How to Deploy BigBlueButton Web Conferencing on CentOS 8 with Docker

BigBlueButton (BBB) is the leading open-source virtual classroom and web conferencing system. While upstream BBB exclusively provides automated installer scripts for Ubuntu LTS, organizations standardized on Enterprise Linux (CentOS 8 / RHEL 8) can deploy BigBlueButton components cleanly using Docker containers.

Stack: CentOS 8 • Docker CE • BigBlueButton Docker Compose • Nginx TLS Reverse Proxy

1. Installing Docker CE on CentOS 8

dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo
dnf install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io -y
systemctl enable --now docker

2. Deploying BigBlueButton via Docker Compose

git clone https://github.com/bigbluebutton/docker.git bbb-docker
cd bbb-docker
cp .env.example .env

# Configure your FQDN and Let's Encrypt email in .env
./scripts/generate-api-secrets.sh
docker-compose up -d

How to Configure Docker with the Btrfs Storage Driver on CentOS 7

On CentOS 7, Docker initially defaulted to the devicemapper storage driver in loop-lvm mode, which suffered from high I/O latency, severe disk fragmentation, and occasional filesystem deadlocks. Configuring Docker to use the Btrfs storage driver provides native copy-on-write subvolumes, instant snapshots, and superior performance for virtualized hosts.

Prerequisites: Dedicated block device or partition formatted as Btrfs (e.g. /dev/sdb1).

1. Create and Mount the Btrfs Filesystem

# Format partition as Btrfs
mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/sdb1

# Mount at Docker root directory
mkdir -p /var/lib/docker
mount -t btrfs /dev/sdb1 /var/lib/docker

Add the mount to /etc/fstab for persistence across reboots:

/dev/sdb1  /var/lib/docker  btrfs  defaults,compress=lzo  0 0

2. Configure Docker Daemon

Specify the Btrfs driver in /etc/docker/daemon.json:

{
  "storage-driver": "btrfs"
}

Start Docker and verify the active storage engine:

systemctl start docker
docker info | grep "Storage Driver"

Installing ShareLaTeX with Docker and CSF Firewall on Linux (CentOS & Ubuntu)

Self-hosting ShareLaTeX (now Overleaf Community Edition) enables collaborative scientific paper writing with full data privacy. Deploying ShareLaTeX via its official Docker container is straightforward, but servers protected by ConfigServer Security & Firewall (CSF) require specific iptables routing configurations to allow containerized network traffic without exposing internal services.

Components: Docker Engine • ShareLaTeX Container • CSF Firewall iptables rules

1. Deploying the Container

docker run -d   -v ~/sharelatex_data:/var/lib/sharelatex   --name=sharelatex   -p 3000:80   sharelatex/sharelatex

2. Resolving CSF Firewall and Docker Bridging Conflicts

By default, CSF disables Docker's automated iptables forwarding rules, cutting off outbound container traffic and external port mapping. Add the following exceptions to /etc/csf/csfpost.sh to restore seamless Docker connectivity:

#!/bin/bash
# Allow bridge network traffic for Docker containers
iptables -A FORWARD -i docker0 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o docker0 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 172.17.0.0/16 -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

Make /etc/csf/csfpost.sh executable and restart CSF:

chmod +x /etc/csf/csfpost.sh
csf -r