How To Build an Openfire Chat Server On Debian 5

palegray.net writes "Inspired by a recent Ask Slashdot, I've written a step-by-step tutorial for setting up an Openfire server on Debian Linux, for those interested in running their own open source collaboration server. Aimed at those just getting started with collaboration software, the tutorial shows precisely how to get Openfire up and running quickly on a base Debian install, and offers a basic feature tour of the software's plugin and IM gateway functionality."

Comments

How To's are so 90s..

[Anonymous Coward]

These days you make me a VMWare image I can just pop-in and run.

Re:How To's are so 90s..

[GMFTatsujin]

Sorry, that's out of my league. Do you have a how-to on using a vmware image?

Re:How To's are so 90s..

[Pollardito]

no, but I have a vmware image of his vmware image you can just pop-in and run

Re:How To's are so 90s..

[jnetsurfer]

I love Virtual Appliances. But HOWTOS are still necessary because I, for one, always question the security/authenticity of 3rd party VMware images. I use them to eval software and, if I like it, create my own appliance so I have full control and know there are no rootkits/backdoors installed...

Re:How To's are so 90s..

[rufus t firefly]

For the lazy people here, try this one: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/64572

very odd

[johnjones]

I thought that openfire was a jabber server so when the article states

"XMPP is also quite stable, at least for my purposes."

I get really worried about how much the author actually knows about the server...

realistically I would like to see some mobile jabber clients for things like blackberry

if anyone knows a free beer version of a jabber client for blackberry let me know
(I am not interested in webapp's since I like my privacy)

regards

John Jones

   

Re:very odd

[ianfs]

FYI - XMPP is the Jabber protocol.

Re:very odd

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I think that that was grandparent's point: To see somebody write an article on setting up a jabber server, then casually note, near the end, that XMPP seems to work OK for him, as though it were some sort of esoteric peripheral configuration option, tends to cause one's eyebrow to start migrating up the forehead.

What about a better conferencing solution?

[Radhruin]

I work at a small business with 10 or so employees. Recently, people have been getting more and more used to Instant Messaging as a way to provide non-intrusive information that is more instant than email. Lately we've even taken to setting up chat rooms to bring together three or four stakeholders to have a short conversation about something.

Now, I know XMPP and OpenFire support Multi-User chats, but what about more robust conferencing? The other day, I wanted to send a screenshot of an application I was working on to everyone in the MU chat. From what I could tell, this is not possible in OpenFire, and perhaps not supported in XMPP. Also, it would be great to collaborate on or point to a file that exists in our shared filesystem, which I would think is a fairly common use case, but I could not find a way to do that either.

So, I suppose what I'm wondering is, are there any solutions similar to Openfire but provide more robust conferencing? It'd be killer to be able to toss revisions around and maybe do some whiteboarding or something...

And if not, who wants to help me write an XEP that will address these use cases? ;)

Re:What about a better conferencing solution?

[jledhead]

openfire whiteboard - http://www.version2software.com/blog/2007/03/whiteboard-sparkplug-released.html openfire more robust collaboration - maybe this http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/docs/DOC-1518 we use openfire+spark with SSO

Re:What about a better conferencing solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

"would be great to collaborate on or point to a file"

It sounds like you should use a URL.

Re:What about a better conferencing solution?

[gduquette]

"The other day, I wanted to send a screenshot of an application I was working on to everyone in the MU chat"

The Spark client that the same company offers has the ability to send screen-shots, actually you grab any part of the screen you want and send it. That is the one feature that is used a lot where I work.

Re:What about a better conferencing solution?

[Radhruin]

Right, but unless I'm mistaken, there is no way to send a screenshot to all of the people in a multi-user chat without initiating individual file transfers. Collaboration between two people seems fairly well supported, especially when you include the above-mentioned whiteboard application, but nothing I've found works when you want to collaborate among three or more people.

What's openfire?

[zx-15]

I did RTFA, it does explain how to install it, but besides that what does openfire actually do? Jabber support, graphs showing who is online, what else?

Finally...

[smooth wombat]

someone who knows how to document a procedure. I don't use linux but even I could follow the instructions.

This is one of the key reasons for a slow adoption rate among interested users. Instead of getting the usual, "RTFM newb!", if there was more explicit documentation such as this that people could be pointed to, people would not be so readily turned off.

And no, MAN pages do not count as documentation. Some people (dare I say most?) need step-by-step instructions on how to do something the first time so they are sure they are doing things correctly. Afterwards, they're free to tinker til their hearts delight.

