You must have heard about the latest release of BigBlueButton 2.4.
Sharing our process to safely migrate our BBB servers running 2.2.x or 2.3.x to 2.4.
1. Take Backup
# Note down your BBB secret so that you can set the same secret after upgrading to the 2.4 version
bbb-conf --secret
# Create a backup directory
mkdir backup && cd backup
# Take backup of all your recordings
mkdir bbb_recording && cp -r /var/bigbluebutton/published/presentation/* bbb_recording
# Take backup of MP4 recordings if you have created MP4 videos
mkdir mp4 && cp -r /var/www/bigblurbutton-default/recording/* mp4
# Take backup of apply-config.sh where you keep all your customizations
cp /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-conf/apply-config.sh .
# add any other file or folder you want to backup then run the following command, which will create a file called backup.tgz. Keep this file safely, which we will use to restore data for your current BBB setup.
tar -zcf backup.tgz backup
2. Install Ubuntu 18.x (only for BBB 2.2 => BBB 2.4)
This is applicable only if you are migrating from BigBlueButton 2.2 to BigBlueButton 2.4.
We figured that it’s much simpler to install Ubuntu 18.x.
Upgrading Ubuntu 16.x is not straightforward. One problem that we faced consistently was that the ruby environment was getting broken and we had to spend hours to fix it.
3. Install BigBlueButton 2.4
Here is the simple upgrade command:
wget -qO- https://ubuntu.bigbluebutton.org/bbb-install.sh | bash -s -- -v bionic-240 -s bbb.your-domain.com -e your@email.com -w -g -c turn.your-turnserver.com:password
One suggestion: use Linux Screen tool to install so that your installation continues even when you lose network connection during the installation. Read more about using Linux Screen here.
4. Restore Data
Once bBigBlueButton 2.4 is installed , place backup.tgz in /root and run tar -xvzf backup.tzg. This will unzip the tar file.
Move the folders to respective place:
cp bbb_recordings/* /var/bigbluebutton/published/presentation/
cp mp4/* /var/www/bigbluebutton-default/recording /
cp apply-config.sh /etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-conf/
Set the same secret for your BBB server:
run bbb-conf --secret to check whether the secret has changed. If yes, then execute below command.
bbb-conf --setsecret <your old secret >
bbb-conf --restart
That’s all!
Enjoy the new BigBlueButton version 2.4.
Do you want to know new features of BigBlueButton 2.4?
Continue reading: Six more Reasons to love BigBlueButton!