How To Install eJabberd XMPP Server on Ubuntu

First, we would have to spin up a Ubuntu 12.10 x64 droplet:

Next, login to your droplet via SSH as root.

Step 1 – Install eJabberd #

apt-get -y install ejabberd

Step 2 – Setup Admin User #

Change “password” to your own value:

ejabberdctl register admin localhost password

Give Admin Privileges #

By default, hostname used by eJabberd is ‘localhost’, which can be modified from config file.
For our example we will call our admin user “admin@localhost” and modify the following lines in /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cfg:

%% Admin user
{acl, admin, {user, "admin", "localhost"}}.

%% Hostname
{hosts, ["localhost"]}.

Restart eJabberd #

service ejabberd restart

Now you can navigate to your eJabberd Web Admin interface on droplet’s IP address port 5280

http://198.199.90.115:5280/admin

The login username is user@domain (“admin@localhost” in our case):

From the web admin interface you can modify all the settings:

Adding New Users #

From web admin interface, click Virtual Hosts -> localhost -> Users

You can also add a user from command line via SSH:

Now you can install a client like Pidgin to connect to XMPP:

Remember to use port 5222 to connect to your XMPP server using encryption:

Adding Users to your Buddy List #

From Pidgin you can either press CTRL+B or from menu “Buddies” -> “Add Buddy” to buddies:

Your buddy would receive a friend request that they would have to authorize:

Now you will be able to communicate securely using XMPP and OTR encryption module in Pidgin:

And you are all done!