Feedback and gateway questions

It’s been a while since I visited this site, but I have to say: kudos to the fantastic progress that has been made in the many months since my last visit (maybe a year+, even)! I don’t remember where I originally found this project, but once I read about, I really wanted to get it up and running on my small server at home.

That small server was an Apple G4 Mini running Tiger Server on PostgreSQL, which has been replaced by an Apple Intel C2D Mini running Leopard server on MySQL (for those wanting sql support, go with MySQL on OSX, the community support is much better than Postgresql). Previously, the installation wasn’t as clean with the IM support and now it seems much more stable than it previously was. I’m starting to consider this for some small offices I support, since I can remove their YahooIM clients with something lighter (Spark, possibly) and the IMs can be audited, etc.

What I cannot (currently) figure out is: how the heck can I get non-Jabber specific clients to work with OpenFire + Gateways. I was able to do this before: get Pidgin or Adium to connect to my OpenFire server and pick up the client list per user. I no longer can get this working (previously it was me going to the gateway section and getting my user/pass on each setup).

Do I now need a plugin for either apps or to change some setting on OpenFire/IM gateway plugin so that I can use those transports/view contacts?

I dont quite understand you question. Can you describe it better?

Do you want to use gateways with Pidgin? This is not possible, as Pidgin is just a multi-protocol app and doesnt support all xmpp/jabber standards. And you will need service discovery support to be able to use gateways. The basic features should be working fine in Pidgin (contact list fetching, messaging).

Additionally as you say you want message auditing. You would loose this ability right quick with both pidgin and adium in regards to the gateways. It will not take people long to figure out they can connect directly to yahoo, aim, etc. This would bypass the auditing of their chats. You need a client that only supports XMPP with the discovery needed to support Gateways to prevent this. Spark is one such client.

Thanks for the replies.

Yes, I wanted to use Pidgin (I was able to in the past) in order to connect to my OpenFire server. Additionally, I wanted to use Pidgin (or Adium, since I have Macs as well) to be able to pull the contact lists from OpenFire – this is not working. I can connect to OpenFire with Pidgin or Adium, but between OpenFire and the IM gateway, none of the automatic transport connects are happening. This used to work, I used older versions of OpenFire + IM gateway that worked with my complete contact list (it was buggy, yes).

I’d give up on auditing so that I can use more clients other than Spark and Psi.

What do you mean by “it worked with older version”? That you were able to connect to say Yahoo or MSN transport of the IM Gateway with Pidgin? This is impossible. As about pulling Openfire user list. Well, maybe you just have to enable group sharing in Admin Console, because my Pidgin is pulling shared groups automatically without the problems.

About two years ago I went about starting with the version of OpenFire and IM gateway on my home machine. At that time, it was very buggy, but I 100% was able to use Pidgin or Adium to connect to OpenFire and use the gateways that were available (Yahoo was ok, ICQ/AIM were good, MSN was very bad). At that time, I had to go into the admin screen and manually add all of my contact information for those IM networks, but (from that point on) I was able to use those clients and get all of my contacts.

With my current “stock” OpenFire DB + IM gateway, I can connect with Adium or Pidgin, but the transports aren’t automatically logging me onto Yahoo/msn/icq/aim/etc. Only with Psi and Spark am I able to log onto the other networks and get my contacts.

Interesting. It seems that Pidgin doesnt support direct service discovery, but you can push gateway registration to it. I was able to add MSN/ICQ registration to a user via Admin Console > Gateways > Registrations. And then Pidgin automatically logged in to those transports and pulled all the contacts.

Though. As it was mentioned before. Not only the auditing could suffer with Pidgin. You cant make users to use Im gateway transports. They can always logout from such transport and then login directly to MSN/ICQ using Pidgin’s direct protocol support.

This is what I did:

  • Install MySQL

  • Install OpenFire

  • Install IM gateway plugin

  • Enable AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo and GTalk plugins

  • Create my single user (non admin)

  • Connect with Psi, find the different service transports, register my different IM accounts

With those steps, any new logins with Spark or Psi will automatically login to the different networks and pull my contact list. Now if I try logging in with Adium or Psi (using xmpp), I don’t get logged in to the different networks, don’t see contacts, etc.

I’m not familiar with Adium.

StashTheVampede wrote:

or Psi will automatically login to the different networks and pull my contact list.

or Psi (using xmpp)

I don’t understand what’s the difference between these logins.