Failed to load accounts storage in XP

[ucl.m...@gmail.com]

I installed Prosody in my XP machine.
I started the sever, and use Exodus to connect it. The connection is
working fine. However, Exodus popup an error message "There was an
error trying to authenticate you. Either you used the wrong password,
or this account is already in use by someone else."

The Prosody server window also shown the following error:
datamanager debug Failed to load accounts storage
('cannot open C:\Documents and Settings\matthew\Application Data
\Prosody\data/localhost/accounts/me.dat: No such file or directory')
for user: me@localhost

Seem that the path notation is wrong for a Windows system.
/localhost/accounts/me.dat
It should be "\" instead of "/".

[Waqas Hussain]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 1:05 AM, <ucl.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I installed Prosody in my XP machine.
> I started the sever, and use Exodus to connect it.  The connection is
> working fine.  However, Exodus popup an error message "There was an
> error trying to authenticate you.  Either you used the wrong password,
> or this account is already in use by someone else."
>
> The Prosody server window also shown the following error:
> datamanager         debug       Failed to load accounts storage
> ('cannot open C:\Documents and Settings\matthew\Application Data
> \Prosody\data/localhost/accounts/me.dat: No such file or directory')
> for user: me@localhost
>

This is not an error. It's a debug-level message saying that no data
exists for the account me@localhost. This means the account does not
exist. The message is only meant for debugging.

> Seem that the path notation is wrong for a Windows system.
> /localhost/accounts/me.dat
> It should be "\" instead of "/".
>

Windows (officially) supports both forward and backward slashes as
directory separators.

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247.aspx

--
Waqas

[Matthew Wild]

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:05 PM, <ucl.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I installed Prosody in my XP machine.
> I started the sever, and use Exodus to connect it.  The connection is
> working fine.  However, Exodus popup an error message "There was an
> error trying to authenticate you.  Either you used the wrong password,
> or this account is already in use by someone else."
>
> The Prosody server window also shown the following error:
> datamanager         debug       Failed to load accounts storage
> ('cannot open C:\Documents and Settings\matthew\Application Data
> \Prosody\data/localhost/accounts/me.dat: No such file or directory')
> for user: me@localhost
>

It seems the account does not exist. How did you create it?

Matthew

[ucl.m...@gmail.com]

Hi Matthew,

Yes, the account does not exist. I simply couldn't find the path data/
localhost/accounts/me.dat after I use the Exodus to create a new user
account.
I then check the configuration file - "prosody.cfg.lua":
modules_enabled = {
-- Generally required
"roster"; -- Allow users to have a roster. Recommended ;)
"saslauth"; -- Authentication for clients and servers. Recommended
if you want to log in.
"tls"; -- Add support for secure TLS on c2s/s2s connections
"dialback"; -- s2s dialback support
"disco"; -- Service discovery

-- Not essential, but recommended
"private"; -- Private XML storage (for room bookmarks, etc.)
"vcard"; -- Allow users to set vCards

-- Nice to have
"legacyauth"; -- Legacy authentication. Only used by some old
clients and bots.
"version"; -- Replies to server version requests
"uptime"; -- Report how long server has been running
"time"; -- Let others know the time here on this server
"ping"; -- Replies to XMPP pings with pongs

-- Other specific functionality
--"register"; -- Allow users to register on this server using a
client
--"posix"; -- POSIX functionality, sends server to background,
enables syslog, etc.
--"console"; -- telnet to port 5582 (needs console_enabled =
true)
--"bosh"; -- Enable BOSH clients, aka "Jabber over HTTP"
--"httpserver"; -- Serve static files from a directory over HTTP
};

I realized that the "register" module is remarked. After removed the
remark, I use Exodus to once again doing new account registration. I
can see the data path and the me.dat is being created successfully.
However, I still can not log in Prosody. The error message from
Exodus said that authentication error is occurred.
The SSL certificate received from the server has errors.
Certificate does not match host: /C=GB/ST=Some-State/L=Jabberland/
O=Prosody IM/CN=Example certificate/Email=pro...@prosody.im
I finally remark out the "saslauth" module to make it work. Any
idea?

