Blog Posts From Ignite Realtime Blog Tagged With openfire

Seasonal Greetings

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 07:04:05 GMT

Dear Community!

Another year has passed for this open source project and various developers have contributed significantly to nearly all of our projects. We were able to finally release Openfire 3.7 and Spark 2.6.3 under Apache 2.0 license. The most important Smack library has also seen several releases and last but not least the good old instant messaging gateway Kraken returned to us. Some great innovations were presented like SparkWeb/Redfire, Websocks and Candy. I really would like to thank all developers involved by contributing code and all users and system admins that went through this year. A very special thank you goes to Daryl Herzmann who keeps the servers healthy and Wroot for outstanding work in the forum. I would also like to single out Guus der Kinderen for his insights in Openfire architecture and the release of Openfire 3.7.

Merry Christmas to all of you and a happy, healthy and sucessful 2012

Openfire 3.7.1 has been released!

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:35:24 GMT

The Ignite Realtime community is happy to announce the release of version 3.7.1 of Openfire! Downloads for various platforms are available here.

Openfire is a real time collaboration (RTC) server licensed under the Open Source Apache license. It uses the only widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging, XMPP (also called Jabber). Openfire is incredibly easy to setup and administer, but offers rock-solid security and performance.

The 3.7.1 release is primarily a bugfix release. Amongst others, these issues have been addressed:

A number of enhancements were made to the server-to-server connectivity. Server-to-Server connectivity was enhanced and a bug preventing a successful dialback was fixed.
Various improvements have been made to platform specific installers and scripts.
The Multi-User Chat implementation has received various tweaks and updates.

The full changelog is available on the Openfire project page.

We welcome your feedback, suggestions, tips, hints, questions and other contributions in the Ignite Realtime Community pages.

WebSockets Connection Manager for Openfire

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:38:29 GMT

This is an implementation of WebSockets for the Openfire XMPP server. It consists a plugin for Openfire and a low-level JavaScript library suitable to be used with jQuery.

Why?

Recently, I have been involved in shaping an XMPP protocol extension (XEP) for simple application remote control of telephony devices for financial trading systems. This XEP is called Openlink and is still evolving.

I use XMPP Bosh to provide an Openlink Javascript library for web based applications and I am seeking to improve performance and scalability beyond the limitations of long-polling BOSH connections, so I decided to investigate replacing BOSH with Websockets in my Openlink Javascript library.

What did you do?

The Websocket protocol is close to finalising and Jetty (the embedded web server for Openfire) has been supporting WebSocket since Nov 2009 in version 7.0.1 which is the Jetty version in current Openfire 3.7.0. My first attempt of using the Jetty WebSocketServelet? class from Openfire 3.7.0 with Google Chrome web browser failed and I am not sure why. The WebSockets specification has changed a lot over the last two years and both Chrome and Jetty have kept up with it, so I was not surprised.

I therefore decided to recompile Openfire from SVN (version 3.7.1 Alpha) with latest Jetty 7.5.1 and finally got it working.

I then implemented a very thin XMPP stanza based Javascript class called openfire-websockets which exposes a minimium "Stophe" like connection object which I tested with the XMPP console application in chapter 4 of the book "Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript and jQuery" by Jack Moffitt.

How?

You can use this plugin from Openfire 3.7.0. Just replace openfire.jar and slf4j-log4j12.jar in OPENFIRE_HOME\lib.

Should I?

If you do most of your application development with XMPP like I do, using Openfire and need fast and simple access to the low level XMPP messages as DOM elements in Javascript from JQuery right now, then take a look at openfire-websockets.js

Where?

http://code.google.com/p/openfire-websockets/

Jappix MiniChat with Openfire

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:54:35 GMT

I have received a couple of emails about Jappix MiniChat not working properly with Openfire BOSH. The main issue seems to be that the Openfire BOSH is not handling the reconnection properly as the user browses from page to page.

I'll be surprised if it did as the implementation was a few years ago and the BOSH specification has moved on since. More importantly was that it was designed to work with SparkWeb which was always resident on the web page until the user logged off. In this mode, Openfire BOSH works very well.

A possible solution for using Jappix MiniChat with Openfire is to use this same approach and keep Jappix resident on the web page as the user browses from page to page. My way of doing this is to use a main top page container with the Jappix MiniChat which puts the content web page in an <iframe> tag. I then call JavaScript on the main top page from within the iframe to control Jappix.

Of course, this does not always work especially if the content page promotes itself to be the top main page for security purposes like Goole Mail for example. In practice, I use Jappix MiniChat with my own web applications and even if my web page is hijacked, cross domain security will stop malicious JavaScript controlling my application.

If this solution will work for you, then use the attached HTML file and adapt it to your needs.

Moving SparkWeb Forward

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 23:35:10 GMT

This is an update from ignite realtime community about where we are with SparkWeb

There is an Open Source HTML version of SparkWeb based on the original commercial Jive Software version and now released under the Apache 2.0 license just like Spark and Openfire. It can be found on the ignite realtime community here.

