ejabberd is a distributed, fault-tolerant technology that allows the creation
of large-scale instant messaging applications. The server can reliably support
thousands of simultaneous users on a single node and has been designed to
provide exceptional standards of fault tolerance. As an open source
technology, based on industry-standards, ejabberd can be used to build bespoke
solutions very cost effectively.
Key Features
-
Cross-platform
ejabberd runs under Microsoft Windows and Unix-derived systems such as
Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD.
-
Distributed
You can run ejabberd on a cluster of machines and all of them will serve the
same XMPP domain(s). When you need more capacity you can simply add a new
cheap node to your cluster. Accordingly, you do not need to buy an expensive
high-end machine to support tens of thousands concurrent users.
-
Fault-tolerant
You can deploy an ejabberd cluster so that all the information required for
a properly working service will be replicated permanently on all nodes. This
means that if one of the nodes crashes, the others will continue working
without disruption. In addition, nodes also can be added or replaced ‘on
the fly’.
-
Administrator-friendly
ejabberd is built on top of the Open Source Erlang. As a result you do not
need to install an external database, an external web server, amongst others
because everything is already included, and ready to run out of the box.
Other administrator benefits include:
- Comprehensive documentation.
- Straightforward installers for Linux and Mac OS X.
- Web administration.
- Shared roster groups.
- Command line administration tool.
- Can integrate with existing authentication mechanisms.
- Capability to send announce messages.
-
Internationalized
ejabberd leads in internationalization. Hence it is very well suited in a
globalized world. Related features are:
- Translated to 25 languages.
- Support for IDNA.
-
Open Standards
ejabberd is the first Open Source Jabber server claiming to fully comply to
the XMPP standard.
- Fully XMPP-compliant.
- XML-based protocol.
- Many protocols supported.
Additional Features
Moreover, ejabberd comes with a wide range of other state-of-the-art features:
-
Modularity
- Load only the modules you want.
- Extend ejabberd with your own custom modules.
-
Security
- SASL and STARTTLS for c2s and s2s connections.
- STARTTLS and Dialback s2s connections.
- Web Admin accessible via HTTPS secure access.
-
Databases
- Internal database for fast deployment (Mnesia).
- Native MySQL support.
- Native PostgreSQL support.
- ODBC data storage support.
- Microsoft SQL Server support.
-
Authentication
- Internal authentication.
- PAM, LDAP and ODBC.
- External authentication script.
-
Others
- Support for virtual hosting.
- Compressing XML streams with Stream Compression (XEP-0138).
- Statistics via Statistics Gathering (XEP-0039).
- IPv6 support both for c2s and s2s connections.
- Multi-User Chat module with support for clustering and HTML logging.
- Users Directory based on users vCards.
- Publish-Subscribe component with support for Personal Eventing.
- Support for web clients: HTTP Polling and HTTP Binding (BOSH).
- Component support: interface with networks such as AIM, ICQ and MSN.
Quickstart guide
0. Requirements
To compile ejabberd you need:
- GNU Make.
- GCC.
- Libexpat ≥ 1.95.
- Libyaml ≥ 0.1.4.
- Erlang/OTP ≥ 19.3.
- OpenSSL ≥ 1.0.0.
- Zlib ≥ 1.2.3, for Stream Compression support (XEP-0138). Optional.
- PAM library. Optional. For Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM).
- ImageMagick's Convert program and Ghostscript fonts. Optional. For CAPTCHA
challenges.
If your system splits packages in libraries and development headers, you must
install the development packages also.
1. Compile and install on *nix systems
To compile ejabberd, execute the following commands. The first one is only
necessary if your source tree didn't come with a configure script (In this
case you need autoconf installed).
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
To install ejabberd, run this command with system administrator rights (root
user):
sudo make install
These commands will:
- Install the configuration files in
/etc/ejabberd/
- Install ejabberd binary, header and runtime files in
/lib/ejabberd/
- Install the administration script:
/sbin/ejabberdctl
- Install ejabberd documentation in
/share/doc/ejabberd/
- Create a spool directory:
/var/lib/ejabberd/
- Create a directory for log files:
/var/log/ejabberd/
2. Start ejabberd
You can use the ejabberdctl command line administration script to
start and stop ejabberd. For example:
ejabberdctl start
For detailed information please refer to the ejabberd Installation and
Operation Guide available online and in the doc directory of the source
tarball.
Development
In order to assist in the development of ejabberd, and particularly the
execution of the test suite, a Vagrant environment is available at
https://github.com/processone/ejabberd-vagrant-dev.
To start ejabberd in development mode from the repository directory, you can
type a command like:
EJABBERD_CONFIG_PATH=ejabberd.yml erl -pa ebin -pa deps/*/ebin -pa test -pa deps/elixir/lib/*/ebin/ -s ejabberd
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