Jabber is the former name for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), which is a set of open XML technologies for presence and real-time communication developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999, formalized by the IETF in 2002-2004, continuously extended through the standards process of the XMPP Standards Foundation, and implemented in a wide variety of software, devices, and Internet services. Jabber service on SDF is run on ejabberd.

Jabber is popularly used as a decentralized instant messaging service. This means that you can create an account on one server such as SDF and talk to users from any other Jabber service. It is also possible to use a transport to communicate with users on other types of instant messaging services as well.

In contrast with other Jabber servers, accounts in SDF's Jabber server are created from the shell with the ‘maint’ utility. This is not needed if you are going to connect to a different Jabber/XMMP server besides SDF's Jabber server.

1. Log in to the password server by running the maint program.
2. Type o to select optional features and social networking
3. Type j to set your Jabber password.
4. Quit from maint utility and wait one minute.

After one minute you will be able to connect to SDF's Jabber server using your prefered Jabber client. Your jabber id (jid) is your SDF username with @jabber.sdf.org at the end

Once you have activated your SDF jabber account, you should choose a Jabber client (see below), and when you run it, use the following settings:

• Server: jabber.sdf.org
• Port: 5222
• SSL: enabled

SDF's Jabber server uses a self-signed SSL certificate, so you will see a warning about this. It is safe to accept this certificate.

Available on SDF cluster and on Metaarray:

• profanity (link to Quickstart guide) (Unix shell). Using profanity is described below.
• mcabber (link to Man page) (Unix shell). Using mcabber is described below.
  • To get mcabber working, copy this example config file to your home folder as .mcabberrc and edit the configuration file. You need to set your jid and possibly username and server

Others:

• iChat (Mac OS X)
• Pidgin (Unix/Windows)
• Adium (Mac OS X)
• Bitlbee
• xabber (Android)
• YAXIM (Android)

Recommended clients for mobile can be found here

Profanity is “a console based XMPP client.. inspired by irssi”. Its UI is based on virtual windows/tabs, each which has the following sections:

• title bar
• main window
• status bar
• input area
• additionally, chat rooms have a roster

To start, enter at shell: profanity

It will start like so:

Profanity. Type /help for help information.                                                          [offline]
01:31:11 - Welcome to                                                                                           
01:31:11 -                   ___            _                                                                   
01:31:11 -                  / __)          (_)_                                                                 
01:31:11 -  ____   ___ ___ | |__ ____ ____  _| |_ _   _                                                         
01:31:11 - |  _ \ / __) _ \|  __) _  |  _ \| |  _) | | |                                                        
01:31:11 - | | ) | | | (_) | | | ( | | | | | | |_| |_| |                                                        
01:31:11 - | ||_/|_|  \___/|_|  \_||_|_| |_|_|\___)__  |                                                        
01:31:11 - |_|                                   (____/                                                         
01:31:11 -                                                                                                      
01:31:11 - Version 0.12.1                                                                                       
01:31:11 - Copyright (C) 2012 - 2019 James Booth <boothj5web@gmail.com>.                                        
01:31:11 - Copyright (C) 2019 - 2021 Michael Vetter <jubalh@iodoru.org>.                                        
01:31:11 - License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>                   

After profanity starts, type in the “slash command” /connect yourusername@jabber.sdf.org and hit enter. It will ask your password that you set up in ‘maint’

(You can also start just by running profanity yourusername@jabber.sdf.org)

After you are logged in and connected:

• To see a list of group chat rooms–also called conferences–enter /rooms after logging in (see ‘Conferences’ section below for more details)
• To join your first room, try the ‘sdf’ group. Type /join sdf. A new window, [2], will be created and you will be switched to that window
• To say something in the room you are in, just type it (no leading slash) and enter. It should appear in the main window.

To issue other commands in the app, enter the appropriate slash / commands (like you did with /join already) in the input area (another important example: /help). Messages responding to your command will show up in the first window, the existence of which will be indicated by a [1] in the status bar. You can change to window 1 using /win 1, or alternately by use of the function key F1 (F1..F10 should work) as listed below, but you may have to figure out for your ssh and computer setup what the “Alt” means (on a mac using default terminal program, [Option]1 switches to window 1):

• Alt-1 to Alt-0
• F1 to F10
• Alt-left, Alt-right

To quit, enter /quit

Much more info is available in theQuickstart guide

TBD

Install Pidgin or Finch locally on your computer via instructions on the Pidgin site, then if you are using Pidgin (GTK graphical interface) or Finch (ncurses term interface) follow the appropriate sections below.

