Modern messaging: Running your own XMPP server (codedge.de)

Good stuff. I run my own ejabberd server and it's been great. Installation is relatively straightforward, configuration isn't terribly convoluted, and it "just works" once up and running. Now my server doesn't have a ton of load on it, as it's used mainly for development / experimental purposes at the moment, so I can't say much about it's scalability or anything. But generally speaking, I installed it, did the initial setup, and other than adding/modifying users, I've rarely had to think about it since.

Thanks! Same for me, it just works. Even regular updates run smoothly with ejabberd. I also do audio calls with it, and it is just a pleasant experience.

the only problem, as usual, is the network effect

I couldn't get iOS notifications to work properly when I tried to set up ejabberd.

Ended up using Hey, and it works pretty well, I guess, but a rails PWA is a little heavy duty for my taste, I would prefer XMPP

I’ve been running Prosody [0] for many years now. Don’t ask me why I chose it over another server. I used to have a jabber.org account that I used before that, already back when I could use jabber to communicate with gchat and facebook messenger users. Alas, nowadays, it’s just my wife I use it to communicate with :(

[0]: https://prosody.im/

Any idea what kind of server we’d need to handle 40M users if it’s just text chat (no files or audio)?

Last time I tried this I couldn’t even find an iOS client that supported reactions. Hate on the complexity of Matrix all you like, but at least when you ask your family to use it, they get a modern experience and don’t feel like they’re giving up everything vs every other messenger they are used to.

One potential issue with XMPP is the default port is commonly blocked on public wifi.

There is an nginx-xmpp to proxy it, but it is archived. https://github.com/robn/nginx-xmpp

For that reason http based protocol just seems much easier on the network or something that can be easily reverse proxied without extensions will be easier to self-host and have wilder internet connection accessibility.

Does anyone use ejabberd inside a wireguard network? I'm hoping to set it up on the main server, and connect to it with aTalk on Android - but I'm worried ssl is going to be a pain if it's not exposed with a proper domain name. I don't know if aTalk will accept a self-signed certificate (or even better, just use non-ssl with an address and port without a domain name)?

If you plan to communicate with people not in the techsphere, Signal is probably the best bet to convince people to switch to.

For TLS I would recommend https://github.com/pingooio/pingoo instead which has automatic certificate management and is really easy to setup.

Although material like this is extremely important, instructions like 'Fill in the IPv6 addresses accordingly.' are a roadblock to anyone who isn't particularly knowledgeable about networking. You could argue that those people should go away and learn, but not everyone has the time or frankly the ability to do so.

I'm running ejabberd in my home network and together with Conversations (Android app) it is my solution to have all devices report their status to my phones, tablets and pc. Easy to upgrade (when used with Docker), never complains.

It's a bit the same feeling like RabbitMQ, which I'm no longer using that much, but I also always thought that it is a reliable software. I've wondered if it is related to them being written in Erlang.

I've forgotten how much hassle installing applications can be since docker.

If you're looking for something that's a little less hassle and has some very sane defaults, try https://snikket.org/

For people who want an easier approach, both NethServer and Cloudron have this packaged as an app for people who self host. The Cloudron one is not official yet and is a community developed one.

I love XMPP. I've never missed a notification with it and I wished I switched back to it sooner rather than sticking with Matrix, I do wish it gets more love these days. I've been tempted to make my own desktop client and integrate VoIP with something like Mumble to achieve a Discord like experience with voice channels, but that's way beyond my pay grade.

yunohost installations include the metronome XMPP service enabled out of the box. it's similar to prosody

"Since 3 years the European Commission works on a plan to automatically monitor all chat, email and messenger conversations.12 If this is going to pass, and I strongly hope it will not, the European Union is moving into a direction we know from states suppressing freedom of speech."

If this come to pass, there will be two approaches:

1. People will not share anything important online, only in person

2. Every friends group will have a more technical guy/girl who will ran chat infrastructure for them

Interesting article though :)

I'm sorry but there's no way you can call xmpp modern messaging. Matrix with all of its shortcomings looks like 2050 compared to xmpp. Xmpp doesn't even have any half-decent mobile client!

As much as I like the idea of XMPP, I don't have good experiences from interacting with it. Neither clients nor protocol/server level.

I've written multiple parsers along the way, back in the days when there was nothing else and more recently for use in very constrained embedded contexts.

I don't know how much has changed, but it was more complicated than I would have wished, seemingly designed more to check theoretical boxes than for ease of use.

I was also part of a project where the backend was implemented as a bunch of services communicating via XMPP, custom server etc. And it was a total mess, we spent a lot of time on manual intervention just making sure messages weren't dropped.

Is this a common experience with XMPP or did I just hit all lemons?

The problem is not the server. The clients all suck.

I still remember when Google (and Facebook?) used XMPP for their chat functions. You could log into any XMPP client and chat with people using Google infrastructure.

Good times, I feel old now.

XMPP has very nice server implementations, and the protocol is OK regarding complexity.

But the clients are lacking. On linux there is gajim that is "okish" but it lacks calling capacity with mobile clients. On mobile there is conversation and derivatives on android which are "nearly there" and monad on iOS.

Globally, the main lacking features are:

- voice and video calls cross platform

- gif integration, tenor/giphy/imgur...

- fast sync (if you open gajim after being offline for a week, it takes ages to catch up)

Hellz yeah. I'm at ~10 active users on my XMPP server and going strong. Finally something that won't unilaterally lock us out if we don't update every week, and we can chat from using any OS. We really do not care about "reactions" or stickers or all that other shit people complain about being lacking. "It doesn't look nice enough".. We just want to talk in private with a secure protocol that lets us actually use whatever we have, up to and including no mobile device at all.