This page is a proposal for a unified chat (instant messaging) environment.

Ticket: http://jira.bluelightav.org/browse/BLUE-1038

This is work in progress!!!

XMPP seem to be an acceptable choice:

• free protocol
• free accounts with jabber.org
• vast choice of clients
• inter-compatibility with gtalk and possibly other common services

Problems:

• Google Hangout does not support XMPP

Proposition:

• anyone should have either:
  • Google account (including the users in the auroville.in.org domain) without Google Hangout activated
  • a jabber.org account
• client: any choice within (Adium, Chat.app, Pidgin, Android Gtalk, etc). See also http://xmpp.org/xmpp-software/clients/

Jabber server

Few notes on the installation of a ejabberd server.

Note that there are many open and free jabber servers around, so we might not want to set up one.

Server setup in Debian

Below, the steps to configure on Rose:

apt-get install ejabberd

dpkg-reconfigure -plow ejabberd

Parameters for dpkg-reconfigure:

Jabber host name: rose

Administrator user name: admin

Administrator password: bluelightav

Web admin

http://rose:5280/admin

User: admin , password: as set during dpkg-reconfigure

Security

• A self-signed certificate is created by debconf
• Admin user is created by default, with admin privileges
• By default, registration of new users can be done only with the web admin interface, not using a Jabber client. To allow users to register in-bound:
  • Edit /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cfg
  • Change at around line 496: {access, register, [{deny, all}]}.
    • by: {access, register, [{allow, all}]}

service ejabberd restart

Iptables

A rule is added in the host node in order to forward all the incoming traffic to the jabber server:

-A PREROUTING -d 176.9.70.139/32 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5222 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.42.107:5222 

Clients

Psi

Protocol well supported, but a bit rough interface

Gajim

Good

Pidgin

Telepathy

Adium

Messages (Mac)