docker-mconf

Unofficial docker image for Mconf Web Conferencing Platform for BigBlueButton.

This repository contains the Dockerfile and all other files needed to build the image and launch a full blown web video conferencing platform. More info about
Mconf can be found at: http://www.mconf.org

Build instructions

We use docker-compose to build and run the images. Clone this repo and then:

cd docker-mconf-web
sudo docker-compose build

How to run it

If you don't want to build the image and just use the images available at docker hub then you can use this other docker-compose.yml file, and bring up the containers like this:

sudo docker-compose -f docker-compose-prod.yml up

Upon container startup, the images of other needed container will be pulled, like:

SMTP relay, a redis container, a Mariadb database, a nginx proxy server, and a bigbluebutton server.

By default, when the Mconf container is run it will be configured according to the setup_conf.yml configuration file. The database configuration file database.yml is already configured to use the included mariadb container, it only needs to be configured if you plan to use another database.

If you are building a derived image from this one you can add your own custom configuration file in the Dockerfile, copying them to /var/www/mconf-web/config/. If not you can use the following environment variables to configure the container in the file docker-compose.yml:

Database configuration:

• MCONF_DB_PASSWORD: Mconf user database password. By default is set to changeme.
• MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: database root user password needed to create the database and fill it up. Default password is also changeme, to change it, change it on the mariadb service definition (look at the docker-compose.yml files for an example).

Mconf configuration:

• MCONF_ADMIN_USERNAME
• MCONF_ADMIN_EMAIL
• MCONF_ADMIN_PASSWORD
• MCONF_ADMIN_NAME
• MCONF_SITE_NAME
• MCONF_SITE_DESC
• MCONF_SITE_LOCALE available languages are en, es-419 and pt-br (default is en).
• MCONF_SITE_DOMAIN
• MCONF_SITE_FEEDBACK_URL
• MCONF_SITE_ANALYTICS_CODE
• MCONF_SITE_SIGNATURE
• MCONF_SITE_SSL
• MCONF_DISABLE_REGISTRATION Disable user registration.

SMTP server settings:

We use a SMTP Relay container to send notification emails. This only need to be set if the included postfix container isn't used.

• MCONF_SITE_SMTP_SERVER
• MCONF_SITE_SMTP_PORT
• MCONF_SITE_SMTP_DOMAIN
• MCONF_SITE_SMTP_SENDER
• MCONF_SITE_SMTP_USE_TLS
• MCONF_SITE_SMTP_AUTO_TLS
• MCONF_SITE_SMTP_AUTH_TYPE

BigBlueButton server configuration:

• MCONF_WEBCONF_NAME Name for the BigBlueButton server.
• MCONF_WEBCONF_SERVER BigBlueButton server hostname.
• MCONF_WEBCONF_SALT Salt of the BigBlueButton server.
• MCONF_WEBCONF_VERSION version of the BigBlueButton server. This one is optional.

If there's linked a BigBlueButton container then there's no need to set MCONF_WEBCONF_SERVER as mconf will be automatically configured to use the linked container.

We also include a redis container so the following variables only need to be set if you plan to use a different one:

• MCONF_REDIS_HOST
• MCONF_REDIS_PORT
• MCONF_REDIS_DB
• MCONF_REDIS_PASSWORD

The default database password is changeme, to change it, edit the docker-compose.yml file and change the MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD environment variable on the mariadb image definition before running docker-compose.

Using docker hub images

Use this docker-compose.yml file that points to pre-built images to be pulled from docker hub and run instead of building them:

sudo docker-compose -f docker-compose-prod.yml up

This docker compose file will pull all needed pieces as mentioned before, including the proxy container. This one is needed to be able to run both mconf-web and the BigBlueButton container on the same host. The proxy is based on jwilder/nginx-proxy and increases client_max_body_size=10m to allow bigger presentation uploads. To use it we need to define an environment variable called VIRTUAL_HOST on the mconf and BigBlueButton services with the DNS hostname of each of them as their value. By default default VIRTUAL_HOST is set to mconf.example.com and bbb.example.com respectively.

After the containers finish starting up you can access the Mconf portal at:

http://meet.example.com

or whatever other hostname you specified on the VIRTUAL_HOST environment variables for mconf-web and BigBlueButton services. If you are just testing you could add mconf.example.com and bbb.example.com to your /etc/hosts file pointing to your docker machine and test it.

Backing up and restoring

I have included backup and restore scripts to backup an mconf install including the database contents. Scripts are still very basic, there's lots of room for improvement. Use them at your own risk.

Backing up

On a running Mconf container exec the following script:

sudo docker exec mconfweb_mconf_1 /mconf_backup.sh

The backup script will create a tarball and copy it to /data/backups which you can host mount to have access to the backup files from the docker host. The backup directory can be changed with the MCONF_BACKUP_DIR environment variable.

Restoring

To restore a backup file created with the previous backup script, two environment variables need to be set:

• MCONF_RESTORE=yes Will restore the backup specified by MCONF_RESTORE_FILE environment variable.
• MCONF_RESTORE_FILE is the backup name to restore, compressed as a bz2 file. Backups must be inside the /data/backups directory.

You need to mount that backups volume from somewhere, it can be from another volume (using --volumes-from) or mounting a host volume which contains the backup files.