Mumble

Mumble is a free voice chat server. While not as flashy as TeamSpeak, it has all the functionality and is easier to customize. And it is better. I may be slightly biased.

Note

Note that this guide assumes that you have installed Auth with the official :doc:/installation/allianceauth guide under /home/allianceserver and that it is called myauth. Accordingly, it assumes that you have a service user called allianceserver that is used to run all Auth services under supervisor.

Warning

This guide is currently for Ubuntu only.

Bare Metal Installations

Installing Mumble Server

The mumble server package can be retrieved from a repository, which we need to add:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mumble/release

sudo apt-get update

Now three packages need to be installed:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties mumble-server libqt5sql5-mysql

Installing Mumble Authenticator

Next, we need to download the latest authenticator release from the authenticator repository.

git clone https://gitlab.com/allianceauth/mumble-authenticator /home/allianceserver/mumble-authenticator

We will now install the authenticator into your Auth virtual environment. Please make sure to activate it first:

source /home/allianceserver/venv/auth/bin/activate

Install the python dependencies for the mumble authenticator. Note that this process can take 2 to 10 minutes to complete.

pip install -r requirements.txt

Configuring Mumble Server

The mumble server needs its own database. Open an SQL shell with mysql -u root -p and execute the SQL commands to create it:

CREATE DATABASE alliance_mumble CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON alliance_mumble . * TO 'allianceserver'@'localhost';

Mumble ships with a configuration file that needs customization. By default, it’s located at /etc/mumble-server.ini. Open it with your favorite text editor:

sudo nano /etc/mumble-server.ini

We need to enable the ICE authenticator. Edit the following:

  • icesecretwrite=MY_CLEVER_PASSWORD, obviously choosing a secure password

  • ensure the line containing Ice="tcp -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6502" is uncommented

We also want to enable Mumble to use the previously created MySQL / MariaDB database, edit the following:

  • uncomment the database line, and change it to database=alliance_mumble

  • dbDriver=QMYSQL

  • dbUsername=allianceserver or whatever you called the Alliance Auth MySQL user

  • dbPassword= that user’s password

  • dbPort=3306

  • dbPrefix=murmur_

To name your root channel, uncomment and set registerName= to whatever cool name you want

Save and close the file.

To get Mumble superuser account credentials, run the following:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure mumble-server

Set the password to something you’ll remember and write it down. This is your superuser password and later needed to manage ACLs.

Now restart the server to see the changes reflected.

sudo service mumble-server restart

That’s it! Your server is ready to be connected to at example.com:64738

Configuring Mumble Authenticator

The ICE authenticator lives in the mumble-authenticator repository, cd to the directory where you cloned it.

Make a copy of the default config:

cp authenticator.ini.example authenticator.ini

Edit authenticator.ini and change these values:

  • [database]

    • user = your allianceserver MySQL user

    • password = your allianceserver MySQL user’s password

  • [ice]

    • secret = the icewritesecret password set earlier

Test your configuration by starting it:

python /home/allianceserver/mumble-authenticator/authenticator.py

And finally, ensure the allianceserver user has read/write permissions to the mumble authenticator files before proceeding:

sudo chown -R allianceserver:allianceserver /home/allianceserver/mumble-authenticator

The authenticator needs to be running 24/7 to validate users on Mumble. This can be achieved by adding a section to your auth project’s supervisor config file like the following example:

[program:authenticator]
command=/home/allianceserver/venv/auth/bin/python authenticator.py
directory=/home/allianceserver/mumble-authenticator
user=allianceserver
stdout_logfile=/home/allianceserver/myauth/log/authenticator.log
stderr_logfile=/home/allianceserver/myauth/log/authenticator.log
autostart=true
autorestart=true
startsecs=10
priority=996

In addition, we’d recommend adding the authenticator to Auth’s restart group in your supervisor conf. For that, you need to add it to the group line as shown in the following example:

[group:myauth]
programs=beat,worker,gunicorn,authenticator
priority=999

To enable the changes in your supervisor configuration, you need to restart the supervisor process itself. And before we do that, we are shutting down the current Auth supervisors gracefully:

sudo supervisor stop myauth:
sudo systemctl restart supervisor

Configuring Auth

In your auth project’s settings file (myauth/settings/local.py), do the following:

  • Add 'allianceauth.services.modules.mumble', to your INSTALLED_APPS list

  • set MUMBLE_URL to the public address of your mumble server. Do not include any leading http:// or mumble://.

