Configuring a Client for CollabChat

Our collaborative chat uses XMPP (Jabber) protocol.

For most chat clients, the basic settings needed are:

Protocol: XMPP
Username: username@abusesa.com

Replace @ in collab username with % (e.g. collabuser%example.com)

Some per client settings below.

Pidgin

Settings for pidgin:

Protocol: XMPP
Username: username
Domain: abusesa.com

Replace @ in collab username with % (e.g. collabuser%example.com)

OS X Messages

Go to Preferences -> Accounts -> +
- Account Type (if prompted): Jabber Account
- Account Name: username@abusesa.com
Go to Preferences -> Accounts -> Abusesa -> Server Settings
- Server: -> im.abusesa.com

Replace @ in collab username with % (e.g. collabuser%example.com@abusesa.com)

Adium

Preferences -> Accounts -> +
Account Type: Jabber Account
Account Name: username@abusesa.com

Replace @ in collab username with % (e.g. collabuser%example.com@abusesa.com)

MCabber

mcabber is a small Jabber console client. -- http://mcabber.com/

For recent versions of macabber following ~/.mcabber file appears to work:

set jid = collabuser%example.com@abusesa.com

For older versions following ~/.mcabber file has worked in the past:

set username=collabuser%example.com@abusesa.com
set server=im.abusesa.com
set ssl=1
set ssl_verify=-1
set ssl_cafile=~/.ca.abusesa.com.crt

Irssi XMPP plugin

irssi-xmpp is an irssi plugin to connect to the Jabber network. http://cybione.org/~irssi-xmpp/

This configuration has been seen to work with fairly recent versions of Irssi and irssi-xmpp. For example, the versions distributed with Ubuntu Karmic (Irssi 0.8.14-1ubuntu1, irssi-xmpp 0.13+cvs20090617-1) work.

According to documentation and our experimentation, the following combination should work:

Irssi >= 0.8.13
irssi-xmpp 0.50

irssi-xmpp apparently doesn't support STARTTLS so instructions below are for old style SSL which we don't officially support.

The certificate validation requires the CA certificate to be installed correctly (eg. /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt in Ubuntu Hardy).

Sample ~/.irssi/config snippet:

servers = (
  {
    address = "im.abusesa.com";
    chatnet = "abusesa";
    port = "5223";
    use_ssl = "yes";
    password = "x";
  }
);

chatnets = {
  abusesa = {
    type = "XMPP";
    nick = "collabuser%example.com@abusesa.com";
  };
};

You will also need to put the following line in your ~/.irssi/startup:

LOAD xmpp

or to say /LOAD xmpp at irssi startup.

Joining a CollabChat conference room

To join to a Chat Room choose <collab>@conference.abusesa.com, where <collab> is the instance you want to join.
For example in OS X Messages:
- File -> Go to Chat Room -> Room Name.