It is just me, or is the Linux installation of
Messenger completely confusing?
Both the SRC and RPM!
Unless this is more structured, im using something else.
teddy,
What’'s confusing about it? Do we just need to clarify the download page?
Most Linux users will want to use either the RPM or the .tar.gz binary distribution.
Regards,
Matt
The Linux SRC and RPM installation may make sense to
you Matt, but to new users/admins to Messenger,
these instructions are very convoluted.
Makes the entire experience of Jive a very
negative experience.
Matt,
I think it could be the documentation. All it says is “Simply launch Jive Messenger and use a web browser to connect to the admin console.” It never says how to launch messenger. It also doesn’'t really say how to install it.
I know it’'s simple, but even something like “unpack the tar file to any location” and “run messenger.sh” may help.
teddy,
Do you have some suggestions about how to clarify things? Is the problem that most Linux admins are accustomed to downloading src builds and then doing a “make”? Perhaps we should just move the source builds to the source page instead of having them on the downloads page since our notion of a “source build” is a bit different than a standard linux project.
Regards,
Matt
I know it’'s simple, but even something like "unpack
the tar file to any location" and “run messenger.sh”
may help.
Ok, good suggestion. We’'ll add this.
Thanks,
Matt
I am a very competent linux admin.
I am used to packages where if I follow a
set of instructions in one place, the
package gets compiled/installed etc.
where i want, with the options i select.
Apache/Bind/Samba/qmail/mysql etc. etc.
Having the instructions in different places,
and trying to follow the setup, gets confusing.
I will kill the JIVE and start all over again…
I will record line by line my installation and
compare to the installation instructions and
post it later.
Like all admins, Im busy…i dont have time
for this.
I am used to packages where if I follow a
set of instructions in one place, the
package gets compiled/installed etc.
where i want, with the options i select.
Apache/Bind/Samba/qmail/mysql etc. etc.
Sounds reasonable. I think the main issue is that most of us do our core development on Windows rather than Linux. So, we’'re not as familiar with best practices.
Having the instructions in different places,
and trying to follow the setup, gets confusing.
I will kill the JIVE and start all over again…
I will record line by line my installation and
compare to the installation instructions and
post it later.
That would be great. We’'ll incorporate whatever comments you have into the documentation.
Like all admins, Im busy…i dont have time
for this.
Heh, like most system admins you’'re also a bit grumpy?
Regards,
Matt
I also found the instructions a little misleading. For example I was wandering around looking for JDBC drivers for MySQL, as described in the database section, but it turns out that they come with the download… or anyway, although I found them they don’'t actually seem to be used or required. That was confusing.
And, there isn’‘t any startup file for messenger, so it starts as a service and can be stopped started that way. Attached is a script I wrote to do this; install this as /etc/init.d/messenger then you should be able to manage it as a normal system service. I haven’‘t looked at the RPM so I don’‘t know if it already does something like this: I didn’'t see anything like it in the tarball.
This is Red Hat-specific which is bad because I’'m a Debian fan myself, but my server happens to be running on Red Hat so… I can give suggestions for a Debian version too if you like.
Like all admins, Im busy…i dont have time
for this.
From the sound of your comments you think you paid big money for this application, but wait, you didn’'t.
I’‘ll admit the documentation for Linux is a little bit lacking (okay, a lot), but I was able to figure it out (I don’'t even consider myself to be a “competent” linux admin).
Anyway, instead of flaming the forums (like I just did you) try asking for help in them, these guy’'s are really quick to respond.
Hey, im a team player.
I will help in any way I can.
Your right Jeff.
I don’'t know what the issue here is. To me (also an experienced Linux/Unix admin) it was brutally simple. Just grab the RPM with wget, run “rpm -ivh jive_messenger_2_1_0.rpm”, take a look to see where the files were installed with “rpm -ql jive_messenger”, cd to /opt/jive_messenger, do an ls, note the ‘‘bin’’ directory, cd to bin and do another ls, attempt to start it:
- ./messenger
Usage: ./messenger {start|stop}
and try once again, this time with feeling:
- ./messenger start
Starting messenger
nohup: appending output to `nohup.out’’
then pause a couple seconds, thinking to yourself, “No way, it can’'t be that simple,” then connect your web browser to port 9090 (you might need to give it a little time, depending how slow your server is (mine is a bit dated)) then follow the instructions from there.
(Of course I was also referencing this page as I went along: http://www.jivesoftware.org/builds/messenger/docs/latest/documentation/install-g uide.html)
Personally I’‘m blown away by how trivial it was to set up. I tried my hand at jabberd (v2) on and off over the months and today I tried ejabberd (after a loooong Erlang compile) and still haven’'t got those working. Put it this way: I started the Erlang compile, and while that was churning away in the background, I proceeded to download/install/configure/restart/connect a new user to Jive. I ended up killing the Erlang compile (which was still running) at the time because I had something Which Just Worked.
Teddy, if you can find another Jabber server for Linux which is easier to set up than what I’‘ve described above, by all means share the wealth, because I haven’‘t found anything which comes close. If you don’‘t have time for installing Jive, I have my doubts that you’'ll have time for the others.
Matt, have any of the APT-RPM or yum repository maintainers approached you regarding being able to add Jive Messenger to their repositories for public distribution? I don’'t know what your policy is, but it seems to me that Jive could get an easy boost in awareness. That was always one place I would check periodically, with “apt-cache search jabber” and “yum search jabber”, but while there were always lots of clients and libraries to pick from, I never got a hit on a server package.
