Jabber Instant Message Server Virtual Appliance

[VMTN_Admin]

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/248

A Jabber instant message server based on jabberd2, BerkeleyDB, and Slackware Linux. Five minute setup!

[TheMot]

Since I can find no other website or forums for this VA, I will post my problem here.

I followed the directions after downloading, setup the the server to use dhcp, rebooted, got IP of 192.168.15.107 (same net as rest of computers), perfect, should work right.... try gaim from my linux box (ubuntu 6.06)at 192.168.15.102... would just hang trying to register account, port scanned the virtual server to make sure port 5222 was open, it was... tried using spark on host machine (192.168.15.100), followed the directions in the /docs directory for setting up spark... no luck, same results, would just sit there. Added the host name I gave the jabber server on initial setup to my hosts file on my win2k pro machines hosts file, pinged -a to make sure the hostname was resolving. Tried many diff configs of spark and gaim to no avail... no firewalls on any machines, got me stumped. Anyone else experience this? Any help would be appreciated, I am going to keep plugging away at the problem. Please overlook my gratuitous use of commas!

Thanks!

[telackey]

I apologize for being so remiss to reply. I did not see this sooner. Did your problems get resolved satisfactorily? If they have not been, I would be glad to assist.

Message was edited by:

telackey

[plm_milano]

hi list,

same for me, jabber ask for password and say no connection.

no firewall il place and ssh machine-name is ok.

client is gaim from the host (suse) and from remote.

service jabberd was running and all appear ok but no connection to the server.

where I can find e jabber log?

tnx paolo

[telackey]

paolo:

You can check out the logs in /var/log/messages. When registering a new user entry you'll see lines like:

Aug 5 20:30:51 jabber jabberd/c2s\[180]: \[192.168.123.113, port=1266] connect

Aug 5 20:31:11 jabber jabberd/c2s\[180]: created user: user=telackey; realm=test4.redbudcomputer.local

Aug 5 20:31:11 jabber jabberd/c2s\[180]: registration succeeded, requesting

user creation: jid=telackey@test4.redbudcomputer.local

Aug 5 20:31:11 jabber jabberd/sm\[178]: created user: jid=telackey@test4.redbudcomputer.local

And when logging in:

Aug 5 20:31:17 jabber jabberd/c2s\[180]: \[192.168.123.113, port=1275] connect

Aug 5 20:31:18 jabber jabberd/c2s\[180]: SASL authentication succeeded: mechanism=DIGEST-MD5; authzid=telackey@test4.redbudcomputer.local

Aug 5 20:31:18 jabber jabberd/c2s\[180]: bound: jid=telackey@test4.redbudcomputer.local/Home

Aug 5 20:31:18 jabber jabberd/c2s\[180]: requesting session: jid=telackey@test4.redbudcomputer.local/Home

Aug 5 20:31:18 jabber jabberd/sm\[178]: session started: jid=telackey@test4.redbudcomputer.local/Home

Did you notice any trouble when registering the user account before attempting to login? Any messages?

Glad to help if I can to get you going.

[jakewilliams]

I am having issues with the jabber VMA as well.

Our VoIP system (Zultys) has an internal IM client application that can interface with Jabber servers. If I use it with an external Jabber server, it works fine. I am trying to get it to work with the internal Jabber server, but am not having any luck with the Jabber VMA.

On the VMA, all it says in the /var/log/messages file is:

jabberd/c2s\[175]: \[10.10.1.25, port=40501] connect

jabberd/c2s\[175]: \[10.10.1.25, port=40501] disconnect

The port number continues to climb, but I cannot get the software to register an account with the Jabber server. I can try rebooting the VoIP system, but not until after hours. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

Jake Williams

ELCOM

[telackey]

The first two things I would look into are:

1) Can the VoIP client can communicate over SSL / startTLS? By default the appliance requires secure connections (it is an option during setup though, so it is easy to turn off).

2) Have you tried registering with a standard client such as GAIM or Psi, and then connecting with the VoIP client? It might be a good thing to test, to try to pin down the location to focus on.

Hope that helps! Feel free to e-mail me too, glad to help if I can.

[jakewilliams]

The first two things I would look into are:

1) Can the VoIP client can communicate over SSL /

startTLS? By default the appliance requires secure

connections (it is an option during setup though, so

it is easy to turn off).

I disabled the SSL / startTLS option when I did the startup, since I'm not sure whether or not the appliance works with it.

2) Have you tried registering with a standard client

such as GAIM or Psi, and then connecting with the

VoIP client? It might be a good thing to test, to

try to pin down the location to focus on.

I have Psi on my machine, and tried that, but I get an error message: There was an error communicating with the Jabber Server. Details: Stream Negotiation Error: Host unknown

I can telnet from my box to port 5222 on the Jabber VMA and get a stream XML error when I type, so I know the server is responding and listening fine.

Hope that helps! Feel free to e-mail me too, glad to

help if I can.

