Setting up a BigBlueButton 0.81 docker container: Part 2

I have made some improvements on my BigBlueButton docker images since I last posted about that. Now, the container can be accessed externally and not only through the private IP address docker assigns to it (by default in 172.17.0.x range) as before. For this to work, the SERVER_NAME env variable must be set pointing to the hostname that is going to be used to access your BigBlueButton container. Now, the container can be started like this:

sudo docker run -d –name bbb -p 80:80 -p 9123:9123 -p 1935:1935 -e SERVER_NAME=meeting.somedomain.com bbb_0.81

Then you can access the container externally (provided SERVER_NAME resolves to a public IP address) using $SERVER_NAME. The hostname set in SERVER_NAME must point to the docker host machine. If the container can’t use the same host ports (ie: there’s already a web server running on port 80) you can start the container using other ports:

sudo docker run -d –name bbb -p 80:8080 -p 9123:91230 -p 1935:19350 -e SERVER_NAME=meeting.somedomain.com bbb_0.81

And configure a reverse proxy server (like nginx) to go to the BigBlueButton’s container private IP address and the new http port in the docker run command when accessing SERVER_NAME, and port forward ports 1935 and 9123 on the docker host machine to the container. Or even easier, use a nginx container and link it to the BigBlueButton container but this deserves another post.

More detailed instructions in the github project page.