(Sidebar: It looks like a bit more package detail could be added to the .spec file to make such searches successful. )
Food for thought.
To summarize what I’'ve been hearing so far:
-
The install guide just isn’'t specific enough and should be updated.
-
The script in the RPM is easy to use. We should probably replace messenger.sh with that same script from the RPM.
-
The downloads section of the site should be be re-organized a bit to be clearer what people should download.
Some other ideas:
-
The app could print to stdout “Admin console listening at http://localhost:9090” (printing out correct server name and port, of course) once the admin console starts up.
-
The startup.bat file could be replaced with the exe for the .zip binary build.
Matt, have any of the APT-RPM or yum repository
maintainers approached you regarding being able to
add Jive Messenger to their repositories for public
distribution?
This sounds like a good idea but we don’'t have much experience with this. Who should we contact?
(Sidebar: It looks like a bit more package detail
could be added to the .spec file to make such
searches successful. )
The RPM is actually generated automatically for us by the installer we use. I’'ll have to see if we can set this info somehow.
Thanks,
Matt
Sure thing, Matt:
http://freshrpms.net/ (Matthias Saou)
http://atrpms.net/ (Axel Thimm)
http://newrpms.sunsite.dk/ (Rudolf Kastl)
http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/ (Dag Wieers)
There may be others, but that should be a good start.
I agree with you Jim. I am an experienced Win/Linux admin and I thought that the install and setup was trivial compared to ejabberd (compile a mess of erlang), jabberd 2 (a constant struggle to get ldap authentication working), or jabberd 1.4 (see jabberd 2). Here was my install process:
tar -zxvf jive_messenger_2_1_0.tar.gz
useradd jive
groupadd jive
chown jive:jive -R jive_messenger_2_1_0
chmod a+x jive_messenger_2_1_0/bin/messenger.sh
cd jive_messenger_2_1_0/bin/
su jive ./messenger.sh &
For my installation I edited the jive_messenger_2_1_0/conf/jive-messenger.xml and added my specific ldap information.
The most difficult thing for me was getting Java setup properly on my system. I run Ubuntu Linux (a Debian based distro) and they have an excellent java howto located at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/Java I used method 0.
After I had java set up properly, jive functioned as expected.
I am a very competent linux admin.
Dude. Please, I am not a linux “Admin” and I know how to rpm -ivh a package, then do a “find / -name jive_messenger” to see where it went. If you haven’‘t figured it out yet, it’'s under /opt
Like all admins, Im busy…i dont have time
for this.
This is open source software which is being developed in a day by day basis and this forum is used to gather bugs/suggestions/feedback in regards to the software they produce. Look back at what your original posts look like and see what you look like. As if these guys owe you an apology for not making the software “User friendly for Linux users”
If you’‘re an admin then you’‘re gonna have to spend a little bit of time trying to get to know your system and software. My sister’‘s maid can probably install apache with the step by step HOWTO. You don’'t need to be a “Linux Admin” to do that.
Done ranting.
//
I just want to followup to Casey and Jim’‘s messages; while it’‘s true that getting messenger to start for the first time is just as easy as described in Casey’‘s mail, note that this is not really a final solution for anyone interested in a robust deployment. If your system reboots, messenger won’‘t come back up. It doesn’‘t go down sanely when you shut down the system. You can’'t manage it using normal system management tools.
I’‘m not saying these things are hard to add, but it would be nice if the package contained (a) a decent UNIX init script and (b) instructions for installing it. Yes, it’‘s easy to do this sort of thing for folks familiar with it. On the other hand, it’‘s better if you don’'t have to.
I agree that an init script would be nice. The problem would be, as the problem is for packaging anything for *nix systems; different *nix systems run their init script in some very different ways.
The developers could write scripts for FreeBSD, Debian, Slackware, Redhat, and Suse. I personally would rather have them work on Jive itself, as I am capable of setting it up, but my java skills are more than a little rusty. Maybe those of us with experience with linux, freebsd, etc. . . should package Jive and submit it to the developers as examples. We could create some .deb, .tbz, and a gentoo ebuild.
Thoughts, comments, suggestions. . .
Hey all,
Attached is an init.d script. This will be likely be included in the next release along with installation instructions. We’'ve tested on Fedora 3.
Having documentation and scripts for all the major distirbutions would be great. However, we only have the bandwidth to do testing on Fedora/Redhat ourselves. If people are willing to volunteer to keep documentation and scripts up to date for particular distros, that would be great.
Thanks,
Matt
Hi Matt,
You beat me to it.
Your script has more detail than what I was going to propose, which is nice. However, I’'d like to suggest the following enhancements:
To save having to create the necessary symlinks, insert these lines near the start of the script:
-
chkconfig: 2345 95 10
-
description: Jive Messenger is a standalone Jabber server
-
processname: jive_messenger
And if you wanted to save having to bother with MESSENGER_USER (or defaulting to the riskier proposition of using root), why not have a post-install script a) adduser jive, b) chown -R jive:jive $MESSENGER_HOME, c) install the init script in /etc/rc.d/init.d, then d) do the following:
-
chkconfig --add jive-messengerd
-
chkconfig jive-messengerd on
and optionally (this will depend on whether you want it started as part of the install or to pass the instructions on to the person doing the installing):
- service jive-messengerd start
I realize it’'s a little specific to Red Hat, but…
HTH.