Knight Raider has worked on the Flash version of SparkWeb and has made it compatible with the ignite realtime latest version of XIFF. His version compiles with Flex Builder using Flex SDK 3.0 for Flash Player 9 and above. It can be found on the ignite realtime community here.

I have made a few more changes to make it compile with the latest Flex SDK 4.5 for current Flash Player 10.3 and above and uploaded it to the SparkWeb SVN. The code can be checked out using

https://svn.igniterealtime.org/svn/repos/sparkweb/trunk/SparkWeb2

Knight Raider has volunteered to work on this. We plan to to add Jingle-based audio, video, file transfer, screen sharing, etc and make it look better than this

Finally, work has started on RedSpark which is yet another web client for Spark, but is tightly integrated into Redfire and will be compatible with the Redfire plugin for Spark. It is extending XIFF with the new RTMP/RTMFP connection classes and has a Facebook/Google type chat user interface that combines both HTML5 and Flash to support a softphone (red5phone), audio/video in both 2-way and multi-user chat with screen sharing (red5-screenshare) and p2p file transfer using RTMFP.

Openfire 3.7.0 has been released!

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:06:32 GMT

The Ignite Realtime Community is very happy to announce the release of Openfire 3.7.0!

You can get your copy of the new release from the Openfire project page on the Ignite Realtime Community website. A fresh batch of plugins, compiled against the latest code is available there too.

As it is the accumulation of nearly two years of work, this new release bring a lot of new features, bugfixes and improvements. Amongst the more notable changes:

Openfire is now released under the Apache v2.0 licence.
Improves how Openfire handles "idle" connections. Some of you may have the system property xmpp.client.idle set to -1 to work around previously broken behaviour. You may now let it default to 6 minutes or set it to your preference.
Improved Openfire's caching to be less prone to memory exhaustion by correctly calculating cache size usage.
Fixed a bug where admin console login into a newly installed Openfire server would fail until restarted.
Fixed a bug with shared rosters within a LDAP environment.
A memory leak with the Personal Eventing Protocol (PEP) was fixed.
Openfire's custom log interface has been replaced with SLF4J and a Log4J backend.
Fix issues with self signed SSL certificates.
A number of improvements and fixes were made to the Multi-User Chat (MUC) configuration pages on the admin console
There were also some improvements made to the plugins, including the addition of brand new Jingle Nodes plugin.
There are also French, Russian, and Lithuanian langauge translation fixes for Openfire and some of the plugins.

A complete set of changes since the 3.6.4 release can be found in the release notes. The changes there include the changes that were part of the beta release. Since the beta, 11 issues were fixed.

Openfire 3.7.0 beta has been released!

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:05:39 GMT

Good things come to those who wait!

The Ignite Realtime Community is pleased to announce the beta for the next release of Openfire. This release contains a number of important fixes and improvements to stability and XMPP protocol compliance. You can find a full list of fixed issues here. This beta is also the first version of Openfire to be released by the Ignite Realtime community under the Apache License v2.0.

You can download the 3.7.0 beta release here. Please provide us your feedback on the Ignite Realtime support forums. It would be helpful if you would tag your comments, discussions and questions with a tag that reads "openfire370beta"

As always, but particularly since this is a beta release, make sure to backup any existing version of Openfire and the persistent storage that it uses, before upgrading!

Some important security related notes to this release:

Openfire no longer ignores the system property to disallow password changes via XMPP. With previous releases, it was not possible to prevent users from changing their password via their XMPP connection. (CVE-2009-1596)
Fixed a XSS attack on the admin console login form.

Protocol compliance improvements:

Publish Subscribe (PubSub)
BOSH (http-bind) xml namespace compliance fix.

Some highlights of this beta release:

Improves how Openfire handles "idle" connections. Some of you may have the system property xmpp.client.idle set to -1 to work around previously broken behaviour. You may now let it default to 6 minutes or set it to your preference.
Improved Openfire's caching to be less prone to memory exhaustion by correctly calculating cache size usage.
Fixed a bug where admin console login into a newly installed Openfire server would fail until restarted.
Fixed a bug with shared rosters within a LDAP environment.
Openfire now ships with the latest JRE (1.6.0u21).
A memory leak with the Personal Eventing Protocol (PEP) was fixed.
Openfire's custom log interface has been replaced with SLF4J and a Log4J backend.
Fix issues with self signed SSL certificates.
A number of improvements and fixes were made to the Multi-User Chat (MUC) configuration pages on the admin console
There were also some improvements made to the plugins.
There are also French, Russian, and Lithuanian langauge translation fixes for Openfire and some of the plugins.

Red5 + Openfire = redfire

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:11:39 GMT

redfire is the future of the Red5 plugin for Openfire.

In an attempt to maintain a single version of Red5phone and keep Openfire (ver 3.7.0) in step with Red5 (ver 0.9.1), I have chosen to embed Openfire inside Red5 instead of the other way round.

