jabber server doesn't work
 

Hi All-

I am new to linux but with the help of this website I've managed to set up a linux server on our lan. Among other things, it provides samba services to various windows clients.

I have installed jabber 1.4 on the server but I can't get it to work. I've searched here and googled for days but I can't find anything on point.

For the purpose of simplicity, I have reinstalled the jabber software and have made only one change in the jabber.xml file replacing localhost with the hostname I'm using for the jabber server. (Does the hostname that I use in the jabber.xml file have to match the actual hostname of the server?).

The server will start up and run and shows that it is listening on 5222 and 5269. (When I start the server using the script supplied with the rpm /etc/init.d/jabber it shows that it starts but then it dies. So, I start the server with jabberd -c /etc/jabber/jabber.xml. Is this related to my problem?)

Gaim clients can register with the server but they can't chat with each other. Users' xml files show up in the subdir of the jabber hostname directory /var/lib/jabber/hostname (at one point I made a very big mistake and did a chmod -R in the /var directory. I think it was 222 or something. I'm not sure I've recovered from that. Is this related to my problem? Is there a graceful way to recover from this kind of error?)

The jabber server in debug shows the incoming messages are timing out.

The Gaim clients are showing unresolved host when the messages are sent.

I can not start a telnet session from any client to my server's port 5222. I CAN have a successful telnet session to port 5222 from a terminal on the
server itself.

Using the DNS host name, I can ping the servert from the client. I can ping client to client. I can ping server to any client.

All the jabber documentation says how simple it is to get up and running so I suspect I may have missed something big but what?

Thank you for your patience and assistance.

P.S. Does this question belong in several different threads?

use the jabber quickstart installer - it'll build all your xml configs and set up the server for you - it's based on DIALOG's and allows you to set up new users and start/stop the server etc...

christo

Thanks for looking at this issue.

Jabber quickstart doesn't work. The main screen comes up but none of the buttons do anything. I have to abort using ctl c because it wont even exit. It won't start or stop the server.

Rgds Claude56

This is mostly resolved.

I found some hateful eccentricities as follows:

1. Gaim client for Windows does not append the jabber servername to the screen name by default so you need to send your messages to "user@host" not just "user". The linux Gaim client DOES append the servername if you leave it off. This is why messages from one windows client to another werent getting through causing errors on the server such as 'bouncing packet' and on the windows client such as 'unable to resolve host'. Experienced chat users probably know this.

2. I had a problem running the jabber start up script that comes with the Mandrake 9.2 distribution. It would look like it started but then show not running when you do /etc/init.d/jabber status. The explanation for this was in the log files /var/log/jabber/error.log and /var/log/jabber/record.log. For some reason, the owner of these log files was root. I just deleted them and ran the script and the script ran and started jabber just fine and recreated the 2 files with the owner 'daemon'. The owner and group of these 2 files should be 'daemon'.

3. There is something strange about the jabber start up script. It seems that it does not consistently create the hostname directory in /var/lib/jabber. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It seems that you have to register from a client on the same machine to get this directory created automatically? If you know why, I'd be curious to find out.

4. I never did get the jabberd-quickstart interface to work. It will run and present an interface but none of the buttons do anything including exit. If you know why, I'd still like to know.

Thanks for looking.