Installing Jitsi Meet on Debian Buster

media

Jitsi-Meet

Debian-Buster

videoconferencing

Reviewed on June 17, 2024

Jitsi Meet is a fully encrypted, open-source video conferencing tool that does not require an account or subscription.

Jitsi Meet offers the following capabilities:

• Screen sharing: Share your screen to make presentations, demonstrate software, or collaborate on documents in real time.
• Dynamic presentations: Engage your audience with dynamic presentations that allow for seamless integration of multimedia elements.
• Custom conference invitations: Invite participants to join your conferences effortlessly by generating custom URLs. This simplifies access for attendees and facilitates smoother collaboration.
• Collaborative document editing with Etherpad: Edit documents together in real time using Etherpad. This feature promotes collaboration and ensures that all participants can contribute to document editing during the meeting.
• Integrated chat functionality: Stay connected and exchange ideas with an integrated chat feature. This instant messaging capability enables real-time communication, fostering collaboration and keeping discussions organized within the platform.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

• A Scaleway account logged into the console
• Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
• An SSH key
• An Instance running on Debian Buster with at least 4 GB of RAM.
• A domain or subdomain pointed to your Instance

Installing Jitsi Meet

1. Configure the hostname of the server corresponding to your domain or subdomain.

   hostnamectl set-hostname jitsi
   sed -i 's/^127.0.1.1.*$/127.0.1.1 jitsi.mydomain.tld jitsi/g' /etc/hosts
   sed -i 's/^127.0.0.1.*$/127.0.0.1 localhost jitsi.mydomain.tld jitsi/g' /etc/hosts

2. Update the APT package cache and upgrade the software installed on the Instance to the latest version available on the Debian repositories.

   apt update && apt upgrade

3. Install an Nginx web server. The Jitsi installation tool handles the Nginx configuration if it is present on the system.

   apt install -y nginx
   systemctl start nginx.service
   systemctl enable nginx.service

   Important

   If you have not installed Nginx or Apache, Jitsi Meet will automatically install Jetty during the installation.

4. Download the APT key and set up the repositories of Jitsi:

   wget -qO - https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi-key.gpg.key | apt-key add -
   sh -c "echo 'deb https://download.jitsi.org stable/' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jitsi-stable.list"
   apt update

5. Launch the installation of Jitsi Meet.

   apt install -y jitsi-meet

   When asked:

   • Enter the FQDN of your Instance. For example jitsi.mydomain.tld and press Enter.
   • Choose the Generate a new self-signed certificate (You will later get a chance to obtain a Let's Encrypt certificate) option as an SSL certificate and press Enter.

6. Run the following script to generate a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate for your Instance:

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

   Tip

   If the generation of the Let's Encrypt certificate fails, run the following command: dpkg-reconfigure jitsi-meet-web-config to reconfigure the package jitsi-meet-web-config before relaunching the certificate request.

7. Open a web browser and type the FQDN of your Instance, for example: https://jitsi.mydomain.tld. The following screen opens:

   Open Image over content
   Close current Lightbox

8. Enter a name for your conference and press Start meeting to enter the conference room.