[BUG] Customizing the UI breaks formatting

[pat-s]

When setting jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: true the site looks as follows

While nothing changes in the app, accessing the jitsi-server via a browser looks awful. Is this an upstream bug?

[santiagomr]

How do you have setted the other variables related to UI customization? Everything by default?

Particularly, the result that you observe seems to be related to bad CSS. Be aware of the warning explained in the code:

# By default it is an empty string because the CSS file is a bundled file for
# the entire site, and it change very frequently with each release. It will be
# replaced only if you have a custom CSS file and indicate its path in this variable
jitsi_meet_css_file: ''

[pat-s]

How do you have setted the other variables related to UI customization? Everything by default?

yes

I have not set jitsi_meet_css_file and therefore I assumed that the default upstream CSS is being used. However no CSS at all seems to be applied in this case?

Or am I doing something wrong? Does it work for you? Didn't you test it lately when setting jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: true in my recent issue?

[santiagomr]

Yes, I tried it. With jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: true and the others vars at their default value, the result I get in both Firefox and Chrome is:

Anyway, keep in mind that:

How do you have setted the other variables related to UI customization? Everything by default?

yes

This is equivalent to not customizing anything (jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: false), since the default values are the same as those used by the Jitsi Meet vanilla installer.

I suspect that somewhere in your project some of these variables are being reassigned with an invalid value:

jitsi_meet_lang: 'en'
jitsi_meet_appname: 'My app name'
jitsi_meet_org_link: 'https://link-to-my-organization.com'
jitsi_meet_welcomepage_title: 'Secure, fully featured, and completely free video conferencing'
jitsi_meet_welcomepage_description: 'Go ahead, video chat with the whole team. In fact, invite everyone you know. __app__ is a fully encrypted, 100% open source video conferencing solution that you can use all day, every day, for free — with no account needed.'
jitsi_meet_css_file: ''
jitsi_meet_welcome_page_additions_file: welcomePageAdditionalContent.html.j2
jitsi_meet_favicon_file: images/favicon.ico
jitsi_meet_logo_file: images/jitsilogo.png
jitsi_meet_watermark_file: images/watermark.png
jitsi_meet_default_background: '#474747'
jitsi_meet_show_video_background: true
jitsi_meet_default_remote_display_name: 'Fellow Jitster'
jitsi_meet_default_local_display_name: 'me'
jitsi_meet_generate_roomnames_on_welcome_page: true
jitsi_meet_lang_detection: false

For the error you have, in addition to the CSS, I recommend you check the template you are using in jitsi_meet_welcome_page_additions_file and look for errors in the console of developer tools of your web browsers

[pat-s]

I have no other variables set, only jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: false. Then I get the appearance of the initial post.

No errors related to this in the console.

I set up the Jitsi instance 4 days ago on Ubuntu 18.04. Functionality is perfectly fine.

Could it be that rerunning the ansible role does not change a possibly invalid config to a valid one? Would I need to provision a new machine and install jitsi fresh? I can't recall anymore if any of these was maybe set during the first install a few days ago.

(Sorry if this is a noob Q, pretty new to ansible)

[santiagomr]

It's not always true, but the objective of Ansible roles is that they are "idempotent" and that when they are executed again (without changing the variables) they don't change anything on your server.

This role is idempotent, so you can run it again on your current server without risks.

If you run again with jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: false, all UI related tasks will be skipped so you won't see any changes. And if you do it with jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: true and the rest of variables in the default value, you will get a result identical to the vanilla installer. Although it seems that this situation was what led you to see the welcome page as now.

If nothing works for you, it may be recommended that you do a fresh install with jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: false and check first that the vanilla install is working for you. This should not be a major problem since you are using automation and Jitsi does not persist data.

After checking that everything went well with the Jitsi installation, you can run the role again with jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: true and your custom values ​​to see if that's where the problem appears.

[pat-s]

I think what might have happened is: I've run the role at some point with an invalid setting and jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: true (probably a faulty custom CSS). It seems that if its broken once, there is no way of going back. Even when using jitsi_meet_customize_the_ui: true and the default variables, I cannot go back to the vanilla experience.

I had the stock site during first deployment, so this is not the issue. I've purged the apt packages and rerun the role and its back to vanilla again.

However, what does not change is that variables

• jitsi_meet_welcomepage_title
• jitsi_meet_welcomepage_description

have no effect.

I see that /usr/share/jitsi-meet/title.html gets edited. However, even when running it with vanilla settings and editing this file by hand, the text in the browser does not change (I've cleared cache also).

I ran a grep -rnw '/usr/share/' -e 'Secure, fully' to see where the default text is specified but could not find another location. Weird.

This is one heck of a rabbit hole that I go down with and waste time for no big reason 😅 (not your fault at all!). I can hardly accept cases where the software "beats me" 😛

[santiagomr]

I just understand that what you wanted to personalize was the welcome message.

I ran a grep -rnw '/usr/share/' -e 'Secure, fully' to see where the default text is specified but could not find another location. Weird.

I already made an attempt to modify this message several versions ago of the role. Unfortunately, these texts on the welcome page come from the translation files (/usr/share/jitsi-meet/lang), which makes automating their modification very unfeasible. I ended giving up on that idea (although now I have better ideas to pick it up :smirk: ).

However, what does not change is that variables

• jitsi_meet_welcomepage_title
• jitsi_meet_welcomepage_description

have no effect.

Checking this, I see that you are right. The value of these variables is no longer displayed anywhere on the Jitsi sites. (Until recently it was displayed in the information of the site that web browsers gave you). Surely remove those variables in future versions after more deeply analysis

[pat-s]

I already made an attempt to modify this message several versions ago of the role. Unfortunately, these texts on the welcome page come from the translation files (/usr/share/jitsi-meet/lang), which makes automating their modification very unfeasible. I ended giving up on that idea (although now I have better ideas to pick it up 😏 ).

Thanks! I think I should also give up now and focus on other things.

Thanks for the great role again!