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BILLETKnowledge Base

Before you install the server

What the portal and relay are, what servers, names, certificates and ports they need, and what is in the server download.

For
Administrators
Applies to
Billet 1.0
Updated

The server side of Billet is two programs you run on your own Linux servers:

  • the portal, which signs people in, holds every tenant, desktop and assignment, and hands out sessions. Administrators use its console.
  • the relay, which carries sessions between people and desktops that cannot reach each other directly.

They can share one server or have one each. A relay on its own server, close to the people using it, is the usual choice once a deployment grows.

Servers
Operating system 64-bit x86 Linux with glibc 2.39 or later. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is recommended, and is what these guides use.
Portal packages nginx (or another reverse proxy), OpenSSL, CA certificates, and the xmlsec1 OpenSSL library. On Ubuntu 24.04: nginx openssl ca-certificates libxmlsec1t64-openssl, plus postgresql if the database runs on the same server.
Database PostgreSQL, on the portal server or a server of its own. Ubuntu 24.04's postgresql package is fine. SQLite works for a lab or test deployment only.
Clock Kept accurate by NTP. The license check refuses answers more than five minutes off.

Names and certificates

Decide these before you start, because the portal, the proxy and the relay are each configured with them:

Name Example Certificate
The portal portal.example.com A publicly trusted certificate (Let's Encrypt is fine), held by the reverse proxy
Each relay relay.example.com A publicly trusted certificate, held by the relay, for browser sessions

People's browsers and the Billet app reach both names, so both need public DNS records and certificates every browser trusts. Never name a host (a desktop machine) in a public certificate: issued certificates are published for good, in Certificate Transparency logs.

The portal also runs its own certificate authority, which issues certificates to hosts and relays for the connections between them. You create it once, after the portal is installed. See Create the certificate authority.

Network

See Network ports for the full table. In short:

  • The portal's reverse proxy takes HTTPS on 443 from everyone: people, the Billet app, hosts and relays.
  • The relay takes its media port and its browser WebSocket port from everyone.
  • The portal makes outbound HTTPS to license.billetstream.com.
  • Hosts need nothing inbound unless you allow direct connections.

What is in the download

The server release is one file, Billet-Server-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz, with a checksum file beside it:

Billet-Server-<version>-linux-x64/
  portal/billet_portal-cli                 the portal
  portal/assets/                           its pages, scripts, styles and the browser session page
  portal/config/production.yaml.example    the configuration it starts from
  relay/billet-relay                       the relay
  agent/billet-stats-agent                 the agent a relay runs beside it

Next

Install the portal.