Galene is a videoconferencing server that is easy to deploy and requires moderate server resources. It is described at https://galene.org.
See the file INSTALL in this directory for installation instructions.
There is a landing page at the root of the server. It contains a form for typing the name of a group, and a clickable list of public groups.
Groups are available under /group/groupname/
. You may
share this URL with others, there is no need to go through the landing
page.
Recordings can be accessed under /recordings/groupname/
.
This is only available to the administrator of the group.
Some statistics are available under /stats.json
, with a
human-readable version at /stats.html
. This is only
available to the server administrator.
After logging in, the user is confronted with the main interface.
There are up to three buttons at the top. The Enable/Disable button enables either or both the camera and the microphone (depending on the options set in the side menu, see below). The Mute button mutes or unmutes the microphone. The Share Screen button shares the screen or a window.
There is a menu on the right of the user interface. This allows choosing the camera and microphone and setting the video throughput. The Blackboard mode checkbox increases resolution and sacrifices framerate in favour of image quality. The Play local file dialog allows streaming a video from a local file.
There is a user list on the left. Clicking on a user opens a menu with actions that can be applied to that user. Clicking on ones own username opens a menu with actions that are global to the group.
Typing a string in the text box at the bottom of the chat pane sends a broadcast message to all of the users in the group.
Typing a line starting with a slash /
in the text box
causes a command to be sent to the server. Type /help
to
get the list of available commands; the output depends on whether you
are an operator or not.
The server may be configured in the JSON file
data/config.json
. This file may look as follows:
{
"admin":[{"username":"root","password":"secret"}],
"canonicalHost": "galene.example.org"
}
The fields are as follows:
admin
defines the users allowed to look at the
/stats.html
file; it has the same syntax as user
definitions in groups (see below).proxyURL
: if running behind a reverse proxy, this
specifies the address of the proxy.canonicalHost
: the canonical name of the host running
the server; this will cause clients to be redirected if they use a
different hostname to access the server.Groups are defined by files in the ./groups
directory
(this may be configured by the -groups
command-line option,
try ./galene -help
). The definition for the group called
groupname is in the file groups/groupname.json
; it
does not contain the group name, which makes it easy to copy or link
group definitions. You may use subdirectories: a file
groups/teaching/networking.json
defines a group called
teaching/networking.
A typical group definition file looks like this:
{
"op":[{"username":"jch","password":"1234"}],
"allow-recording": true,
"allow-subgroups": true
}
This defines a group with the operator (administrator) username
jch and password 1234, empty username and password for
presenters (ordinary users with the right to enable their camera and
microphone). The allow-recording
entry says that the
operator is allowed to record videos to disk, and the
allow-subgroups
entry says that subgroups will be created
automatically. This particular group does not allow password login for
ordinary users, and is suitable if you use invitations (see Stateful
Token below) for ordinary users.
In order to allow password login for ordinary users, add a list of
users as the entry presenter
:
{
"op": [{"username":"jch","password":"1234"}],
"presenter": [{"username":"john", "password": "secret"}]
}
If the group is to be publicly accessible, you may allow logins with any username and an empty password:
{
"op": [{"username":"jch","password":"1234"}],
"presenter": [{}],
"public": true
}
The empty dictionary {}
is a wildcard entry: it matches
any username and any password. Setting public
causes the
group to be displayed in the list of public groups on the landing
page
Every group definition file contains a single JSON directory (a list
of entries between {' and
}’). All fields are optional, but
unless you specify at least one user definition (op
,
presenter
, or other
), nobody will be able to
join the group. The following fields are allowed:
op
, presenter
, other
: each of
these is an array of user definitions (see Authorisation below)
and specifies the users allowed to connect respectively with operator
privileges, with presenter privileges, and as passive listeners;authKeys
, authServer
and
authPortal
: see Authorisation below;public
: if true, then the group is listed on the
landing page;displayName
: a human-friendly version of the group
name;description
: a human-readable description of the group;
this is displayed on the landing page for public groups;contact
: a human-readable contact for this group, such
as an e-mail address;comment
: a human-readable string;max-clients
: the maximum number of clients that may
join the group at a time;max-history-age
: the time, in seconds, during which
chat history is kept (default 14400, i.e. 4 hours);allow-recording
: if true, then recording is allowed in
this group;unrestricted-tokens
: if true, then ordinary users
(without the “op” privilege) are allowed to create tokens;allow-anonymous
: if true, then users may connect with
an empty username;allow-subgroups
: if true, then subgroups of the form
group/subgroup
are automatically created when first
accessed;autolock
: if true, the group will start locked and
become locked whenever there are no clients with operator
privileges;autokick
: if true, all clients will be kicked out
whenever there are no clients with operator privileges; this is not
recommended, prefer the autolock
option instead;redirect
: if set, then attempts to join the group will
be redirected to the given URL; most other fields are ignored in this
case;codecs
: this is a list of codecs allowed in this group.
