IM Server for an office

[Chewy509]

Hi All,

As part of a team project this semester at Uni, I setting up a team server that has:
1. Apache + MySQL + PHP installed (classic LAMP stack).
2. dotProject Project Management Suite
3. Subversion Server
4. Hudson for CI
5. SSH
6. IM Server.

I've got most things running (still need to do SVN and Hudson), but am wondering if anyone has setup their own IM Server? I've done it years ago, when Exchange 2000 has native IM service before MS ripped IM out of Exchange, how have not had to do it recently.

Ideally, it should:
1. Run on Linux (as that is what the server is).
2. Have clients that run on Windows and Linux (and I've got Pigdin 2.10 on Solaris, so have most major IM protocols available).
3. Support SSL (or some form of privacy control).
4. Able to log ALL messages (text file is fine).
5. Client authentication is PAM compatible (so only users on the server located in /etc/passwd can access the system).

I did think of just using IRC, but all the IRC servers I've read about either miss one of the above functions or want to join one of the super-clusters.

I personally don't care what the protocol is, as long as there is decent client support.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

PS. I've got the forum module for dotProject enabled, so am able to use that, but wanted something more instant.

 

[timwhit]

How about Openfire? Client would probably be Spark.

 

[Mercutio]

ejabberd looks ridiculously easy to get running and seems feature-complete for your needs. I can't say I've needed to do it but given about five minutes I think I could.

 

[Chewy509]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give ejabberd a look first, since it's in Arch's main repository.

 

[Chewy509]

Well, after 2 minutes scanning the configuration file, ejabberd it is. (It does everything I need).
Took more time stuffing around with SSL, than making it work in plain-text mode, it was that easy.

 

[Handruin]

How about Openfire? Client would probably be Spark.

These are the two I used years ago when evaluating an IM server within our organization. The company eventually settled on office communicator for the entire company.

 

[Stereodude]

The company I work for uses Openfire / Spark. I use Pidgin with it though instead of Spark.

 

[MaxBurn]

God I hate office communicator. IT locked it down so I can't block anyone, we can't send URLs to people and certainly can't send files god forbid. Being a work from home person my boss of course wants us to run it all the time and every single message people spam across the whole group forces a new window and flashes in the task bar and interrupts whatever I am doing, as far as I can tell there is no way to have it just ding and quietly open a conversation in the background and NOT flash the task bar. I normally autohide the taskbar to get a little more vertical real-estate on a widescreen monitor and this work machine is the only one I can't do that with because of this one annoying piece of shit application. I have researched this on multiple occasions and found nothing on how to stop this thing from bring such a work interruption and productivity killer.

Every single other IM client I have tried just dings in the background and doesn't interrupt you. On the PC I used to run trillian pro but it got really bloated a couple years ago so I switched to pidgin which is great and I still use it on PC, nice minimal lightweight app. On mac I prefer audium, which again is minimal. Both seem to have everything I want and more, also I believe both are open source? On mobile I am pretty well satisfied with IM+ Pro, very nice client on Android and iOS. That developer has had some troubles with the shifting IM protocols but they are super responsive in fixing them and this is where the app store approval process slows things down; they almost always have a fix ready right away when a service changes something but have to wait a couple days to a week to get it to users. I expect that to be different now that I am on android. The one common thing here is that all these messengers handle pretty much every IM protocol known to man except for OCS/Lync, wonder why that is?

 

[Mercutio]

I use imo.im to handle instant messaging, mostly because it supports Skype without needing the bloated-ass Skype client. Somehow Skype became a standard for communication for a few people that I deal with. Since it's owned by Microsoft now, I wonder if it will be integrated in Exchange or something, going forward.

IM pisses me off. The lack of standardization just sucks. I have to log in to Yahoo, two different Google accounts, Windows Live and Skype to communicate with different people. In a few cases, IMs are the only way I have to reach them.

 

[LunarMist]

They banned IM where I work. I have no idea why. Everything has to be an e-mail.

 

[Mercutio]

Presumably the administrative cost of logging and archiving all of it, combined with easy security leaks over IMs.

 

[MaxBurn]

. I have to log in to Yahoo, two different Google accounts, Windows Live and Skype to communicate with different people. In a few cases, IMs are the only way I have to reach them.

Exactly why in my opinion a chat client has to handle every IM protocol out there.

Presumably the administrative cost of logging and archiving all of it, combined with easy security leaks over IMs.

Exactly, we were using AIM before IT dictatorship determined that we must use OCS. It's not even the latest version of linc communicator, it's the old office communicator.

 

[ddrueding]

We use Google for e-mail. This means that everyone already has a nice, clean, web-based IM client running all the time. You can even go direct to video conference if you like. And the transcript of an IM conversation gets e-mailed to the participants at the end.

 

[DrunkenBastard]

Lotus Notes and Sametime here at work. I actually get a lot of work done over sametime versus email, it's so much faster than waiting for an email back and forth (if the person is available). And it has custom preferences so I can appear busy to those I choose whilst still being available to management etc.