Installing OpenMeeting with MySQL

Installing OpenMeeting with MySQL

March 14th, 2013

From Wikipedia OpenMeeting is:

OpenMeetings is software used for presenting, online training, web conferencing, collaborative whiteboard drawing and document editing, and user desktop sharing. The product is based on OpenLaszlo RIA framework and Red5 media server, which in turn are based on a bunch of open source components. Communication takes place in meeting rooms which are set to different communication, security and video quality modes. The recommended database for backend support is MySQL. The product can be set up as an installed server product, or used as a hosted product.

Today we will be installing OpenMeeting on CentOS 6.3 (64-bit).
Find a nice place to work:

mkdir /home/dev
cd /home/dev

Go to and download and unpack latest binary.

1. wget http://archive.apache.org/dist/incubator/openmeetings/2.0-incubating/apache-openmeetings-incubating-2.0.0.r1361497-14-07-2012_1108.tar.gz

2. mkdir openmeeting

3. cd openmeeting

4. tar -xzvf ../apache-openmeetings-incubating-2.0.0.r1361497-14-07-2012_1108.tar.gz

The default installation of OpenMeeting uses an integrated Apache Derby database to persist data at the back end. They recommend MySQL (or a real database) for production installations. I however, like to easily poke around the database and investigate how the product works. The trouble with an integrated database is that it won’t be available when the application is down and it may not be available to clients outside the application.

OpenMeeting requires UTF8 so we’ll install MySQL and configure the collation.

1. Install PHP and MySQL with yum

yum install php mysql-server mysql

2. There are a few of setting the collation with MySQL so. Edit /etc/my.cnf and add the following lines to the mysqld section:

   [mysqld]
   skip-character-set-client-handshake
   collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci
   init-connect=’SET NAMES utf8′
   character-set-server = utf8

3. Then restart MySQL with:

   /etc/init.d/mysqld restart

Now that we have MySQL installed, we’ll have to create a MySQL account for OpenMeeting to use.

1. Login to MySQL:

   mysql -uroot

2. Create the database:

   CREATE DATABASE openmeetings;

3. Create a MySQL user for the application:

   CREATE USER openmeetings;

4. Set permissions:

   GRANT ALL ON openmeetings.* TO openmeetings@localhost;

5. Set password (change **** to your password):

   SET PASSWORD FOR openmeetings@localhost=PASSWORD(’****’);

6. Log out of MySQL:

   exit;

7. Now we will just check that our new user is set up properly. (Where **** is the password)

   mysql -uopenmeetings -p**** openmeetings

OpenMeeting isn’t bundled with all the database connectors so we’ll have to download and install the MySQL connector in order to talk to the database.

1. Start off in our dev area:

   cd /home/dev

2. Go to and download the latest ConnectorJ (at the time of writing this was 5.1.24)
3. Unpack it:

   tar -xvzf mysql-connector-java-5.1.24.tar.gz

4. Move the connector to the correct place in the OpenMeeting directory structure so it can be found by the application:

   mv mysql-connector-java-5.1.24/mysql-connector-java-5.1.24-bin.jar openmeeting/webapps/openmeetings/WEB-INF/lib/

We are not using the default database type so we must change the configuration files so that the OpenMeeting installation process uses the MySQL configuration file instead of the integrated Derby configuration file.

1. Go to the connectors folder:

   cd /home/dev/openmeeting/webapps/openmeetings/WEB-INF/classes/META-INF

2. Use the MySQL configuration template:

   cp mysql_persistence.xml persistence.xml

3. Edit persistence.xml and change the MySQL credentials. At the bottom of the file you will see

   value="DriverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
   , Url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/openmeetings?autoReconnect….
   …. , MaxActive=100
        , MaxWait=10000
        , TestOnBorrow=true
        , poolPreparedStatements=true
        , Username=openmeetings
        , Password=****"/>

   Change the Username and Password to what you set earlier. If you want to change the database name localhost:3306/openmeetings? will become localhost:3306/my_database?.

Now we are going to set up Enabling Image Upload and import to whiteboard.

To install ImageMagick we’ll use the package manager:

1、 wget
       cd ImageMagick-6.7.5-10
      ./configure --prefix=/usr/
       make all
       make install

Installing ImageMagick will install GhostScript as a dependency so we get part 1 of Enabling import of PDFs into whiteboard for free. Part 2 requires installing SWFTools which we will do now:

1. Start in our development directory:

   cd /home/dev

2. Go to and get the latest version:

   wget

3. Unpack with:

   tar -xvzf swftools-0.9.2.tar.gz

4. If this is a minimal version of CentOS (or you type gcc and get bad command) then you’ll need to install the C compiler and tools:

   yum install gcc* automake zlib-devel libjpeg-devel giflib-devel freetype-devel make

5. Prepare to build the software:

   cd /home/dev/swftools-0.9.2

6. Run the pre-build configuration script:

   ./configure

7. Build SWFTools:

   make

There is a bug in the make install step so we’ll just fix that before running it.

