I'm trying to compile Jitsi and set up a small scale server. There's not a rush, but I'm trying to learn my way.

I started with jitsi videobridge, and apache ant, which has a slackbuild. What little documentation there is keeps talking about a sandbox, and doing stuff inside the sandbox.

I thought sandboxes were halfway houses to a VM, and not very secure either. Jitsi is network heavy. My memory of them was as a failed attempt to make dody M$ browsers secure. Do I need a sandbox in linux?

I'm also finding stuff about various strange protocols - SIP, RTP, SRTP, STUN (Session Traversal Utilities for NAT), etc. It sounds like a neat piece of work once I get set up. It's just a pity they didn't write it up better. Each doc is like a jigsaw piece, but they don't make a picture.

Do you mean Jitsi-meet? Or regular Jitsi? The latter is in java, the former a mish-mash including a lot of javascript.

I installed Jitsi meet using their deb-based repositories. Even that was a chore. There are so many different protocols because Meet is doing so much. Keep at it! I ran into issues on port forwarding within my router, but internal traffic could use the Jitsi meet (not very useful, obviously).

It's one of those things, isn't it? You do stuff and end up knowing less than you did before.

I'm trying to set up the videobridge, and there's more ports & protocols than you want, certainly. what's worse, they seem to be doing it under docker.

I've found a promising looking document on their site, and I'll give that a go.

I had to look that up.
According to wikipedia Jitsi-meet is a "Video conferencing server designed for quick installation on Debian/Ubuntu servers", and Jitsi is a "Audio, video, and chat communicator that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber, AIM/ICQ, and IRC" - that sounds like a regular (desktop) chat app.
I'm guessing OP wants a "Video conferencing server designed for quick installation on Debian/Ubuntu servers"?

Personally, I'd use Openfire for the server.
https://www.igniterealtime.org/downloads/

Uses the same protocol as Jitsi (and even the same clients on the desktop), and is a breeze to set up. Plugins for voice/video and even SIP integration.

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Right. I've grabbed it. I'll read up before I install much. Thanks

Openfire somehow eluded me so I had to grab it again today. Our days run 5-8 hours before the Excited States.

It seems to be a group chat IM server. Never used IM myself. Does it do video? ZRTP?

Well, it IS an IM server...which is exactly what Jitsi is. As said, yes...it does video, SIP, and lots of other things. It is an RPM file, so installing it should be a matter of using your package manager. The "strange protocols" are for handling different media types, like video.

OK. I'm on slackware, and it lacks a resident genius who took interest in this. So it's all compiling.

I'm not in a rush, so if you can break this sort of thing up, you learn as you go.