Install Jitsi Meet on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Published on February 21, 2021•Updated on November 21, 2023

Jitsi Meet is a free and open-source video conferencing service solution packed with various premium features, such as superior sound quality, high-grade encryption and privacy, and universal multi-platform availability. With the help of Jitsi Meet, you can easily set up a stunning video conferencing service of your own.

One-Click Jitsi Server

Vultr has preinstalled Jitsi servers ready to launch! Deploy a Jitsi Meet server in your customer portal without any installation steps required. The One-Click Jitsi server supports your custom domain name, a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate, and it's the best way to install Jitsi.

Learn more about our One-Click Jitsi server, or if you prefer to install your server manually, follow the steps below.

Manual Installation

This tutorial explains how to install a video conferencing service on an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server instance using Jitsi Meet.

Prerequisites

A fresh Vultr Ubuntu 18.04 LTS x64 server instance with an IPv4 address 203.0.113.1.
A sudo user.
A domain jitsimeet.example.com pointed to the server instance mentioned above.

Note: When deploying on your server instance, be sure to replace all example values with your actual ones.

1. Set up a Swap Partition

For a machine with 2GB of memory, it's recommended to set up a 2GB (2048M) swap partition to improve system performance.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile count=2048 bs=1M
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
echo '/swapfile   none    swap    sw    0   0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
free -m

Note: If you are using a different server size, the swap partition size may vary.

2. Set up the Domain Name

You need to correctly set up a hostname and an FQDN for the machine before you can enable HTTPS security by deploying a Let's Encrypt HTTPS certificate.

The following commands will set up a hostname, jitsimeet, and an FQDN, jitsimeet.example.com, for the machine:

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname jitsimeet
sudo sed -i 's/^127.0.1.1.*$/127.0.1.1 jitsimeet.example.com jitsimeet/g' /etc/hosts

Confirm the results:

hostname
hostname -f

3. Set the Firewall Rules

As required by Jitsi Meet, you need to allow OpenSSH, HTTP, and HTTPS traffic, along with inbound UDP traffic on port 10000 through port 20000:

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow http
sudo ufw allow https
sudo ufw allow in 10000:20000/udp
sudo ufw enable

When you see the prompt Command may disrupt existing ssh connections. Proceed with operation (y|n)?, input y and then press Enter.

4. Update the System

For security and performance purposes, its necessary to update the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS system to the latest status:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo shutdown -r now

You may be informed that the currently installed version of the grub configuration file has been locally modified during the upgrade. Since we are not responsible for the modification, use the Up arrow to highlight the install the package maintainer's version option, and then press Enter.

After the system reboot, log back in as the same sudo user to move on.

5. Install Required Packages

Jitsi Meet requires Java Runtime Environment and GNU Privacy Guard.

sudo apt install -y gnupg
sudo apt install -y openjdk-8-jre-headless

After OpenJDK JRE 8 installed, use the following command to verify the result:

java -version

The output will be similar to the following:

openjdk version "1.8.0_171"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_171-8u171-b11-0ubuntu0.18.04.1-b11)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.171-b11, mixed mode)

In addition, you can setup the JAVA_HOME environment variable as follows:

echo "JAVA_HOME=$(readlink -f /usr/bin/java | sed "s:bin/java::")" | sudo tee -a /etc/profile
source /etc/profile

6. Install Nginx

To better serve Jitsi Meet, you can install an Nginx web server before actually installing Jitsi Meet:

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

You don't need to manually configure Nginx because the Jitsi Meet installer will deal with this job for you later.

Note: If Nginx or Apache is not in place, the Jitsi Meet installer will automatically install Jetty along with the Jitsi Meet program.

7. Install Jitsi Meet

On a modern Ubuntu or Debian system, you can easily install Jitsi Meet using the official Jitsi deb repo.

First setup the Jitsi repository on your system:

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

Then install the full suite of Jitsi Meet:

sudo apt install -y jitsi-meet

During the installation, when you are asked to provide the hostname of the current installation, type in the FQDN jitsimeet.example.com you set up earlier and then press Enter.

When you are asked about the SSL certificate, highlight the Generate a new self-signed certificate (You will later get a chance to obtain a Let's Encrypt certificate) option and then press Enter.

After Jitsi Meet is successfully installed, use the following script to apply for a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate:

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

During the process, input your email admin@example.com as prompted and then press Enter. This script will automatically handle any tasks related to the Let's Encrypt SSL certificate.

Finally, point your favorite web browser to http://jitsimeet.example.com or https://jitsimeet.example.com to access your Jitsi Meet Video conferencing service. Feel free to explore the interface. Clicking the GO button will immediately create a Video conferencing channel for you.