Part1 of the guide: https://www.techtimejourney.net/?p=875
Part2 of the guide: https://www.techtimejourney.net/?p=88
We will start the third part of this guide by building a web server with XAMPP.
From XAMPP home page: XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html)
Get XAMPP and unzip it while inside /opt
cd /opt
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp/files/XAMPP%20Linux/1.8.1/xampp-linux-1.8.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.8.1.tar.gz
As you might notice I am not using the very latest version of Xampp. This is purely because in the latest release there appears to be a gui only option which makes things more complicated as it requires an active desktop environment and cannot be installed without problems if the xserver is not running. Once xampp unzipping is done you wil have a new folder in /opt called lampp which contains the newly unzipped files.
Sharing files when using Openmeetings whiteboard:
When importing you might experience plenty of errors depending on your system’s version of a swftools. In some distributions swftools is functional out of the box but in most cases you need to compile it by hand. First you should remove the old swftools if it is installed. As a root or a sudo type:
apt-get remove swftools
Next you need to get a newer version by following the steps below.
GET SWFTOOLS
cd /opt
wget http://www.swftools.org/swftools-0.9.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz swftools-0.9.1.tar.gz
cd swftools-0.9.1
./configure – -prefix=/usr
make
make install
Again: There should be no space between – –
The latest version of swftools is at this point 0.9.2 but as I had difficulties compiling it I decided to use the older version. Self-compiled swftools worked a lot better than the Debian Wheezy’s default one. Image importing and pdf importing worked perfectly. Difficulties were experienced while trying to import text files. I suspect this to be because I used an older version of swftools and because my system is very highly modified.
If you want to record an audio or a video session
Install Sun Java and open recording with a program called javaws. For Java installation see:https://www.techtimejourney.net/?p=674
Installing Openmeetings
mkdir -p /opt/meetings
cd /opt/meetings
wget http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/apache.org/openmeetings/2.1.1/bin/apache-openmeetings-2.1.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz apache-openmeetings-2.1.1.tar.gz
Openmeetings is now located under /opt/meetings
Now we need to start the server program and configure its security settings. The following is done as a root or a sudo:
/opt/lampp/lampp start
/opt/lampp/lampp security
Installing and running the Openmeetings (must be done as a root or a sudo)
Before proceeding make sure Openmeetings is running:
cd /opt/meetings
sh red5.sh
Once everything listed above has been completed successfully then let’s proceed to install Openmeetings. Execute the following inside an Internet browser:
http://localhost:5080/openmeetings/install
Once you have filled the forms and installed Openmeetings you can access it locally by going to an address: http://localhost:5080/openmeetings/
The Flash issue
Unfortunately Openmeetings uses Adobe’s Flash and it is not playing very nice. When you try to start your video conference and configure your camera and microphone you get stuck in to the following screen
To overcome this problem do the following:
Download Flash tar.gz from Adobe’s site: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
Uzip the tar.gz package and navigate inside the newly unzipped /usr/bin folder structure which originated from the Flash package. Next copy the binary file flash-player-properties to a desired location. We will be using the mentioned binary to overcome the above problems between Flash and Openmeetings.
Next open and execute the binary. Inside the camera and microphone settings you will see the following:
Click the Add button and choose the option allow while typing localhost to the Website Domain field. Now you can close Adobe Flash player settings and go back to Openmeetings: http://localhost:5080/openmeetings/
Note: You need to do the above Flash fix every time you purge your browser’s information (meaning surfing history and cookies).
Changing localhost to a real IP address
In the entries above we have used localhost as an “IP” address. This is of course good for testing but not so good for a real life conferencing as we would like our conference to be something other people can actually join in.
To change your IP address from localhost to a real one execute the following as a root or a sudo inside a terminal:
ifconfig
from the entries presented you can get your IP (inet addr)
Next you will need to edit config.xml file found inside /opt/meetings/webapps/openmeetings as a root or a sudo
nano /opt/meetings/webapps/openmeetings/config.xml
Replace the value: <rtmphostlocal>192.168.254.182</rtmphostlocal> with a real life IP address of your machine. Once you are done safe the file and close Openmeetings completely and then restart it while replacing http://localhost:5080/openmeetings/ with something like http://648.112.2.3:5080/openmeetings/ (replace 648.112.2.3 with your actual IP).
You might also be interested in setuping Mysql alongside Openmeetings. If the previous is the case take a look at these simple instuctions:http://openmeetings.apache.org/MySQLConfig.html