Installing BigBlueButton For Seneca

1. Update your server

You first need to give your server access to the BigBlueButton package repository for 0.81.

In a terminal window, copy and paste the following commands.

# Add the BigBlueButton key
wget http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bigbluebutton.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

# Add the BigBlueButton repository URL and ensure the multiverse is enabled
echo "deb http://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/lucid_dev_081/ bigbluebutton-lucid main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list
echo "deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

Note: At the time of writing, the packages are unstable. The XXX will updated when the beta repository is ready.

After you've made the above changes, do a dist-upgrade to ensure your running the latest packages and your server is up-to-date before installing BigBlueButton.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If you've not updated in a while, apt-get may recommend you reboot your server after dist-upgrade finishes. Do the reboot before proceeding to the next step.

2. Install Ruby

The record and playback infrastructure uses Ruby for the processing of recorded sessions.

First, you'll need to install the following dependencies to compile ruby.

sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libreadline5-dev libyaml-dev build-essential bison checkinstall libffi5 gcc checkinstall libreadline5 libyaml-0-2

Next, create a file called install-ruby.sh and copy and paste in the following script.

#!/bin/bash
cd /tmp
wget http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p290.tar.gz
tar xvzf ruby-1.9.2-p290.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.2-p290
./configure --prefix=/usr\
            --program-suffix=1.9.2\
            --with-ruby-version=1.9.2\
            --disable-install-doc
make
sudo checkinstall -D -y\
                  --fstrans=no\
                  --nodoc\
                  --pkgname='ruby1.9.2'\
                  --pkgversion='1.9.2-p290'\
                  --provides='ruby'\
                  --requires='libc6,libffi5,libgdbm3,libncurses5,libreadline5,openssl,libyaml-0-2,zlib1g'\
                  --maintainer=brendan.ribera@gmail.com
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/ruby ruby /usr/bin/ruby1.9.2 500 \
                         --slave /usr/bin/ri ri /usr/bin/ri1.9.2 \
                         --slave /usr/bin/irb irb /usr/bin/irb1.9.2 \
                         --slave /usr/bin/erb erb /usr/bin/erb1.9.2 \
                         --slave /usr/bin/rdoc rdoc /usr/bin/rdoc1.9.2
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gem gem /usr/bin/gem1.9.2 500

Next, run the script

chmod +x install-ruby.sh
./install-ruby.sh

After the install finishes, type ruby -v. You should see the ruby interpreter output 1.9.2p290 (or later).

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.9.2p290 (2011-07-09 revision 32553)

Next type gem -v.

$ gem -v
1.3.7

Finally, to make sure you can install gems, type sudo gem install hello (BigBlueButton does not need the gem hello; rather, we're just testing to makes sure gem is working properly).

$ sudo gem install hello
Successfully installed hello-0.0.1
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for hello-0.0.1...
Installing RDoc documentation for hello-0.0.1...

Make sure you can execute the above three commands without errors before continuing with these instructions. If you do encounter errors, please post to bigbluebutton-setup and we'll help you resolve the errors.

You might be wondering why not use the default Ruby packages for Ubumtu 10.04? Unfortunately, they are out of date. Thanks to Brendan Ribera for the above script for installing the latest ruby on Ubuntu 10.04 as a package.