Users can't add each other as contacts in Empathy client

I just built a near default installation of Openfire 4.2.3 on a CentOS 7 server. It is configured to use the built in database. I’ve also turned off the firewall. The server is not a member of any domain nor is it on a network that has access to the internet. I simply used the hostname for the domain. I created two user accounts with which to log into the server from two other CentOS 7 machines on the network.

The two other machines are both using Empathy as their chat client. They can both log into the Openfire server using the user accounts that I’ve created for them. The Openfire server shows them as logged in and their status is available.

The two machines are not able to add each other as contacts. The empathy client displays an error message that says, “Server cannot find contact: remote-server-not-found.”

I have no idea where to go from here. Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: I should also note that the two CentOS 7 machines are on separate networks/subnets and a router is performing routing between them. No NAT or ACL settings are defined on the router. They can both ping each other and the Openfire server. The fact that they can both log into the Openfire server should be enough to prove that network connectivity is established.

You see, plain network connectivity is not enough for XMPP to operate correctly, as it based on domains. It is hard to tell what could be wrong without a detailed information about your Openfire setup (domain name, server’s fqdn, DNS records, etc.) and how exactly you are logging in and doing a search for a user. remote-server-not-found hints that you might be using IP addresses, which is bad for XMPP. This can also be just a client’s issue, so trying with a few clients could be useful.

Here’s my guide, which is for Windows based network and Spark, but it should provide a general info on how XMPP domain is setup. http://www.wroot.lt/wp/technology/very-basic-openfire-spark-guide-en/

So this is on a small isolated network. There’s a couple of VLANs with a router providing interVLAN routing. There are no DNS servers and there is no Active Directory domain. The server is not a member of any domain; its essentially a fresh install of CentOS 7. I just want the machines to be able to chat with each other.

Rather than using IP addresses directly as I have been doing would it work well enough to simply edit the hosts file on each machine and then use their hostname?

It should work. Is your xmpp domain value the same as your server’s hostname? Ideally you would put xmpp domain in hosts files and point to server’s IP. If you use hostname in the hosts file, but your domain is different, i think you still can have some quirks, but it should work better than using IP to login.

Looks like that worked. Just needed to be sure that I had an entry for the server in my hosts files. Thank you!!