Ventrilo is a VoIP group communications software used by business users, gamers, or anyone needing group communication. A typical setup usually requires a Ventrilo server and some Ventrilo clients connected to it. The client software is available on Windows and the Mac.
Ventrilo server is available on many platforms such as Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD and NetBSD. Ventrilo server is available in two versions: (1) the public version which defaults to port 3784 with up to 8 users, (2) and the pro version that is configurable that can run on multiple servers and thousands of users.
This article will show how to install Ventrilo Server on the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, currently version 12.04. Credit goes to Ben Wagner for his article on installing Ventrilo server on Ubuntu 10.10.
Download
First, download the latest Linux version of Ventrilo Server from Ventrilo’s website.
Upload and Unzip
FTP the tar file to the home directory of your web server. Unpack the zipped file.
$ tar -xzf ventrilo_srv-3.0.3-Linux-i386.tar.gz $ cd ventsrv |
Create Ventrilo user
$ sudo useradd ventrilo |
Move Binaries
Move the binaries to /usr/bin and make them executable.
$ sudo mv ventsrv/ventrilo_srv /usr/bin/ventrilo_srv $ sudo mv ventsrv/ventrilo_status /usr/bin/ventrilo_status $ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/ventrilo_srv /usr/bin/ventrilo_status |
Move config file
$ sudo mkdir /etc/ventrilo $ sudo mv ventrilo_srv.ini /etc/ventrilo/ventrilo_srv.ini $ sudo chown -R ventrilo:ventrilo /etc/ventrilo |
Create the Start/Stop scripts
Insert the contents of this script into the ventrilo file. Make the file executable. Add the scripts to the boot sequence.
$ sudo nano /etc/init.d/ventrilo $ sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/ventrilo $ sudo update-rc.d ventrilo defaults |
Start Ventrilo
$ sudo /etc/init.d/ventrilo start |
* Starting VOIP server ventrilo 8931 (process ID) old priority 0, new priority -5 [ OK ] |
Stop Ventrilo
$ sudo /etc/init.d/ventrilo stop |
* Stopping VOIP server ventrilo [ OK ] |
Customize Config
Edit the Ventrilo config file.
$ sudo nano /etc/ventrilo/ventrilo_srv.ini |
The contents will look similar to this.
[Server] Name=ServerName Phonetic=Servername Auth=0 Duplicates=1 AdminPassword=password Password=password SendBuffer=0 RecvBuffer=0 Diag=0 LogonTimeout=5 CloseStd=1 TimeStamp=0 PingRate=10 ExtraBuffer=0 ChanWidth=0 ChanDepth=0 ChanClients=0 DisableQuit=0 VoiceCodec=3 VoiceFormat=18 SilentLobby=0 |
Pay attention to VoiceCodec and VoiceFormat. I’m using 3 and 18 respectively, so it’s compatible with the Mac OS clients.
Firewall Rules
The standard default port for Ventrilo server is port 3784. With the public version, you can connect up to 8 users concurrently. If you have a firewall installed such as iptables, you will need to open up port 3784 for both TCP and UDP. Here are the rules you will need to add to /etc/iptables.firewall.rules.
# Allow Ventrilo -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 3784 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p udp --dport 3784 -j ACCEPT |
Apply the new rules.
$ sudo iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.firewall.rules |
Just connect the Ventrilo clients to the server.
That’s it.