How to deploy the Jitsi Meet conferencing server with Ubuntu 22.04

Jack Wallen shows you how easy it is to implement an easy-to-use video and voice conferencing server in your LAN with Jitisi Meet.

Jitsi is an open-source, free conferencing server that can handle chat, video and VOIP conferencing. It is a great alternative to Skype and Zoom. You can quickly deploy Jitsi and use it as an internal solution or even open it up to the public.

I want to show you how easy it is to implement Jitsi on Ubuntu 22.04. You can implement this with a fully qualified domain name or with a server with only an IP address. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll demonstrate using an IP address, which is a great option for an in-house solution.

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What you need

All you need for this to work is a server running Ubuntu Server 22.04 with at least 4 GB of RAM and a user with sudo privileges. That’s it: let’s get to work.

How to install the dependencies

The first thing we need to do is install some simple dependencies. Log into your Ubuntu instance and issue the following two commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wget curl gnupg2 apt-transport-https -y

Once these commands are completed, you can proceed to install Jitsi.

How to install Jitsi Meet

Since you won’t find Jitsi in the default repositories, we need to add the repo to apt. First, download and add the official Jitsi GPG key with the following commands:

curl https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi-key.gpg.key -o jitsi-key.gpg.key
sudo gpg --output /usr/share/keyrings/jitsi-key.gpg --dearmor jitsi-key.gpg.key

Then add the repository with:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jitsi-stable.list

In that file, paste the following:

deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/jitsi-key.gpg] https://download.jitsi.org stable/

Update apt and install Jitis Meet with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install jitsi-meet -y

During the installation, you will be prompted to enter the hostname for the machine (Figure A)†

Image A

You will then be prompted to generate a self-signed certificate or upload your own certificate (Figure B†

Figure B

Finally, you will be prompted to restart the necessary services (Figure C†

Figure C

And that’s it for the interactive part of the installation. The installation should complete without errors and the service should start.

How to access Jitsi Meet

Open a web browser and point it to https://SERVER, where SERVER is the IP address or domain of the server. You will be greeted by the main Jitsi Meet window, where you can start a new meeting (Figure D†

Figure D

Once you’ve created the new meeting, Jitsi will ask for permission to use whatever camera and microphone you have.

Congratulations, you now have a meeting and conference server up and running on your LAN. Everyone should be able to use and access this service for easy and internal communication.

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