So I decided I wanted to test out BBB (big blue button) and after looking at the instructions I was thinking "this is going to be cake".  Oh if it were only so...

I found out that most VPS systems don't allow you to change the kernel, so when you get the kernel source.. it freaks out.

But the a way around it that is actually pretty easy.  I found this nice post that explained what to do.  I'm just going to run through it with some of my tips.

Step 1

#### (1) prepare a centos 5.4 (virtual) machine with SAME kernel of
openvz VPS
####     for us, "uname -r" command returned:
2.6.18-164.2.1.el5.028stab066.10

When I first read this, I though he was using a centos install on his VPS.  I started to do that untill he gives "apt-get" insturctions further down.  I think all he means by this is that the system that your VPS is running on is probably centos. 

He just wants you to figure out what kernel they are using by typing in:

uname -r

Mine outputs this: 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5.028stab070.2   This looks just like his, (has the el5.028stab070.2 stuff), its just a different version.Just remember this, we will use it in the next step. 

If your output is different, you may not have an openvz VPS and this article might be worthless to you.

Step 2

#### (2) in centos machine home folder, as root user, download kernel
sources rpm package

mkdir tmp
cd tmp

wget http://download.openvz.org/kernel/branches/rhel5-2.6.18/028stab066.10...

First thing I did different was create a directory that was called ovzkernel-2.6.18 instead of tmp:

mkdir ovzkernel-2.6.18


cd ovzkernel-2.6.18

Since my kernel is a different version, I'm not going to download the exact same source file he did.  I'm going to:

• go here: http://download.openvz.org/kernel/branches/ 
• then click the "rhel5-2.6.18" link
• then find the 028stab070.2/ link
• then find the file link with ".src.rpm" at the end of it
• finally, wget 'insert link here".  So I did wget http://download.openvz.org/kernel/branches/rhel5-2.6.18/028stab070.2/ovzkernel-2.6.18-194.8.1.el5.028stab070.2.src.rpm

Step 3

#### (3) extract kernel source files

####     reference: http://hack2live.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-extract-files-in-rpm-on-...

rpm2cpio ovzkernel-2.6.18-164.2.1.el5.028stab066.10.src.rpm | cpio -idvm

This is pretty simple... oh wait... rpm2cpio doesnt work.  To fix it I just did:

sudo apt-get install rpm cpio

Then I ran rpm2cpio vovzkernel-2.6.18-194.8.1.el5.028stab070.2.src.rpm | cpio -idvm

Step 4

#### (4) upload kernel source folder to destination home folder (for
us: /home)

I didn't do this step since I extracted my files directly to ovzkernel-2.6.1 folder and not to a tmp folder

Step 5

#### (5) move kernel source folder to /usr/src and create symbolic
link to it

mv /home/ovzkernel-2.6.18 /usr/src
cd /usr/src
ln -s ovzkernel-2.6.18 linux

I didnt do much different here.  Just note that your ovzkernel-2.6.1 directory probably isnt at /home so you wont be able to just copy paste the above commands.

Step 6

This is where I started doing things differently than his direction.  I just started following the actual directions from here:

http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/InstallationUbuntu#These_are_the_commands_to_setup_your_own_BigBlueButton_Servervi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list

# Add the package key
wget http://archive.bigbluebutton.org/bigbluebutton.asc
sudo apt-key add bigbluebutton.asc

# add the archive for BigBlueButton Ubuntu 9.04 and make sure multiverse
# is enabled
echo "deb http://archive.bigbluebutton.org/ bigbluebutton main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list
echo "deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty multiverse" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bigbluebutton

# Ensure BigBlueButton is restarted and good to go
sudo bbb-conf --restart
sudo bbb-conf --check


Step 7

By going to http://mysite.com or http://myserverip, I was NOT greeted with the nice demo screen.  Instead it tried to get me to download a file that said "it works" inside.

To fix this, I ran:

bbb-conf --setip mysite.com

(enter in your domain name or the ip of the server where I have "mysite.com" above.

That fixed my issue.

Getting .71-dev

As of today, .71 hasn't been released, but to get it an test it out you just do a couple little things:

• open /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bigbluebutton.list with your favorate text editor (I use nano).
• edit the line that says: deb http://archive.bigbluebutton.org/dev bigbluebutton main so that it has a "dev" on the end of the url.
• It should look like: deb http://archive.bigbluebutton.org/dev bigbluebutton main
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade

So there you go... not to tricky, just an extra couple steps to get the source of your kernel.