matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/docs/configuring-playbook-jitsi.md

Setting up the Jitsi video-conferencing platform (optional)

The playbook can install the Jitsi video-conferencing platform and integrate it with Element clients (Element Web/Desktop, Android and iOS).

See the project’s documentation to learn what it does and why it might be useful to you.

Note: the configuration by the playbook is similar to the one by docker-jitsi-meet. You can refer to the official documentation for Docker deployment here.

Prerequisites

You may need to open the following ports to your server:

• 4443/tcp - RTP media fallback over TCP
• 10000/udp - RTP media over UDP. Depending on your firewall/NAT setup, incoming RTP packets on port 10000 may have the external IP of your firewall as destination address, due to the usage of STUN in JVB (see jitsi_jvb_stun_servers).

Adjusting the playbook configuration

To enable Jitsi, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

jitsi_enabled: true

Adjusting the Jitsi URL

By default, this playbook installs Jitsi on the jitsi. subdomain (jitsi.example.com) and requires you to adjust your DNS records.

By tweaking the jitsi_hostname variable, you can easily make the service available at a different hostname than the default one.

Example additional configuration for your vars.yml file:

# Change the default hostname
jitsi_hostname: call.example.com

Adjusting DNS records

Once you’ve decided on the domain and path, you may need to adjust your DNS records to point the Jitsi domain to the Matrix server.

By default, you will need to create a CNAME record for jitsi. See Configuring DNS for details about DNS changes.

Configure Jitsi authentication and guests mode (optional)

By default the Jitsi Meet instance does not require any kind of login and is open to use for anyone without registration.

If you’re fine with such an open Jitsi instance, please skip to Installing.

If you would like to control who is allowed to open meetings on your new Jitsi instance, then please follow the following steps to enable Jitsi’s authentication and optionally guests mode.

Currently, there are three supported authentication modes: ‘internal’ (default), ‘matrix’ and ‘ldap’.

Note: Authentication is not tested via the playbook’s self-checks. We therefore recommend that you manually verify if authentication is required by jitsi. For this, try to manually create a conference on jitsi.example.com in your browser.

Authenticate using Jitsi accounts (Auth-Type ‘internal’)

The default authentication mechanism is ‘internal’ auth, which requires jitsi-accounts to be setup and is the recommended setup, as it also works in federated rooms. With authentication enabled, all meeting rooms have to be opened by a registered user, after which guests are free to join. If a registered host is not yet present, guests are put on hold in individual waiting rooms.

Add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

jitsi_enable_auth: true
jitsi_enable_guests: true
jitsi_prosody_auth_internal_accounts:
  - username: "jitsi-moderator"
    password: "secret-password"
  - username: "another-user"
    password: "another-password"

⚠️ Warning: Accounts added here and subsequently removed will not be automatically removed from the Prosody server until user account cleaning is integrated into the playbook.

If you get an error like this: “Error: Account creation/modification not supported.", it’s likely that you had previously installed Jitsi without auth/guest support. In such a case, you should look into Rebuilding your Jitsi installation.

Authenticate using Matrix OpenID (Auth-Type ‘matrix’)

⚠️ Warning: probably this breaks the Jitsi instance in federated rooms and does not allow sharing conference links with guests.

Using this authentication type require a Matrix User Verification Service. By default, this playbook creates and configures a user-verification-service to run locally, see configuring-user-verification-service.

To enable set this configuration at host level:

jitsi_enable_auth: true
jitsi_auth_type: matrix
matrix_user_verification_service_enabled: true

For more information see also https://github.com/matrix-org/prosody-mod-auth-matrix-user-verification.

Authenticate using LDAP (Auth-Type ‘ldap’)

An example LDAP configuration could be:

jitsi_enable_auth: true
jitsi_auth_type: ldap
jitsi_ldap_url: "ldap://ldap.example.com"
jitsi_ldap_base: "OU=People,DC=example.com"
#jitsi_ldap_binddn: ""
#jitsi_ldap_bindpw: ""
jitsi_ldap_filter: "uid=%u"
jitsi_ldap_auth_method: "bind"
jitsi_ldap_version: "3"
jitsi_ldap_use_tls: true
jitsi_ldap_tls_ciphers: ""
jitsi_ldap_tls_check_peer: true
jitsi_ldap_tls_cacert_file: "/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt"
jitsi_ldap_tls_cacert_dir: "/etc/ssl/certs"
jitsi_ldap_start_tls: false

For more information refer to the docker-jitsi-meet and the saslauthd LDAP_SASLAUTHD documentation.