Seems that Prosody is light weight and easy to use. The roster and
chat functions work fine.
May be the "prosody.cfg.lua.dist" should enable the "register" and
disable the "saslauth" as default, so that it will work right after
the first installation?

Thank you for the good job.

UCL

[Matthew Wild]

Hi,

Great. Really Exodus should have displayed an error to you when you
attempted to create the account the first time.

> However, I still can not log in Prosody.  The error message from
> Exodus said that authentication error is occurred.
> The SSL certificate received from the server has errors.
> Certificate does not match host: /C=GB/ST=Some-State/L=Jabberland/
> O=Prosody IM/CN=Example certificate/Email=pro...@prosody.im

This is normal. To allow encrypted connections you need an SSL
certificate, Prosody comes with one by default but it won't be correct
for your server and you should generate your own or get one from eg.
http://xmpp.org/ca/

> I finally remark out the "saslauth" module to make it work.  Any
> idea?
>

mod_saslauth is required by the XMPP specifications. By commenting it
out Exodus would have used the "legacyauth" module instead, which
works but isn't recommended (especially over unencrypted connections).

> Seems that Prosody is light weight and easy to use.  The roster and
> chat functions work fine.

Glad to hear :)

> May be the "prosody.cfg.lua.dist" should enable the "register" and
> disable the "saslauth" as default, so that it will work right after
> the first installation?
>

I have reservations about enabling mod_register by default... if
someone didn't realise it was enabled then it would allow anyone to
register for accounts on their server without the owner even knowing.
Because of this I think it really ought to be explicitly enabled by
the server admin.

Also as I said above we can't really disable mod_saslauth by default.
Clients may soon stop supporting legacyauth, and eventually when this
happens we may even disable that plugin by default.

> Thank you for the good job.
>

You're welcome! I'll keep your feedback in mind, for example it might
be possible for us to ask during installation whether to enable
mod_register. This way the admin won't be caught out like you have
been.

As for SSL certificates - we really need to generate those at
installation too, with input from the admin on what domain name to
use, etc. I'll add an issue to our tracker.

Regards,
Matthew

[ucl.m...@gmail.com]

Hi,
You are right. I will disable registration via Jabber client later
on. Anyway, if not allow registration of new accounts via Jabber
client I should have no other way to learn the dat file format, not to
mention how to prepare the user account and their roster manually.
How about an utility to manage the user account?

Also, according to http://prosody.im/doc/configure :
allow_registration - Whether to allow registration of new accounts via
Jabber clients. Default is true.

[Dwayne Bent]

> Hi,
> You are right. I will disable registration via Jabber client later
> on. Anyway, if not allow registration of new accounts via Jabber
> client I should have no other way to learn the dat file format, not to
> mention how to prepare the user account and their roster manually.
> How about an utility to manage the user account?

You should be able to use the prosodyctl
[http://prosody.im/doc/prosodyctl] utility for that.

> Also, according to http://prosody.im/doc/configure :
> allow_registration - Whether to allow registration of new accounts via
> Jabber clients. Default is true.

I believe that only has an effect if mod_register is loaded. So you can
load mod_register and set allow_registration to false which would allow
clients to change passwords for existing users but not allow new
registrations to occur. At least I believe that's how it works.

--
Dwayne Bent

[Matthew Wild]

Hi,

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 6:30 PM, <ucl.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> You are right.  I will disable registration via Jabber client later
> on.  Anyway, if not allow registration of new accounts via Jabber
> client I should have no other way to learn the dat file format, not to
> mention how to prepare the user account and their roster manually.
> How about an utility to manage the user account?
>

Yes, there does need to be such a utility. We don't currently have one
on Windows. After discussion with Waqas, our Windows developer, this
morning it seems likely until we have such a feature for Windows that
mod_register will be enabled by default.

