Installing BigBlueButton 0.64 on CentOS5.5

The documentation to install BigBlueButton 0.64 on CentOS (and on most other distributions) is really excellent. However, I found that CentOS 5.5 had not been documented yet, so I tried it and run into a few problems. I explain below how to get it all sorted out. I installed CentOS5.5 from a DVD in "server" mode, so without graphical interface. Once installed, I proceeded with the following. I followed the first directions from http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/RPMPackaging#How_to_Install_BigBlueButton_on_CentOS_5.4 However, I ran into my first problem: the epel could not be found by the script, so I had to update the script to change epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm for epel-release-5.4-noarch.rpm, then launch the script again. Probably because the script had a problem, I had another problem later during the install: /etc/init.d/asterisk conflicted with asterisk14, so I had to remove Asterisk first: "yum remove asterisk14-core-1.4.36-1_centos5.x86-64", then launch again "yum -y install bigbluebutton" At this point, bigbluebutton should work fine from the local machine (if you are doing that on a CentOS5.5 server without graphical interface, try installing lynx and launching lynx localhost. If you see text saying BigBlueButton, you're OK), but accessing this server from another machine might not work (could not connect, error 500, etc). This is (most probably) because your server has an iptables (default firewall) configuration preventing access on port 80 to your server from another computer. The quick solution to try it is to shut down iptables with "/etc/init.d/iptables stop" and try connecting again. If that works, then you'll have to setup your firewall properly. Finally, to install the desktop sharing utility, you will have to launch "yum install bbb-apps-deskshare". You might also be interested (as a backup- into a guide that explains how to install BigBlueButton on CentOS5.4 step by step: http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/InstallingBigBlueButtonCentOS BBB 0.70 seems to install fine on top of the 0.64, but the sound doesn't work and the whiteboard features are not registering write operations (just showing on screen).