Galène installation

Installation instructions

Quick installation

CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -ldflags='-s -w'
mkdir groups
echo '{"presenter": [{}]}' > groups/test.json
./galene &

Then connect to https://localhost:8443 and choose “test”.

Full installation instructions

Build the `galene` binary

You will need Go 1.17 or later (type go version). Then do:

CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -ldflags='-s -w'

On Windows, do

set CGO_ENABLED=0
go build -ldflags="-s -w"

Set up a group

Set up a group called test by creating a file groups/test.json:

mkdir groups
vi groups/name.json

You may use the following definition:

{
    "op": [{"username": "admin", "password": "1234"}],
    "presenter": [{}]
}

See the README file for more details about defining groups.

Test locally

./galene &

You should be able to access Galène at https://localhost:8443. Connect to the group that you have just set up in two distinct browser windows, then press Ready in one of the two; you should see a video in the other.

Configure your server’s firewall

If your server has a global IPv4 address and there is no firewall, there is nothing to do.

If your server has a global IPv4 address, then the firewall must, at a strict minimum, allow incoming traffic to TCP port 8443 (or whatever is configured with the -http command-line option) and TCP port 1194 (or whatever is configured with the -turn option). For best performance, it should also allow UDP traffic to the TURN port, and UDP traffic to ephemeral (high-numbered) ports (or whatever is configured using the -udp-range option).

If your server is behind NAT (which is not recommended), then the NAT must forward, at the very least, port 8443 to your server. Ideally, you should configure an external TURN server (see ICE Servers below) on a host that is not behind NAT. If that is not possible, then you must use a NAT that supports hairpinning, you must forward port 1194 in addition to port 8443, and you will need to add add the option -turn 203.0.113.1:1194 to Galène’s command line, where 203.0.113.1 is your NAT’s external (global) IPv4 address.

Cross-compile for your server

This step is only required if your server runs a different OS or has a different CPU than your build machine.

For a Linux server with an Intel or AMD CPU:

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -ldflags='-s -w'

For a Raspberry Pi 1:

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm GOARM=6 go build -ldflags='-s -w'

For a BeagleBone or a Raspberry Pi 2 or later:

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm GOARM=7 go build -ldflags='-s -w'

For a 64-bit ARM board (Olimex Olinuxino-A64, Pine64, etc.) or server:

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 go build -ldflags='-s -w'

For a 32-bit MIPS board with no hardware floating point (WNDR3800, etc.):

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=mips GOMIPS=softfloat go build -ldflags='-s -w'

Deploy to your server

Set up a user galene on your server, then do:

rsync -a galene static data groups galene@server.example.org:

If you don’t have a TLS certificate, Galène will generate a self-signed certificate automatically (and print a warning to the logs). If you have a certificate, install it in the files data/cert.pem and data/key.pem:

ssh galene@server.example.org
sudo cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/server.example.org/fullchain.pem data/cert.pem
sudo cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/server.example.org/privkey.pem data/key.pem
sudo chown galene:galene data/*.pem
sudo chmod go-rw data/key.pem

Now arrange to run the binary on the server. If you never reboot your server, it might be as simple as

ssh galene@server.example.org
ulimit -n 65536
nohup ./galene &

If you are using runit, use a script like the following:

#!/bin/sh
exec 2>&1
cd ~galene
ulimit -n 65536
exec setuidgid galene ./galene

If you are using systemd:

[Unit]
Description=Galene
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/home/galene
User=galene
Group=galene
ExecStart=/home/galene/galene
LimitNOFILE=65536

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Running behind a reverse proxy

Galene is designed to be directly exposed to the Internet. In order to run Galene behind a reverse proxy, you might need to make a number of tweaks to your configuration.

First, you might need to inform Galene of the URL at which users connect (the reverse proxy’s URL) by adding an entry proxyURL to your data/config.json file:

{
    "proxyURL": "https://galene.example.org/"
}

Second, and depending on your proxy implementation, you might need to request that the proxy pass WebSocket handshakes to the URL at ws; for example, with Nginx, you will need to say something like the following:

location /ws {
    proxy_pass ...;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
}

Finally, in order to avoid TLS termination issues, you may want to run Galene over plain HTTP instead of HTTPS by using the command-line flag -insecure.

Note that even if you’re using a reverse proxy, clients will attempt to establish direct UDP flows with Galene and direct TCP connections to Galene’s TURN server; see the section on “Configuring your firewall” above.

Connectivity issues and ICE Servers

Most connectivity issues are due to an incorrect ICE configuration.

ICE is the NAT and firewall traversal protocol used by WebRTC. ICE can make use of two kinds of servers to help with NAT traversal: STUN servers, that help punching holes in well-behaved NATs, and TURN servers, that serve as relays for traffic. TURN is a superset of STUN: no STUN server is necessary if one or more TURN servers are available.

Galène includes an IPv4-only TURN server, which is controlled by the -turn command-line option. It has the following behaviour:

if its value is set to the empty string "", then the built-in server is disabled; in this case, the file data/ice-servers.json configures an external TURN server;
if its value is a colon followed with a port number, for example :1194, then the TURN server will listen on all public IPv4 addresses of the local host, over UDP and TCP; this is the recommended value if the server is not behind NAT, and the firewall allows incoming connections to port 1194;
if the value of this option is a socket address, such as 203.0.113.1:1194, then the TURN server will listen on all addresses of the local host but assume that the address seen by the clients is the one given in the option; this is useful when running behind NAT with port forwarding set up.
the default value is auto, which behaves like :1194 if there is no data/ice-servers.json file, and like "" otherwise.

If the server is not accessible from the Internet, e.g. because of NAT or because it is behind a restrictive firewall, then you should configure a TURN server that runs on a host that is accessible by both Galène and the clients. Disable the built-in TURN server (-turn "" or the default -turn auto), and provide a working ICE configuration in the file data/ice-servers.json. In the case of a single STUN server, it should look like this:

[
    {
        "urls": [
            "stun:stun.example.org"
        ]
    }
]

In the case of s single TURN server, the ice-servers.json file should look like this:

[
    {
        "urls": [
            "turn:turn.example.org:443",
            "turn:turn.example.org:443?transport=tcp"
        ],
        "username": "galene",
        "credential": "secret"
    }
]

It is more secure to use coturn’s use-auth-secret option. If you do that, then the ice-servers.json file should look like this:

[
    {
        "urls": [
            "turn:turn.example.com:443",
            "turn:turn.example.com:443?transport=tcp"
        ],
        "username": "galene",
        "credential": "secret",
        "credentialType": "hmac-sha1"
    }
]

For redundancy, you may set up multiple TURN servers, and ICE will use the first one that works. If an ice-servers.json file is present and Galène’s built-in TURN server is enabled, then the external server will be used in preference to the built-in server.