I have posted the first version at http://code.google.com/p/redfire/

This first version is just only Openfire 3.7.0 beta running as a web application in Red5. You acess Openfire web console the same way. http://your_server:9090

I will be adding the improved redfire sparkweb client with latest versions of red5phone, red5screen-share and support for onesocialweb later on.

Openfire at FISL11!

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:52:45 GMT

This year, Openfire will be the subject of two lectures given at the eleventh edition of the annual FISL conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Both presentations are scheduled for the last day of the event, Saturday. The lectures will provide a basic introduction to Openfire and Openfire development. They will be presented by yours truly.

If you're interested, I invite you to drop by! I'm pretty sure that Openfire (or even more generic XMPP related) discussions won't stop when the lectures are over. For one, Thiago Camargo, former Openfire developer and author of the new Jingle Relay Nodes enhancement proposal, will be attending as well. I've heard rumors of Openfire-ready implementations, which should be very, very interesting!

I'd love to see you there!

Openfire available in FindBugs Community Review

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:30:30 GMT

Static analysis is the analysis of software without executing that code. For Java, one of the better known static analysis tools is FindBugs.

The FindBugs team is planning a community review of warnings in several open source projects of varying sizes. The goals of the review are to bring problems to the attention of developers and compare the perspectives of independent reviewers on the severity of the warnings. Openfire has been included in this endeavor.

We invite you to take part. Using a Java Webstart instance of FindBugs, you will be able to review warnings and add comments where appropriate. If you're interested, please navigate to the FindBugs Community Review page and start reviewing!

Clustering plugin for Openfire is now open source

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:48:38 GMT

We are happy to announce that the clustering plugin is now available as an open source plugin. The clustering plugin adds support for running multiple redundant Openfire servers together in a cluster. By running Openfire in a cluster, you can distribute the load amongst a number of servers, as well as having some form of redundancy in the event that one of your servers dies.

By making this functionality open source we now made 100% of the old Enterprise plugin open source. The reason why the clustering plugin came last is that it relies on Oracle Coherence, that is a commercial product, so to make it open source was a little tricky. At the end what we did was to open source our implemented functionality but to use this plugin you will need to get a valid Oracle Coherence license. The readme file explains the steps to follow to install this plugin. Moreover, it also explains how to setup your environment if you plan to develop new versions of the plugin.

Have fun,

-- Gato

A highly requested feature is about to come true

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:45:16 GMT

Should I say more? I will create another blog post with detailed information when we push out the final release. Stay tuned.

-- Gato

New Openfire monitoring plugin

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:09:42 GMT

Java-monitor.com has released a new, free Openfire plugin that allows you to monitor your Openfire instance remotely. The plugin will notify you if your server goes off-line. It also allows you to keep a close eye on a number of important health indicators, such as the usage pattern of the Openfire worker threads, JVM memory usage and garbage collection statistics, JVM thread and Openfire's database connection pool usage.

Unlike most monitoring tools, you don't have to set up a monitoring server yourself for this to work. Java-monitor.com provides the infrastructure to do the monitoring for you. The probe that's integrated in the Openfire plugin sends statistics to java-monitor.com. Everything else is handled there. You can view the data from their website, as shown below.

To get started, register an account at http://java-monitor.com/install.html. After you've registered, you'll be able to download a personalized Java-Monitor probe package, which includes an Openfire plugin. Add this plugin to your Openfire installation, and you're done! The plugin will automatically start collecting data. Java-monitor allows you to monitor Openfire from anywhere - all you need is a javascript enabled browser.

What We're Working On

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:15:57 GMT

Gato and I are sitting together drinking beers and hacking on Ignite code. After a hiatus (too long), we're both back to working on Smack and Openfire weekly. As I'm writing this, Gato is doing some super low level Java debugging to figure out a strange XML parsing error that we're seeing when running the Smack test cases. Assuming we get to the bottom of the problem, we plan to package up and release a new beta release of Smack. It includes lots of great improvements, but I'll leave the details for the next blog post. We have several goals around our weekly hackathons:

Jump start software releases -- it's time to get more regular releases of all the projects going again.
Recruit and empower community leaders -- there's already a large number of people in the Ignite community doing some amazing work on the code. Now it's time to equip them with the tools to be as effective as possible and to let them take on more explicit leadership roles.
Have some fun -- hence the beer

We're looking forward to demonstrating progress and to keeping the Ignite projects at the forefront of the XMPP world.

Book Release: Openfire Administration

communityadmin@igniterealtime.org — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:10:28 GMT

A great book about installing and administering Openfire has been released: Openfire Administration, by Mayank Sharma (a contributing editor at Linux.com). Some of the topics covered:

Installing Openfire
Administration of server settings and users
Integration with Active Directory and LDAP
Tuning Openfire for large numbers of users and high performance
Enterprise features like logging and auditing
Much more...

So far, I've only just started reading through the book in detail. The writing seems to be clear and detailed, while keeping a light-hearted tone. I also love the fact that the author includes lots of pictures -- it makes understanding some of the administration tasks much simpler.

We're thrilled to see the first book about an Igniterealtime Open Source project. If you get a chance to check it out, please let us know what you think.