The default is ["vp8", "opus"]
.Supported video codecs include:
"vp8"
(compatible with all supported browsers);"vp9"
(better video quality, but incompatible with
Safari);"av1"
(even better video quality, only supported by
some browsers, recording is not supported, SVC is not supported);"h264"
(incompatible with Debian and with some Android
devices, SVC is not supported).Supported audio codecs include "opus"
,
"g722"
, "pcmu"
and "pcma"
. Only
Opus can be recorded to disk. There is no good reason to use anything
except Opus.
Galene implements three authorisation methods: a simple username/password authorisation scheme, a scheme using stateful tokens and a mechanism based on cryptographic tokens that are generated by an external server. The former two mechanism are intended to be used in standalone installations, while the server-based mechanism is designed to allow easy integration with an existing authorisation infrastructure (such as LDAP, OAuth2, or even Unix passwords).
When password authorisation is used, authorised usernames and
password are defined directly in the group configuration file, in the
op
, presenter
and other
arrays.
Each member of the array is a dictionary, that may contain the fields
username
and password
:
username
is present, then the entry only matches
clients that specify this exact username; otherwise, any username
matches;password
is present, then the entry only matches
clients that specify this exact password; otherwise, any password
matches.For example, the entry
{"username": "jch", "password": "1234"}
specifies username jch with password 1234, while
{"password": "1234"}
allows any username with password 1234, and
{}
allows any username with any password.
By default, empty usernames are forbidden; set the
allow-anonymous
option to allow empty usernames. By
default, recording is forbidden; specify the
allow-recording
option to allow operators to record.
If you don’t wish to store cleartext passwords on the server, you may
generate hashed passwords with the
galene-password-generator
utility. A user entry with a
hashed password looks like this:
{
"username": "jch",
"password": {
"type": "pbkdf2",
"hash": "sha-256",
"key": "f591c35604e6aef572851d9c3543c812566b032b6dc083c81edd15cc24449913",
"salt": "92bff2ace56fe38f",
"iterations": 4096
}
}
Stateful tokens allow to temporarily grant access to a user. In order to generate a stateful token, the group administrator types
/invite user period
where user
is the username granted to the temporary
user, and period
is the time period for which the token
will be valid (for example 2d
meaning 2 days). The server
replies with a link, valid the given time period, that may be sent to
the temporary user for example by e-mail.
Tokens may also be granted without imposing a specific username:
/invite '' 2d
Stateful tokens are revokable (use the /revoke
command)
and their lifetime may be extended (use the /reinvite
command).
Galene is able to delegate authorisation decisions to an external authorisation server. This makes it possible to integrate Galene with an existing authentication and authorisation infrastructure, such as LDAP, OAuth2 or even Unix passwords.
When an authorisation server is used, the group configuration file specifies one or more public keys in JWK format. In addition, it may specify either an authorisation server or an authorisation portal.
{
"authKeys": [{
"kty": "oct",
"alg": "HS256",
"k": "MYz3IfCq4Yq-UmPdNqWEOdPl4C_m9imHHs9uveDUJGQ",
"kid": "20211030"
}, {
"kty": "EC",
"alg": "ES256",
"crv": "P-256",
"x": "dElK9qBNyCpRXdvJsn4GdjrFzScSzpkz_I0JhKbYC88",
"y": "pBhVb37haKvwEoleoW3qxnT4y5bK35_RTP7_RmFKR6Q",
"kid": "20211101"
}]
"authServer": "https://auth.example.org",
}
The kid
field serves to distinguish among multiple keys,
and must match the value provided by the authorisation server. If the
server doesn’t provide a kid
, the first key with a matching
alg
field will be used.
If an authorisation server is specified, then the default client, after it prompts for a password, will request a token from the authorisation server and will join the group using token authentication. The password is never communicated to the server.
If an authorisation portal is specified, then the default client will
redirect initial client connections to the authorisation portal. The
authorisation portal is expected to authorise the client and then
redirect it to Galene with the username
and
token
query parameters set.
Galène’s web page is at https://galene.org.
Answers to common questions and issues are at https://galene.org/faq.html.
– Juliusz Chroboczek https://www.irif.fr/~jch/