With the invent of Internet, the way of communication revolutionized, a long ago. E-mail replaced traditional postal mail. Email was fast still there were some bottlenecks. One would not knew if the person on the other end is online or not, hence email was fast way of communication than postal mail but its constraints gave way to Instant Messaging (IM).

Instant Messaging like America Online (AOL) and CompuServe get famous much before Internet gets famous. We all have used and still using IM in our day-to-day life. Specially, among Young generation IM is very famous. How about setting our own chat server? Lets do it with an open-source and cross platform application called Openfire.

Install Openfire in Linux
Install Openfire in Linux
What is Openfire?
Openfire is an Instant Messaging and Group chat server, written in Java that uses XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) server. Wikipedia reports, Openfire was previously called as ‘Wildfire‘ and ‘Jive Messenger‘. The Application Software is developed by Jive Software and a community called ‘IgniteRealtime.org‘, and is Licensed under Apache License.

Openfire Features
Web Based Admin control
SSL/TLS support
LDAP connectivity
User Friendly
Platform Independent
Testing Environment

OS – Ubuntu 13.04
OS – CentOS 6.5
Application – Openfire 3.8.2 [Server]
Application – Spark 2.6.3 [Client]
Installation of Openfire in Linux
Openfire, as said above is a cross platform Application, available for all known platforms – Windows, Mac and Linux. You can download, package relevant to your OS and architecture from the link provided below:

http://www.igniterealtime.org/downloads/index.jsp
You may also, use following wget command to download package and install it using dpkg or rpm command as shown below.

On Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint

# wget http://download.igniterealtime.org/openfire/openfire_3.8.2_all.deb
# dpkg -i openfire_3.8.2_all.deb
Sample Output

(Reading database ... 198537 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace openfire 3.8.2 (using openfire_3.8.2_all.deb) ...
Stopping openfire: openfire.
Unpacking replacement openfire ...
Setting up openfire (3.8.2) ...
Starting openfire: openfire.
On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora

# wget http://download.igniterealtime.org/openfire/openfire-3.8.2-1.i386.rpm
# rpm -ivh openfire-3.8.2-1.i386.rpm
Sample Output

Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
1:openfire ########################################### [100%]
After successful installation, Stop and Start the Openfire service.

# service openfire stop
# service openfire start
Now point the browser to “http://localhost:9090” or “http://your-ip-address:9090” and follow these simple steps to install Openfire on your machine.

1. Select Preferred Language (I chose English).

Openfire Setup Screen
Openfire Setup Screen
2. Select Domain name, Admin port and Secure Admin port. Generally you don’t need to change these data, until you need a custom port.

Openfire Server Settings
Server Settings
3. You have the option to set external database as well as or can use embedded database. Embedded database requires no external database configuration, hence is easy to configure and set, but it doesn’t give same level of performance as an external database.

Openfire Database Settings
Database Settings
4. Then, you need to setup profile setting.

Openfire Profile Settings
Profile Settings
5. The last step is to set up Admin password and email address. Note, that the current password is ‘admin‘, in new installation.

Openfire Administration Account
Setup Administration Account
6. On successful setup, confirmation message is shown.

Openfire Setup Completed
Openfire Setup Completed
7. Login to Openfire Admin using username “admin” and password, the one we set above.

Openfire Administration Console
Openfire Administration Login
8. Next, create new user.

Openfire Create New User
Add New User
9. Setup username, name, email and password for the new user.

Openfire User Details
New User Details
The server is setup successfully, you can add users, groups, contacts, plugins, etc. Since the application is X based, and is very handy, it is just a few clicks away. And now we need to download client application ‘Spark‘, for user communication.

Installation of Spark Client
Download and Install cross platform Spark client for your system using the below link.

http://www.igniterealtime.org/downloads/index.jsp
Once you’ve installed Spark client, open the application and enter username, password and IP addresss of openfire server.

Install Spark IM Client
Spark IM Client
Once you logged in you can chat with the users who are online.

Spark Client