Example config:

# Installed apps
INSTALLED_APPS += [
  # ...
  'allianceauth.services.modules.mumble'
  # ...
]

# Mumble Configuration
MUMBLE_URL = "mumble.example.com"

Finally, run migrations and restart your supervisor to complete the setup:

python /home/allianceserver/myauth/manage.py migrate

supervisorctl restart myauth:

Permissions

To use this service, users will require some of the following.

Permission

Admin Site

Auth Site

mumble.access_mumble

None

Can Access the Mumble Service

ACL configuration

On a freshly installed mumble server only your superuser has the right to configure ACLs and create channels. The credentials for logging in with your superuser are:

  • user: SuperUser

  • password: what you defined when configuring your mumble server

Optimizing a Mumble Server

The needs and available resources will vary between Alliance Auth installations. Consider yours when applying these settings.

Bandwidth

https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Murmur.ini#bandwidth This is likely the most important setting for scaling a Mumble installation, The default maximum Bandwidth is 72000bps Per User. Reducing this value will cause your clients to automatically scale back their bandwidth transmitted, while causing a reduction in voice quality. A value that’s still high may cause robotic voices or users with bad connections to drop due entirely due to the network load.

Please tune this value to your individual needs, the below scale may provide a rough starting point. 72000 - Superior voice quality - Less than 50 users. 54000 - No noticeable reduction in quality - 50+ Users or many channels with active audio. 36000 - Mild reduction in quality - 100+ Users 30000 - Noticeable reduction in quality but not function - 250+ Users

Forcing Opus

https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Murmur.ini#opusthreshold A Mumble server, by default, will fall back to the older CELT codec as soon as a single user connects with an old client. This will significantly reduce your audio quality and likely place a higher load on your server. We highly recommend setting this to Zero, to force OPUS to be used at all times. Be aware any users with Mumble clients prior to 1.2.4 (From 2013…) Will not hear any audio.

opusthreshold=0

AutoBan and Rate Limiting

https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Murmur.ini#autobanAttempts.2C_autobanTimeframe_and_autobanTime The AutoBan feature has some sensible settings by default. You may wish to tune these if your users keep locking themselves out by opening two clients by mistake, or if you are receiving unwanted attention

https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Murmur.ini#messagelimit_and_messageburst This, too, is set to a sensible configuration by default. Take note on upgrading older installs, as this may actually be set too restrictively and will rate-limit your admins accidentally, take note of the configuration in https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/blob/master/scripts/murmur.ini#L156

“Suggest” Options

There is no way to force your users to update their clients or use Push to Talk, but these options will throw an error into their Mumble Client.

https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Murmur.ini#Miscellany

We suggest using Mumble 1.4.0+ for your server and Clients, you can tune this to the latest Patch version. suggestVersion=1.4.287

If Push to Talk is to your tastes, configure the suggestion as follows suggestPushToTalk=true

General notes

Setting a server password

With the default configuration, your mumble server is public. Meaning that everyone who has the address can at least connect to it and might also be able to join all channels that don’t have any permissions set (Depending on your ACL configured for the root channel). If you want only registered member being able to join your mumble, you have to set a server password. To do so open your mumble server configuration which is by default located at /etc/mumble-server.ini.

sudo nano /etc/mumble-server.ini

Now search for serverpassword= and set your password here. If there is no such line, add it.

serverpassword=YourSuperSecretServerPassword

Save the file and restart your mumble server afterward.

sudo service mumble-server restart

From now on, only registered member can join your mumble server. Now if you still want to allow guests to join, you have two options.

Enabling Avatars in Overlay (V1.0.0+)

Ensure you have an up-to-date Mumble-Authenticator. This feature was added in V1.0.0

Edit authenticator.ini and change (or add for older installations) This code block.

;If enabled, textures are automatically set as player's EvE avatar for use on overlay.
avatar_enable = True
;Get EvE avatar images from this location. {charid} will be filled in.
ccp_avatar_url = https://images.evetech.net/characters/{charid}/portrait?size=32