• Go to Accounts→Manage Accounts.
• Click on Add button.
• Select XMPP as Protocol.
• Fill the appropiate field with your desired Username.
• Fill the Domain field with: jabber.sdf.org
• Click on Save button.

After finishing this steps, Pidgin will try to connect to the jabber server and will ask for your password (the one you have set up with the maint utility), also you will be warned about the self signed certificate, it is safe to accept it.

Finch is the shell-based desktop-ish version of the jabber client Pidgin that was available on SDF, but seems to have not made it past the last upgrade.

If you have it, however, the following tutorial should work:

To move around Finch's fields and buttons use the TAB key. You can learn more about using Finch here.

• Press ALT + a and select Accounts
• Select Add button to open New Account dialog box
• Choose XMPP as the protocol
• Fill the appropiate field with you desired Username
• Fill the Domain with: jabber.sdf.org
• Save
• Now you just can select your newly created account from the Accounts list to get connected to SDF's jabber server.

1. Select a group in the buddy list.
2. Press F11 to bring out the context menu
3. Select “Add Buddy”.

Read bitlbee's documentation for how to get the server up and running. Then, to add SDF's jabber account:

1. Go to the &bitlbee channel in the server and register your user
2. Run the following command in that channel: account add account_name user@jabber.sdf.org [passwd]
3. Run: account account_name on

Read the help of bitlbee's commands and add your contacts there.

Jabber allows you to talk to several users at once in conferences. These are similar to com rooms or IRC channels. The SDF jabber server has a “helpdesk” conference already set up and you are free to create new conferences too.

To see a list of existing conferences, type /rooms while still in window 1 after logging in. Example response:

Room list request sent: conference.jabber.sdf.org
Rooms list response received: conference.jabber.sdf.org
  anon@conference.jabber.sdf.org (anon (0))
  anonradio@conference.jabber.sdf.org (anonradio (8))
  conference@conference.jabber.sdf.org (conference (0))
  helpdek@conference.jabber.sdf.org (helpdek (0))
  helpdesk@conference.jabber.sdf.org (helpdesk (3))
  pcom@conference.jabber.sdf.org (dienda (0))
  roof@conference.jabber.sdf.org (roof (2))
  sdf@conference.jabber.sdf.org (sdf (10))
  test@conference.jabber.sdf.org (test (0))
  zcom@conference.jabber.sdf.org (zcom (1))

To join an existing conference you can just /join [room] where the room is the roomname, and the @conference.jabber.sdf.org can be left off, e.g., /join helpdesk

You can just /join [newroom] where newroom is a new room name, and profanity will create the room.

• Go to Buddies→Join a Chat….
• Select your jabber.sdf.org account in the Account drop-down
• Click on the Room List button
• Make sure the server to query is: conference.jabber.sdf.org
• Click on the Find Rooms button
• The Room List window will show all existing conferences along with the number of users in each. Select the one you want (helpdesk, for example) and click on the Join button.

By default you will not be notified of activity in conference windows the same way you are when someone talks in a one-to-one chat window. You can change this by going to Tools→Plugins, selecting to configure Message Notification and checking Chat Windows in the “Notify For” section.

• Go to Buddies→Add Chat….
• Select your jabber.sdf.org account and enter the desired room in the Room field.
• Click the Add button
• The new conference will have appeared in your buddy list. Double click on it to join it.
• You will be prompted to configure your new room. Do so if you wish, or accept defaults.
• Invite other users to join your conference through Conversation→Invite… or have them look in the Room List as described above.

The easiest way to find other SDF Jabber users is to visit the conferences as described above. If you know that somebody uses the SDF jabber server you can add them to your contact list directly by using the address: username@jabber.sdf.org where username is their SDF user name.

You can also use your SDF account to chat with people who have accounts on other Jabber servers. Note that some people might call it `XMPP' instead of `Jabber'. One of the largest Jabber servers is Google Talk: you can chat to GMail/Google Talk users this way without needing a Google account. The Jabber address of those users is the same as their email address.

Lots of updates from source below:

$Id: jabber.html,v 1.13 2019/12/02 16:13:22 thegiant Exp $ Jabber on SDF - traditional link (using RCS)