Linux Commands and Scripts

How To Install Jitsi Meet in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

In this article, we’ve covered how to install Jitsi Meet in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Jitsi meet is a secure, more flexible, completely free video conferencing, and open source project that allows you to easily build and deploy secure videoconferencing solutions. At the heart of Jitsi are Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet, which let you have conferences on the internet, while other projects in the community enable other features such as audio, dial-in, recording, and simulcasting.

Jitsi started life as a way to talk to people over the internet using audio and video. Over the course of a decade, though, it’s become so much more.

Features:
  • Unlike other video conferencing technologies, Jitsi Video bridge, the heart of Jitsi, passes everyone’s video and audio to all participants, rather than mixing them first.
  • The result is lower latency, better quality and, if you are running your own service, a much more scalable and inexpensive solution.
  • Jitsi is compatible with WebRTC, the open standard for Web communication.
  • Jitsi supports advanced video routing concepts such as simulcast, bandwidth estimations, scalable video coding and many others.
  • Ubuntu and Debian packages for easy installation.

The Installer will look for if Nginx or Apache. If none of the above is found it then defaults to Nginx.

Let’s start installation of the Jitsi meet.

1. Keep the server up-to-date

# apt update -y

2. Add Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)(Optional)

Add hostname in /etc/hosts file:

# vi /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost meet.example.org

and also set hostname:

# hostnamectl set-hostname meet.example.org

3. Configure The Firewall

In case, you enabled UFW firewall, you need to allow some ports.

Run the following ufw commands to open these ports:

# ufw allow 80/tcp

# ufw allow 443/tcp

# ufw allow 4443/tcp

# ufw allow 10000/udp

Check that they were all added with the ufw status command:

# ufw status

4. Add the Jitsi package repository

echo ‘deb https://download.jitsi.org stable/’ > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jitsi-stable.list

5. Download and add the Jitsi GPG key

Download the Jitsi GPG key with the wget downloading utility:

# wget https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi-key.gpg.key

Add the GPG key you downloaded to apt’s keyring using the apt-key utility:

# apt-key add jitsi-key.gpg.key

6. Update the server

# apt update -y

7. Perform jitsi-meet installation

# apt install jitsi-meet -y

During the installation, you will ask for enter hostname. Enter your server’s hostname meet.example.org.
Next you will ask for certificate for the Jitsi Meet instance. Select “Generate a new self-signed” and click ok.

The installation is completed now.

8. Next, Generate a Let’s Encrypt certificate(Recommended)

Jitsi Meet mobile apps require a valid certificate signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (such as a Let’s Encrypt certificate) and will not be able to connect to your server if you choose a self-signed certificate.

First, install certbot. To install certbot, add certbot repository:

# add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

Next, install the certbot package:

# apt install certbot -y

Your server is now ready to run the TLS certificate installation program provided by Jitsi Meet:

# /usr/share/jitsi-meet/scripts/install-letsencrypt-cert.sh

That’s it.

Now, access the Jitsi meet using your hostname.

https://meet.example.org

In this article, we have see how our support engineers install Jitsi Meet in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

[Need assistance to fix this error or install tools? We’ll help you.]

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