1. Edit /home/dev/swftools-0.9.2/swfs/Makefile

2. Search for the install: directive and change:

   
   

           rm -f $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf -o -L $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf
           $(LN_S) $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/simple_viewer.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf
           rm -f $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf -o -L $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf
           $(LN_S) $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/tessel_loader.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf
   

   
   

   to

   
   

   rm -f $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf
   $(LN_S) $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/simple_viewer.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf
   rm -f $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf
   $(LN_S) $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/tessel_loader.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf
   
   

   
   

   Make sure that the first and only character at the start of the replacement lines is a TAB and not a space.

3. Now we can run:

   make install

Next we’ll install the dependencies for Enabling import of .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, … all Office Documents into whitebaord. This also installs Oracle’s Java which is why we didn’t install it earlier.

1. Install Libre Office:
    yum install -y penoffice.org-core openoffice.org-base openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-draw openoffice.org-impress openoffice.org-math openoffice.org-writer openoffice.org-graphicfilter openoffice.org-headless

Enabling Recording and import of .avi, .flv, .mov and .mp4 into whiteboard requires FFMpeg which is not available via standard yum so we’ll add another repository that does contain it. Thanks to .

1. Edit /etc/yum.repos.d/dag.repo

2. Add:

   [dag]
   name=DAG RPM Repository
   baseurl=
   gpgcheck=1
   enabled=1

3. Import keys so we can talk to the repository securely:

   rpm ??import

4. Start installation:

   yum install ffmpeg

Enabling Recording and import of .avi, .flv, .mov and .mp4 into whiteboard also requires SOX but that is available on the standard yum so just install that.

yum install sox

I have read through the installation instructions for OpenMeeting and they are as clear as mud. Half the documents seem to say that JODConverter is needed and the other half say that it isn’t. Even the project page for JODConverter says that the project isn’t even maintained. It has some connection to OpenOffice/LibreOffice, so I’m installing it anyway just in case.

1. Change back to our scratch folder:

   cd /home/dev

2. Go to

3. And download the latest version:

   wget

4. Then unzip it

   unzip jodconverter-core-3.0-beta-4-dist.zip

Well that’s it for the dependencies. Hopefully OpenMeeting will find all the things it needs during it installation.

After following the original instructions for installing OpenMeeting, the Oracle Java had been replaced by the GNU version of the Java runtime. When I started the OpenMeeting container it use that version instead of the Oracle implementation and didn’t work.
If you install the dependencies in the order that I described above then Oracle’s Java should come out on top. We need to check to make sure though:

1. Get which version of Java are you running:

   java -version

2. You should get:

   java version “1.7.0_13″
   Java? SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_13-b20)
   Java HotSpot? 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.7-b01, mixed mode)

3. If you don’t then you’ll have to uninstall the GNU version:

   yum remove gij
   rpm -e jre

4. And reinstall Oracle’s Java over the top:

   1. Navigate to:
   2. And download the appropriate version I selected “Linux x64 RPM".
   3. Install via the Redhat Package Manager, you might see a couple of errors like “Error: Could not open input file” but you can ignore these.

      rpm -i jre-7u13-linux-x64.rpm

OpenMeeting uses a couple of ports to communicate with so make sure your firewall allows traffic on them. For development purposes the following will remove all firewall rules until you reboot.

iptables -F

To start OpenMeeting:

1. Change directory:

   cd /home/dev/openmeeting

2. Type:

   ./red5.sh

It should print a lot of information on the screen. There will be pauses and gaps but when it starts repeating no Appointments in range you are ready for the next step.

You can check [crudely] that the database has been created in MySQL by ensuring that there are plenty of files in:
/var/lib/mysql/openmeetings/

The final part of the installation is run from the web interface so navigate to:

where localhost is the machine you have installed OpenMeeting on.

Click the link Continue with STEP 1. This will take you to the initial configuration screen where you can set up the application:

In the Userdata section fill in the admin user

Username: admin
Password: admin
Email:

In the Configuration section I didn’t touch anything but the names seem pretty self explanatory if you know how to set up your mail system (which is beyond the scope of this document).

In the Converters section we need to add the paths to the support utilities as they won’t be available to the servlet container.

All the Converter support applications should be in your path except jodconverter-core. I still don’t understand if or how JODConverter is needed, so add a reference to the JOD path anyway.

/home/dev/jodconverter-core-3.0-beta-4/lib

I leave all the other stuff to their defaults.

Finally click INSTALL. The red5.sh screen will spend a couple of minutes spewing out data, so let it get on with it. When it has finished your web browser will sent you to the “Installation Complete!” page.

Click Enter the Application and login with Username as admin and Password as admin.

The rest is up to you! Good luck.

profile :




支持中文文档

yum -y groupinstall chinese-support

修改/etc/sysconfig/i18n，将LANG修改为LANG="zh_CN.GB18030"

重启，生效。