Thanks,

Jake

[telackey]

I have Psi on my machine, and tried that, but I get an error message: There was an error communicating with the Jabber Server. Details: Stream Negotiation Error: Host unknown

I can telnet from my box to port 5222 on the Jabber VMA and get a stream XML error when I type, so I know the server is responding and listening fine.[/B]

Interesting. Is there a DNS entry for the Jabber appliance? Normally, DNS is used to resolve the host name of the Jabber server, corresponding to the "myserver.com" portion of an ID like username@myserver.com. That can be overridden in some clients however, to specify it manually.

One other thing that occurs to me is if the name in DNS does not match the hostname of the appliance. The Jabber server expects the clients to connect to a certain name, if they are connecting to some other name it may result in that error.

As an example, if the device is configured as jabber.mydomain.com, but it has two entries in the DNS server, jabber.mydomain.com and mail.domain.com, the users cannot connect as @jabber.mydomain.com, and manually specify the actual hostname or IP address of the server to the client.

[jakewilliams]

OK, I have made some progress. I did mess up, and now I can create an account from my VoIP appliance. However, I still can't log in through there. From Psi I CAN log in fine now, chat with offsite users, etc - so the error is in my VoIP appliance. The only messages I'm getting now regarding the VoIP appliance are:

jabberd/c2s\[296]: \[10.10.1.25, port=40893] connect

5 minutes later:

jabberd/c2s\[296]: packet sent before session start, closing stream

jabberd/c2s\[296]: \[10.10.1.25, port=40893] disconnect

Any ideas? I am going to talk with the support people for the VoIP appliance, but I don't have much hope that they'll be very helpful.

Thanks,

Jake

[telackey]

Jake,

Apologies for the delay in replying. It has been a busy couple of days.

As far as I can make out from that, it certainly looks like for some reason it isn't sending the login information.

The next step I would take would be sniff the traffic with Ethereal/Wireshark. Ideally, what I would do is sniff it connecting to the public server and then again connecting to the private one and compare the traces. Of course, the order doesn't so much matter as just trying both.

If you'd like to post the results (you'll want to remove the passwords though), or prefer to e-mail them, I'd be glad to take a look as well and see if I can spot anything.

Best!

[kashikoi_saru]

First, thanks for creating this!

I've got the server running. And I'm slowing learning how to administer it.

Users can register and chat. But they can't create persistant rooms.

Are JCR and MU-Conference included in this build? (yeah, I'm just copying from email from one of the mailing lists. lol)

Thanks for any help.

David

[telackey]

David:

Good questions! No, unfortunately not. It is a basic jabberd2 install, without many options. When designing the layout of the package, I went for a very simple, very small setup. In retrospect, there are a couple of things, conferencing one of them, that might call that into a little bit of question.

I've been working on a new appliance based on Wildfire (http://www.jivesoftware.org/wildfire/), which would provide a broader array of features at the expense of a minor addition to setup time. There are some licensing issues regarding the Java JRE that have kept me from working it out yet though. If I can get it worked out, I'll be glad to post about it here.

[SamClaret]

How do I get the appliance without using bittorrent

[tsuarez]

We are currently running the Jabber VMA within the few users in our IT dept and its working great. However, before rolling it out to select end users I need to know how to reset a password for a registered account. Also how can I see a list of registered users. I am new to the Linux CLI so any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[telackey]

How do I get the appliance without using bittorrent

I am afraid BitTorret is it for the moment. I can assure you that I have my torrent client up seeding it, so hopefully the download time won't be very long. Any happy users out there might also consider leaving their torrent clients open as well.

[telackey]

We are currently running the Jabber VMA within the

few users in our IT dept and its working great.

However, before rolling it out to select end users I

need to know how to reset a password for a registered

account. Also how can I see a list of registered

users. I am new to the Linux CLI so any help will be

greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Good question! There is not a way built-in to reset a lost password, but I have written a little utility that will do it. I'll post it on my site in the next day or so, but if you'd like it right away, just send me a message and I can e-mail it to you.

For listing the users, the simplest way is to run:

cd /usr/local/var/jabberd/db

db4_dump -p authreg.db | grep '^ ' | grep -v '
00'

I am thinking of creating a general user utility suite add on to handle these situations, and a few others such as bulk creation, if there is sufficient interest in it.

[telackey]

Update:

Some utilities have been released intended to ease user management. The complete list is:

jabberd2_passwd -- Changes the password for a user

jabberd2_useradd -- Adds a user to the database

jabberd2_userdel -- Removes a user from the database

jabberd2_userls -- List users in the database

Example:

jabberd2_userls -f /usr/local/var/jabberd/db/authreg.db -r jabber.domain.com

A readme for the utilities is available at http://www.redbudcomputer.com/updates/jabber/README.txt. They can be downloaded from http://www.redbudcomputer.com/downloads.htm under the “Jabber IM Server” section. The package contains binaries compiled for the Jabber IM appliance and source code.

Disclaimer: The utilities are provided with no warranty whatsoever.

[pbertain]

I am unable to get the utilities to build. The system cannot find gcc and I cannot locate it with find.

Any thoughts?

[pbertain]

Oops! I didn't realize that they are already built in there. Sorry about the unnecessary traffic.

Thanks.