	General log information from startup.
localhost.yyyy-mm-dd.log	General log information from startup of applications.
/var/log/syslog	Also contains output from bbb-web.
/var/log/bigbluebutton	Contains BigBlueButton Web and Recording processing logs.

FreeSWITCH

Configuration Files

/opt/freeswitch/conf/vars.xml

Setup host and external IP values.

/opt/freeswitch/conf/autoload_configs/conference.conf.xml

Setup voice conference properties.

/opt/freeswitch/conf/dialplan/default
/opt/freeswitch/conf/dialplan/public

Recording

Log files

For each workflow and meeting we have a different logfile, they come in the form: <workflow>-<meetingId>.log, as specified below:

Log	Description
`/var/log/bigbluebutton/archive-<meetingId>.log`	All logs for archive phase
`/var/log/bigbluebutton/presentation/process-<meetingId>.log`	All logs for process phase
`/var/log/bigbluebutton/presentation/publish-<meetingId>.log`	All logs for publish phase

Overview​

Local overrides for configuration settings​

HTML5 Client​

Configuration files​

Log files​

Log monitoring for server logs (bbb-html5)​

Logs sent directly from the client​

nginx​

Configuration files​

Log files​

bbb-web​

Configuration files​

Log files​

FreeSWITCH​

Configuration Files​

Recording​

Log files​

Overview

Local overrides for configuration settings

HTML5 Client

Configuration files

Log files

Log monitoring for server logs (bbb-html5)

Logs sent directly from the client

nginx

Configuration files

Log files

bbb-web

Configuration files

Log files

FreeSWITCH

Configuration Files

Recording

Log files