Making your Jitsi server work on a LAN (optional)

By default the Jitsi Meet instance does not work with a client in LAN (Local Area Network), even if others are connected from WAN. There are no video and audio. In the case of WAN to WAN everything is ok.

The reason is the Jitsi VideoBridge git to LAN client the IP address of the docker image instead of the host. The documentation of Jitsi in docker suggest to add JVB_ADVERTISE_IPS in enviornment variable to make it work.

To enable it, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

jitsi_jvb_container_extra_arguments:
  - '--env "JVB_ADVERTISE_IPS=<Local IP address of the host>"'

Fine tune Jitsi (optional)

If you’d like to have Jitsi save up resources, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file (adapt to your needs):

jitsi_web_custom_config_extension: |
  config.enableLayerSuspension = true;

  config.disableAudioLevels = true;

  // Limit the number of video feeds forwarded to each client
  config.channelLastN = 4;

jitsi_web_config_resolution_width_ideal_and_max: 480
jitsi_web_config_resolution_height_ideal_and_max: 240

These configurations:

• suspend unused video layers until they are requested again, to save up resources on both server and clients. Read more on this feature here.
• disable audio levels to avoid excessive refresh of the client-side page and decrease the CPU consumption involved
• limit the number of video feeds forwarded to each client, to save up resources on both server and clients. As clients’ bandwidth and CPU may not bear the load, use this setting to avoid lag and crashes. This feature is available by default on other webconference applications such as Office 365 Teams (the number is limited to 4). Read how it works here and performance evaluation on this study.
• limit the maximum video resolution, to save up resources on both server and clients

Specify a Max number of participants on a Jitsi conference (optional)

The playbook allows a user to set a max number of participants allowed to join a Jitsi conference. By default the number is not limited.

To set the max number of participants, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file (adapt to your needs):

jitsi_prosody_max_participants: 4 # example value

Set up Additional JVBs (optional)

By default, a single JVB (Jitsi VideoBridge) is deployed on the same host as the Matrix server. To allow more video-conferences to happen at the same time, you’d need to provision additional JVB services on other hosts.

These settings below will allow you to provision those extra JVB instances. The instances will register themselves with the Prosody service, and be available for Jicofo to route conferences too.

Add the jitsi_jvb_servers section on hosts file

For additional JVBs, you’d need to add the section titled jitsi_jvb_servers on the ansible hosts file with the details of the JVB hosts as below:

[jitsi_jvb_servers]
jvb-2.example.com ansible_host=192.168.0.2

Make sure to replace jvb-2.example.com with your hostname for the JVB and 192.168.0.2 with your JVB’s external IP address, respectively.

You could add JVB hosts as many as you would like. When doing so, add lines with the details of them.

Set the server ID to each JVB

Each JVB requires a server ID to be set, so that it will be uniquely identified. The server ID allows Jitsi to keep track of which conferences are on which JVB.

The server ID can be set with the variable jitsi_jvb_server_id. It will end up as the JVB_WS_SERVER_ID environment variables in the JVB docker container.

To set the server ID to jvb-2, add the following configuration to either vars.yml or hosts file (adapt to your needs). If you set the value on the hosts file, add jitsi_jvb_server_id=jvb-2 after your JVB’s external IP addresses as below.

• On vars.yml:

  jitsi_jvb_server_id: 'jvb-2'
  

• On hosts:

  [jitsi_jvb_servers]
  jvb-2.example.com ansible_host=192.168.0.2 jitsi_jvb_server_id=jvb-2
  jvb-3.example.com ansible_host=192.168.0.3 jitsi_jvb_server_id=jvb-2
  

Alternatively, you can specify the variable as a parameter to the ansible command.

Note: the server ID jvb-1 is reserved for the JVB instance running on the Matrix host, therefore should not be used as the ID of an additional JVB host.

Set colibri WebSocket port

The additional JVBs will need to expose the colibri WebSocket port.

To expose the port, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

jitsi_jvb_container_colibri_ws_host_bind_port: 9090

Set Prosody XMPP server

The JVB will also need to know the location of the Prosody XMPP server.

Similar to the server ID (jitsi_jvb_server_id), this can be set with the variable for the JVB by using the variable jitsi_xmpp_server.