> Also, according to http://prosody.im/doc/configure :
> allow_registration - Whether to allow registration of new accounts via
> Jabber clients. Default is true.

You're right, thanks - I need to make this more clear. All the options
in that section only apply when mod_register is loaded.

Regards,
Matthew

[Matthew Wild]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 6:37 PM, Dwayne Bent <dbb.g...@liqd.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> You are right.  I will disable registration via Jabber client later
>> on.  Anyway, if not allow registration of new accounts via Jabber
>> client I should have no other way to learn the dat file format, not to
>> mention how to prepare the user account and their roster manually.
>> How about an utility to manage the user account?
>
> You should be able to use the prosodyctl
> [http://prosody.im/doc/prosodyctl] utility for that.
>

Only on systems other than Windows, currently. For future versions we
will either modify prosodyctl to work on Windows (probably not an
ideal solution, Windows isn't exactly geared for command-line usage)
or to create a graphical utility which would be easily accessible and
also run on startup.

A web interface shouldn't be too far away, either.

>> Also, according to http://prosody.im/doc/configure :
>> allow_registration - Whether to allow registration of new accounts via
>> Jabber clients. Default is true.
>
> I believe that only has an effect if mod_register is loaded. So you can
> load mod_register and set allow_registration to false which would allow
> clients to change passwords for existing users but not allow new
> registrations to occur. At least I believe that's how it works.
>

Correct.

Regards,
Matthew

[ucl.m...@gmail.com]

Thank you Dwayne.
I just added
allow_registration = false;
into the prosody.cfg.lua file and tested with Exodus. And that is
exactly what I want. :)

On 2 June, 13:37, Dwayne Bent <dbb.goo...@liqd.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > You are right.  I will disable registration via Jabber client later
> > on.  Anyway, if not allow registration of new accounts via Jabber
> > client I should have no other way to learn the dat file format, not to
> > mention how to prepare the user account and their roster manually.
> > How about an utility to manage the user account?
>
> You should be able to use the prosodyctl
> [http://prosody.im/doc/prosodyctl] utility for that.
>

> > Also, according tohttp://prosody.im/doc/configure:

[Matthew Wild]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 7:11 PM, <ucl.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you Dwayne.
> I just added
> allow_registration = false;
> into the prosody.cfg.lua file and tested with Exodus.  And that is
> exactly what I want.  :)
>

I've just made a few changes to the site/documentation and the default
configuration file.

- I have made http://prosody.im/doc/configure#registration more clear
about require mod_register
- Made a new page at http://prosody.im/doc/creating_accounts
- Added a title "Creating accounts" on
http://prosody.im/doc/configure and linked to
http://prosody.im/doc/creating_accounts
- Updated the default config to load mod_register by default
- Added to the config the line: allow_registration = false

The new line in the configuration file has the following comment above it:

-- Disable account creation by default, for security
-- For more information see http://prosody.im/doc/creating_accounts

I hope this should make everything more clear for others in the future.

Thanks,
Matthew

[ucl.m...@gmail.com]

Perfect! Thank you for the good job.

On 2 June, 15:07, Matthew Wild <mwi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 7:11 PM,  <ucl.matt...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Thank you Dwayne.
> > I just added
> > allow_registration = false;
> > into the prosody.cfg.lua file and tested with Exodus.  And that is
> > exactly what I want.  :)
>
> I've just made a few changes to the site/documentation and the default
> configuration file.
>

>  - I have madehttp://prosody.im/doc/configure#registrationmore clear
> about require mod_register
>  - Made a new page athttp://prosody.im/doc/creating_accounts
>  - Added a title "Creating accounts" onhttp://prosody.im/doc/configureand linked tohttp://prosody.im/doc/creating_accounts

>  - Updated the default config to load mod_register by default
>  - Added to the config the line: allow_registration = false
>
> The new line in the configuration file has the following comment above it:
>
>    -- Disable account creation by default, for security

>    -- For more information seehttp://prosody.im/doc/creating_accounts