Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

by Miki Alliel -
Number of replies: 9
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I'm usining BBB first time. added the mod and when clicking on the moodle bbb link I get this error:

Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server. Please contact the Administrator.

More information about this error

Debug info: 
Error code: view_error_unable_join_teacher
Stack trace:
  • line 463 of /lib/setuplib.php: moodle_exception thrown
  • line 73 of /mod/bigbluebuttonbn/view.php: call to print_error()
Output buffer: <div class="notifytiny debuggingmessage" data-rel="debugging">add_to_log() has been deprecated, please rewrite your code to the new events API<ul style="text-align: left" data-rel="backtrace"><li>line 48 of /lib/deprecatedlib.php: call to debugging()</li><li>line 52 of /mod/bigbluebuttonbn/view.php: call to add_to_log()</li></ul></div>

can you help me to fix this
 thank you
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In reply to Miki Alliel

Re: Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

by john Simpson -

Join the crowd. Just press that big blue button and it will work is just an illusion. Are you the admin? Because that is the person who has to do all the setting up. I do believe there is a long list of instructions on how to install this first. If you are a windows user you you could install first Oracle vm virtualbox, and then download a ubuntu 10.04 server, and then the fun begins on installing bigbluebutton. Its a bit like installing your own moodle. 

Try here

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/BigBlueButton


As I said, you need to be the admin.

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In reply to Miki Alliel

Re: Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

by Jesus Federico -
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If you get that error either your Moodle server doesn't have access to the BigBlueButton server or the BigBlueButton server you are using is not working properly (so the response sent to the Moodle server is not correct).


You don't need to install your own BigBlueButton server to test it. You can use the default values and create/use meetings as it is shown in the video included in the plugin page https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_bigbluebuttonbn


Just keep in mind that your Moodle server needs to be able to communicate with the bigbluebutton server using CURL. The first call the plugin makes is to validate the BBB version parsing the xml response that you usually get from here http://test-install.blindsidenetworks.com/bigbluebutton/api/


Also, as always, the more information you provide (specially versions you are using, settings you have and steps you followed), the easier for anyone to help you out.

Regards,


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In reply to Jesus Federico

Re: Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

by Miki Alliel -
Picture of Translators

Hey thanks for the reply

when I set the "http://test-install.blindsidenetworks.com/bigbluebutton/" url in moodle bbb setting it does work. but of course we want it to work on our bbb server. the IP from the bbb virtual machine is 10.0.9.92 (internal network -it's ok) so I set the url setting like this: " 10.0.9.92/bigbluebutton/"  and here again I have the error I described in the beginning of this post.

when clicking on the link you provided this is the output: 

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
<response>
<returncode>SUCCESS</returncode>
<version>0.81</version>
</response>

More information: THE bbb server runs under windows in a vmware player installed and downloaded from here. I turned off the bbb server firewall , but still same problem.
if there are more questions please let me know and what can I do now?
Thanks
Thansk
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In reply to Miki Alliel

Re: Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

by Jesus Federico -
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Hi Miki,

If the configuration by default works so the plugin and the moodle server configuration are correct. So there are a few things you may want to check:

First. By chance, are you missing the protocol in the url?

>url setting like this: " 10.0.9.92/bigbluebutton/"

It should be http://10.0.9.92/bigbluebutton/, if that is the url you use to access to your BBB server, which by the way, assuming you have a n standard and complete installation, it should show you the demo page.

Also, if you test this URL in your browser http://10.0.9.92/bigbluebutton/api/ do you get the same XMl you got from the test-install server? You should. If you don't so your BBB server is broken.

And finally, did you replace the salt (AKA shared secret) by default with the one used by your server? The one that comes by default only works for test-install, at least you replace the salt in your BBB server.

By the way, the XML response you got in the browser has nothing to do with the response your Moodle server should get. That only means that your client computer can communicate with the BBB server, but doesn't mean the Moodle server can.

JF

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Jesus Federico

Re: Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

by Miki Alliel -
Picture of Translators
Hay again thanks for the info.

1) in the moodle setting I set with http:// and without and it was the same error.

2) When clicking (in the browser) on http://10.0.9.92/bigbluebutton/api/

I get:

"This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.

<response>
<returncode>SUCCESS</returncode>
<version>0.81</version>
</response>"

3) Well when I'm clicking in the browser on this link: (with or without "http://") "10.0.9.92/bigbluebutton/" I get this:
This page is no longer available, please use the api."
What does it mean?

4)but the default demo in the server works find namelyonly clinking in the browser on the ip 10.0.9.92 I get the bbb app (where I can log in and enter my name...)


5) About the salt.  unfortunately I forgot   (didn't notice) I need to change it. where is the salt key in the vmware so I can copy paste it to the moodle setting?  


Thanks again for the help.




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In reply to Miki Alliel

Re: Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

by Jesus Federico -
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Hi Miki,

So, as I imagined you have a configuration issue.

As this is your first experience with BigBlueButton, you will find very useful information here https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ

If you want to change the salt go directly here https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#How_do_I_change_the_security_salt?

This will help you to do basic administration on your BBB server

https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/BBBConf

You are specifically looking for this command

bbb-conf --salt

Good luck!

JF



Or if you only want to see the information of your server



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In reply to Jesus Federico

Re: Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

by Mike Verna -

I was getting a similar error.

I knew the mapping and SALT were correct.

I ran sudo bbb-conf --clean   on the BBB server that all was it needed.

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In reply to Mike Verna

Re: Unable to connect to the BigBlueButton server

by Jesus Federico -
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Hi Mike,

Thanks for sharing your experience. You can also try restarting the server but you should not really need it for diagnosis.

The first thing you want to try is of course to make sure that the target BBB server is working fine using the demo page installed by default.

When you are trying to make the plugin to work for the very first time, we recommend testing with the configuration by default. If that works you can discard a bunch of things.

If these two conditions are fulfilled, then you can proceed with changing the URL and SALT.

Now, if after these three steps you still have problems, the first thing I would check is communication between servers. Making a wget call from the Moodle server to the BBB server can give you a good idea about what can be possible wrong.

wget -O - http://demo.bigbluebutton.org/bigbluebutton/api


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