*gives a mold-friendly thumbs up*

Re:Finally...

[Samschnooks]

And no, MAN pages do not count as documentation. Some people (dare I say most?) need step-by-step instructions on how to do something the first time so they are sure they are doing things correctly. Afterwards, they're free to tinker til their hearts delight.

*gives a mold-friendly thumbs up*

Damn straight about the Man Pages! Man pages are for reference for experienced users. In other words, for those who are wondering, "What are the parameters again?" Why?

You see, when you read the man pages, parameters have all these "[]" and "-" and other things. I've occasionally come across programs that had "optional" parameters in their man pages that ended being required.

Re:Finally...

[value_added]

And no, MAN pages do not count as documentation.

I appreciate the general sentiments in your post, but the above is simply not correct. Putting aside issues of writing style, quality, completeness, etc., along with the abomination called info pages, manpages ARE documentation.

What you are looking for or expecting is a Tutorial. And most likely one written in a friendly style that includes a breadth of related topics (like "How do I install this thing?" or "What's a protocol?" or "How does XMMP work?". For that, I'd suggest a Google search. Programmers are expected to document their work, but it's unreasonable to expect them to write Tutorials.

To put things in a reverse perspective, the frustrating thing for non-Windows users is that on Windows, almost nothing is documented. Lots recursive clicky links that pop up HowTo's with explanatory or descriptive verbage, but no real documentation.

Re:Finally...

[fm6]

Man pages are (or are meant to be) reference documentation. Reference docs are important, but yeah, so are procedural docs.

Thing is, they're really hard to write well. I earn an absurd amount of money because I'm good at writing them. Most developers are not. Even the ones who are good writers (a distinct minority) tend to be good at academic-style writing, where you assume a lot of sophistication on the part of your reader. Such writers have no patience for the nit-picky detail good procedural docs need.

(I once wrote software release notes which included an explanation of how to unzip an archive. The developers, who happened to be pretty brilliant computer scientists doing cutting-edge work, thought their audience was "smarter" than that and made me take it out. Wackiness ensued.)

If you want good procedural documentation, you have to put a lot of work into creating it. Most open source projects don't have the extra bandwidth, and even if they do, they don't have people with the right skill set. That boils down to fluency with language and and stubborn patience when describing boring details. Not a big skill set, but one very few people seem to have.

For the rest of us...

[geekmux]

Something this basic requires a posting on the front of Slashdot? Great choice, kdawson!

I'll be sure to try and get my article about setting Openfire up on FreeBSD here soon..........

Ah, feel free to excuse yourself at anytime if you feel the rest of us are not worthy of your all-knowing power.

He was merely posting as a response to several queries he had received for the information, and since it's not quite as simple as apt-get to do this, along with the fact that FOSS collaboration tools are gaining popularity in this economy of ever-shrinking budgets, I find it rather relevant.

Re:Debian

[skyride]

Whats wrong with debian? Yes, CentOS and the likes are great but Debian is still a very good OS and its really just opinion of whether you prefer the APT or RPM system. Personally I use both. I have a dedicated server currently running a small number of Source-based Game servers and my home server is running CentOS 5.2. Debian Lenny is a great OS, its not really a complete re-write, but thats the point. Its a good, mature system which can only get better. And what operating system were you referring to? Windows? Sorry but most people aren't happy to buy Server 2008 for a small project like this. My guess is that more than half the people following this tutorial will be many who, like myself about a year ago, were keen on learning about linux.

Re:Why not OpenJDK?

[lgbr]

Sadly, Openfire did have some issues when I used with icedtea6. The best example I can think of is the MSN transport. MSN simply wont connect because of the security algorithm it uses. This is caused by icedtea6 missing that algorithm which Sun's JDK has.

Re:Fluff Articles?

[palegray.net]

This was a direct response to an Ask Slashdot article a few days ago. The community seemed more than interested to offer tips for what software they advised using, but nobody seemed to offer any concrete installation instructions. The Openfire community documentation is great, but kinda hard to wrap your brain around for Debian installs (mostly because it doesn't cover prerequisites and some other points).

Re:Why not OpenJDK?

[palegray.net]

As other posters have noted, I encountered issues with OpenJDK while I was writing the first draft of the tutorial. I'll probably go back and try it again, communicating the precise issues I ran across to the Openfire project. Hopefully they (or me, if I can find the time) can get the issues resolved, as I would have greatly preferred using a JVM in the "free" repositories.