How to install Ejabberd on CentOS 8 | RHEL 8?. Ejabberd is a free and open source XMPP server written in Erlang. Ejabberd has been designed for scalability and fault-tolerance. It has a small resource footprint and can run on any Unix like Operating system – Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, macOS, OpenBSD, and others.
The default data store used by Ejabberd is Mnesia (the distributed internal Erlang database) but you can use SQL or NoSQL database server.
Features of Ejabberd XMPP Server
Ejabberd has a modular architecture which allows for high customisability and easy access to the required features, which includes:
- Store-and-forward (offline messages)
- Contact list (roster) and presence
- One-to-one messaging
- User presence extension: Personal Event Protocol (PEP) and typing indicator
- User profile with vCards
- Group chat: MUC (Multi-User Chat)
- Messaging archiving with Message Archive Management (MAM)
- Message Delivery Receipts (aka XEP-184)
- Privacy settings, through privacy list and simple blocking extensions
- Last activity
- Metrics and full command-line administration
- Full feature web support, with BOSH and web sockets
- Stream management for message reliability on mobile (aka XEP-0198)
and many many more.
Install Ejabberd XMPP Server on CentOS 8 | RHEL 8
Ejabberd is packaged as RPM file which can be easily downloaded and installed with rpm package manager. If you have an ardor of compiling from source, do it.
Step 1: Update system
As usual, you need to work on updated system:
sudo yum -y updateStep 2: Download and Install Ejabberd RPM package
After the update, download the Ejabberd RPM package. You’ll need to check for the latest release before doing the actual download.
Install wget:
sudo yum -y install wgetDownload ejabberd:
EJ_VERSION=21.12
wget https://static.process-one.net/ejabberd/downloads/${EJ_VERSION}/ejabberd-${EJ_VERSION}-0.x86_64.rpmInstall Downloaded RPM package by running the command:
sudo yum localinstall ejabberd-${EJ_VERSION}-0.x86_64.rpmAgree to installation prompt.
Dependencies resolved.
=====================================================================================================================================================================================================
Package Architecture Version Repository Size
=====================================================================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
ejabberd x86_64 21.12-0 @commandline 18 M
Transaction Summary
=====================================================================================================================================================================================================
Install 1 Package
Total size: 18 M
Installed size: 29 M
Is this ok [y/N]: yThis will place ejabberd init script under /etc/init.d/ejabberd
- A system user called ‘ejabberd‘ is created
- ejabberd application directory is
/opt/ejabberd. This is a home for the ejabberd user. - When ejabberd is started, the processes that are started in the system are
beamorbeam.smp, and alsoepmd.
Step 3: Start Ejabberd service on CentOS 8 | RHEL 8
Now that we have done the installation, we need to start the service and enable it to start automatically when the server is rebooted.
Locate ejabberd.service and copy it to /etc/systemd/system
sudo yum -y install mlocate
sudo updatedb
sudo cp $(locate ejabberd.service) /etc/systemd/systemThen reload systemd:
sudo systemctl daemon-reloadOnce the new ejabberd service is detected, start it:
sudo systemctl enable --now ejabberdYou can confirm that the service is in running state.
$ systemctl status ejabberd
● ejabberd.service - XMPP Server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/ejabberd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2022-01-20 00:54:48 EAT; 4s ago
Process: 28813 ExecStart=/bin/sh -c /opt/ejabberd-21.12/bin/ejabberdctl start && /opt/ejabberd-21.12/bin/ejabberdctl started (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Tasks: 23 (limit: 4991)
Memory: 67.6M
CGroup: /system.slice/ejabberd.service
├─28842 /opt/ejabberd-21.12/bin/epmd -daemon
├─28843 /opt/ejabberd-21.12/bin/beam.smp -K true -P 250000 -- -root /opt/ejabberd-21.12 -progname /opt/ejabberd-21.12/bin/erl -- -home /opt/ejabberd -- -sname [email protected] -smp en>
├─28853 erl_child_setup 65536
└─28882 /opt/ejabberd-21.12/lib/os_mon-2.4.7/priv/bin/memsup
Jul 20 00:54:46 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Starting XMPP Server...
Jul 20 00:54:48 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Started XMPP Server.Step 4: Create ejabberd XMPP admin account.
You need an admin XMPP account for accessing the Web Admin dashboard.
Change your working directory to cd /opt/ejabberd-${VER}/bin
cd /opt/ejabberd-21.12/binAdd admin account:
Save username and password in variables.
username="myadmin"
password="mystrongPassword"Create admin user.
$ sudo ./ejabberdctl register ${username} localhost ${password}
User [email protected] successfully registeredYou may need to replace localhost with your actual server hostname. Other user accounts should be added in a similar manner.
# ./ejabberdctl register testuser localhost testuserpasswordEdit the ejabberd configuration file to give administration rights to the XMPP account you created /opt/ejabberd/conf/ejabberd.yml
$ sudo vi /opt/ejabberd/conf/ejabberd.yml
acl:
local:
user_regexp: ""
loopback:
ip:
- "127.0.0.0/8"
- "::1/128"
- "::FFFF:127.0.0.1/128"
admin:
user:
- "[email protected]"
- "[email protected]"Restart ejabberd service.
sudo systemctl restart ejabberdStep 5: Configure firewall and Access UI
Allow Ejabberd UI port on the firewall.
sudo firewall-cmd --add-port=5280/tcp --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reloadThe Web Admin should be accessible on http://ip-address:5280/admin/. Open the URL using your favorite browser. Login with [email protected].
For further reading on Ejabberd administration, refer to the official documentation.
For Ubuntu/Debian users, you can install Ejabberd XMPP server using the guide:
