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."

How To's are so 90s..

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

   

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? ;)

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: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: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.

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.