Set the Matrix domain

The Jitsi Prosody container is deployed on the Matrix server by default, so the value can be set to the Matrix domain. To set the value, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

jitsi_xmpp_server: "{{ matrix_domain }}"

Set an IP address of the Matrix server

Alternatively, the IP address of the Matrix server can be set. This can be useful if you would like to use a private IP address.

To set the IP address of the Matrix server, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

jitsi_xmpp_server: "192.168.0.1"

Expose XMPP port

By default, the Matrix server does not expose the XMPP port (5222); only the XMPP container exposes it internally inside the host. This means that the first JVB (which runs on the Matrix server) can reach it but the additional JVBs cannot. Therefore, the XMPP server needs to expose the port, so that the additional JVBs can connect to it.

To expose the port and have Docker forward the port, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

jitsi_prosody_container_jvb_host_bind_port: 5222

Reverse-proxy with Traefik

To make Traefik reverse-proxy to these additional JVBs (living on other hosts), add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

# Traefik proxying for additional JVBs. These can't be configured using Docker
# labels, like the first JVB is, because they run on different hosts, so we add
# the necessary configuration to the file provider.
traefik_provider_configuration_extension_yaml: |
  http:
   routers:
     {% for host in groups['jitsi_jvb_servers'] %}

     additional-{{ hostvars[host]['jitsi_jvb_server_id'] }}-router:
       entryPoints:
         - "{{ traefik_entrypoint_primary }}"
       rule: "Host(`{{ jitsi_hostname }}`) && PathPrefix(`/colibri-ws/{{ hostvars[host]['jitsi_jvb_server_id'] }}/`)"
       service: additional-{{ hostvars[host]['jitsi_jvb_server_id'] }}-service
       {% if traefik_entrypoint_primary != 'web' %}

       tls:
         certResolver: "{{ traefik_certResolver_primary }}"

       {% endif %}

     {% endfor %}

   services:
     {% for host in groups['jitsi_jvb_servers'] %}

     additional-{{ hostvars[host]['jitsi_jvb_server_id'] }}-service:
       loadBalancer:
         servers:
           - url: "http://{{ host }}:9090/"

     {% endfor %}

Run the playbook

After configuring vars.yml and hosts files, run the playbook with playbook tags as below:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts --limit jitsi_jvb_servers jitsi_jvb.yml --tags=common,setup-additional-jitsi-jvb,start

Enable Gravatar (optional)

In the default Jisti Meet configuration, gravatar.com is enabled as an avatar service. This results in third party request leaking data to gravatar. Since Element clients already send the url of configured Matrix avatars to Jitsi, we disabled gravatar.

To enable Gravatar, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

jitsi_disable_gravatar: false

⚠️ Warning: This leaks information to a third party, namely the Gravatar-Service (unless configured otherwise: gravatar.com). Besides metadata, this includes the Matrix user_id and possibly the room identifier (via referrer header).

Installing

After configuring the playbook and potentially adjusting your DNS records, run the playbook with playbook tags as below:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,start

The shortcut commands with the just program are also available: just install-all or just setup-all

just install-all is useful for maintaining your setup quickly (2x-5x faster than just setup-all) when its components remain unchanged. If you adjust your vars.yml to remove other components, you’d need to run just setup-all, or these components will still remain installed. Note these shortcuts run the ensure-matrix-users-created tag too.

Usage

You can use the self-hosted Jitsi server in multiple ways:

• by adding a widget to a room via Element Web (the one configured by the playbook at https://element.example.com). Just start a voice or a video call in a room containing more than 2 members and that would create a Jitsi widget which utilizes your self-hosted Jitsi server.

• by adding a widget to a room via the Dimension integration manager. You’ll have to point the widget to your own Jitsi server manually. See our Dimension integration manager documentation page for more details. Naturally, Dimension would need to be installed first (the playbook doesn’t install it by default).

• directly (without any Matrix integration). Just go to https://jitsi.example.com

Troubleshooting

Rebuilding your Jitsi installation

If you ever run into any trouble or if you change configuration (jitsi_* variables) too much, we urge you to rebuild your Jitsi setup.

We normally don’t require such manual intervention for other services, but Jitsi services generate a lot of configuration files on their own.

These files are not all managed by Ansible (at least not yet), so you may sometimes need to delete them all and start fresh.

To rebuild your Jitsi configuration:

• ask Ansible to stop all Jitsi services: just run-tags stop-group --extra-vars=group=jitsi
• SSH into the server and do this and remove all Jitsi configuration & data (rm -rf /matrix/jitsi)
• ask Ansible to set up Jitsi anew and restart services (just install-service jitsi)