Really disliking OpenFire

Openfire Openfire Support
1

I am running into every problem listed in these forums.

New Ubuntu install, followed the instructions for a .deb install.

Set everything up, but Spark would continuously say there was a server error.

Rebooted the server and now I cannot log in, I am using LDAP and one of the AD users as the admin.

Edited the openfire.xml and added an account and it wanted to go through the setup process again, now it states the Openfire datavase schema does not appear to be installed. Funny, it didn’t say anything the first time I ran though this.

I am almost believing that this is just a lost cause and the system is just riddled with bugs and inconsistent install instructions. Every fix in these forums seems to just break the system even more.

If anyone has a defenitive guide published within the last year on how to get this running on Ubuntu, using LDAP and the Spark client, I am all ears.

I setup one of these servers about 7 years ago and don’t remember it being such a headache to get running.

UPDATE: Was able to get past the database part by making sure I am using the same domain name I set it up with originally. Now it cannot find anything by hostname, so I changed it to the IP of the domain controller. Now it says I am using the wrong password for the domain users I assigned as admin. Nothing but headaches with this software.

UPDATE 2: I just want to blow my brains out. Rebooted the server and it wants to go through the setup process again.

FINAL UPDATE: Come to find out v4.0.2 doesn’t work out of the box, I am told it only works with Java 8, which I tried and it still failed. Once I installed 4.0.1 all my issue went away. Funny thing is, if you create a brand new server, install Java 8, OpenFire will not install, unless you install Java 7, so why make a product that only works with one version of Java, but demand a prior version?

2

I can’t reproduce this issue. Anyhow there is a known Java7 issue.

And I agree that the deb install is annoying as uninstall keeps a lot of files and re-installing a clean version requires manual rm -rf and userdel. I prefer using the .tar.gz version.

3

The reason there are .deb issues is that there are no .deb experts that have stepped up with Pull Requests to fix these issues. I have only made attempts at fixing things as I blindly hack away at things.

4

I think i have posted a link to a ticket fixing requirement of Java 7 when installing 4.0.2 on Debian a few times. It is marked to be fixed for 4.0.3, but it is not released yet, because there can’t be a release done for every single issue fixed. In time it will come up and this issue will be resolved (meanwhile there is an announcement on top of the forums).

Can’t comment on the issue with 4.0.2. Not using it on Ubuntu myself. Works fine on Windows with Java 8, though.

5

Daryl, you can blame me partly for encouraging you to switch all Openfire builds to JDK8. I haven’t thought it should cause issues on modern operating systems. But of course, there is Debian… I’m ok with switching Debian back to JDK7 (if this is possible and if this helps, though i think i have seen about 3 reports with issues on Debian with 4.0.2 so far). Especially when i haven’t figured out how to produce a deb artifact with Spark build for Debian, so JDK version on Debian box is not an issue for now

6

As long as we have no enterprise contract we should use Java 8 and stop supporting outdated versions. If there are issues with an unsupported JRE/JDK the best advice is to update to the recent version anyway.

(I installed also all plugins - it turned out that some of them couldn’t be removed using the web console).