Re: Instant Messaging service
Rory McCann
> Hi Rory,
>
> How are you ..
> Cecile (Symantec colleague who is going to Kenya) and I were watching
> your pictures from last year trip in Flickr .. ahhhh (sigh)
:) I know. :)
> I have a question for you about Ubuntu. I wonder if you could give some
> insights.
> I wonder if it is possible to install any sort of Instant messaging
> service on a small network without access to the internet.
> Pidgin is preinstalled in Ubuntu but as far as I know it needs access to
> the Internet.
>
> Would you know any other way to install an IM sevice on a small network
> built with 10-15 Ubuntu PCs ?
Well it would be possible to install a jabber server
(http://www.jabber.org/ or https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jabber). Jabber is an
open source instant messanging system. It's the same thing that GMail
uses. However I think this is total overkill and I suspect jabber would
be annoying to set up.
I think you should look at Bonjour, which should be included in Ubuntu
and Pidgin. it's basically a zero-configuration local network chat
system (it also does things like automatically discovering printers, or
the iTunes shared library thing). All you need to do is connect
computers to a local network and then set up accounts in Pidgin.
Links:
http://www.blog.highub.com/linux/use-bonjour-to-chat-on-ubuntu/
http://pidgin.im/pipermail/devel/2007-July/002073.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToZeroconf
I don't think you need to set anything up, it should all just work
automatically out of the box.
Hope that helps. :)
Rory
Paul O'Rourke
Hi Lothar and Rory,
Erm I think Moodle has chat and im functions available...
The stock Ubuntu 6 workshop install doesn't appear to have pidgin installed / available (unless you want to go looking at oldreleases.ubuntu.com). It does seem to have avahi (is this Bonjour?) and Gaim.
Of course Pidgin and Bonjour / Avahi are installed and available in Ubuntu 8.
Now I had a quick look at the process one ejabberd site and it really doesn't look too bad!
Although there are a LOT of curly brackets in the documentation, there is a very useful demo movie.
It looks like they have an installer that you can just run to install ejabberd on a machine as server on the network. The various Gaim clients can connect to this. It looks to me like you could probably automate the installation by way of a shell script (there's a small set of configuration settings you can make on the install command line / in an options file
On a machine called camarabuntu the options are as follows
I suspect that this would be not unlike the moodle installation I was looking at, especially since it was built with the same Bitrock installer software.
I managed to get it up and running here in a few minutes. Just note that regardless of any other instructions you kind of want to use sudo to install it (I know this is a bit of a pain for certain maintenance), because I don't think my default user account has the right privileges for creating services, etc.
If you want, I might have a chance to have a better look at this over the next couple of days.
Kind Regards,
|
Rory McCann
> The stock Ubuntu 6 workshop install doesn't appear to have pidgin
> installed / available (unless you want to go looking at
> Bonjour?) and Gaim.
Pidgin used to be called Gaim, in fact it used to be called gAIM. But
AOL, who have trademarked AIM (AOL Instant Messanger), complained so
they changed the name. They are in fact the same thing.
avahi is basically the software backend behind Bonjour (and the
networkless auto configuration of stuff / chat / printers / iTunes music
sharing ).
So I *think* that means that it should work on Ubuntu 6.10 (we don't use
6.06 much/at all/? and there is no "Ubuntu 6"). but y'know test it... to
be sure, to be sure...
> Now I had a quick look at the process one ejabberd site and it really
> doesn't look too bad!
> http://www.process-one.net/en/ejabberd/
> ...
Ah cool. :) I was just thinking that if there's something already
installed that does it, then problem solved.
> I managed to get it up and running here in a few minutes. Just note
> that regardless of any other instructions you kind of want to use sudo
> to install it (I know this is a bit of a pain for certain maintenance),
> because I don't think my default user account has the right privileges
> for creating services, etc.
Yes, for installing software you're going to always have to sudo things.
Rory
Rory McCann
> Hi Rory,
> Its been along time, well can you do me a favour please, Lothar is
> amongst the volunteers coming to Kenya again this year, can you please
> get him the apt for ubuntu 6.06, remember i have the 8.04 one if there
> is an update i dont mind. So i wll suggest that we put them in an
> external hardrive and i will pay for it, you can even install any other
> software you may think will be good for the hubs in Africa. We also have
> a lot of macs in the hubs any recommended linux power pc iso
> files?Thanks in advance.
> ALI
Hi Ali & Lothar,
Sure I'm willling to help with this. Last time I downloaded the Ubuntu
repositories it was about 30GB in total. There's programmes you can use
to install a local apt mirror (that'd be what we're doing here). It's
called apt-mirror.
There might be an update for 8.04, but most likely everything has been
updated, so it would be as quick to start from scratch and re-download.
It'll take a while to download everything. I have some space on my local
laptop here, however not enough to download the whole thing. I can start
downloading, just to get the ball rolling...
Rory