Openfire XMPP/Jabber Server with LDAP Authentication
Some quick notes on deploying the very impressive Openfire XMPP/Jabber server from Ignite Realtime/Jive Software.
If, like me, you’re primarily of a UNIX bent and have so-far managed to sucessfully avoid LDAP in any detail, you might want to download the trial version of LDAP Administrator from Softerra if you intend on getting your installation talking to a Microsoft Active Directory. The Openfire LDAP configuration procedure needs a couple of DNs to enable it to query the domain, and to locate the users. In theory, the DN is a simple little string. In the reality of an actual-live-working-I’ve-seen-two-admin-teams-come-and-go AD it’s often not. In my opinion Softerra’s tool is what the Microsoft AD tools should have been.
In terms of plugins, I think the Jive Software Monitoring Service plugin along with the built-in logging is almost mandatory in any company working in a level above informal/start-up. I’m very impressed with the ability to export a chat session, highlighed properly, as a PDF with all of the important information easily found. You really should take a look, even for the purposes of your own archives on a private server.
Finally, if you’re using the latest Ubuntu 9.10 release with the Empathy IM client, keep an eye on the various bug reports that are currently circulating, suggesting that the Empathy client causes a heap consuming memory leak in Openfire.
