jabber?

[klussier at comcast.net]

> We're considering switching to Jabber, because it seems to fulfill our
> requirements.  It appears that it can autheticate against krb5, which
> would be a huge win for us, and it appears to have decent
> cross-platform client support, as well as central logging.

You can use GAIM to connect to a Jabber server, and GAIM can run on Linux, *BSD, Windows, and OSX (via fink). As far as Kerberos auth, I'm not sure on that. According to the Jabber.org servers page, none of the OSS licensed servers use kerberos. However, most support PAM, so if PAM is doing krb5, then you should be all set, in theory (note: I have no clue if that will actually work). 
 
> There even appear to be a couple of emacs-based jabber clients.
> 
> So, I guess my questions are this:
> 
>  1. Is anyone running a central jabber server at work for
>     intra-company communication?

Yes. I'm running eJabberd (http://ejabberd.jabber.ru/). It is really easy to set up and configure, and once it is up and running, there is a decent web interface for maintenence. It also supports server-side rosters so that everyone in the company is listed rather then having every person add every other person to their roster. 

>  2. Is anyone familiar with it's level of support for kerberos auth?

Not I. However, eJabberd supports external authentication scripts, so you can probably write a perl script to do the authentication.

>  3. How difficult is it to set up and maintain?

eJabberd is in apt :-) After that, there are about 5 or 6 lines in the ejabberd.cfg file that need to be changed  depending on the features that you want (external conduits for AIM/MSN/etc.). It took me about 20 minutes to have the whole thing up and running. The docs on their website are quite complete. 

>  4. What else do I need to know :)

Not much. Most of the jabber servers out there are pretty simple to set up and deploy. The benefit that I have found with eJabberd is the web-based admin tool. I have set up jabber v1 and v2 servers, and administration of adding users, etc. can be annoying. The web front end makes it less annoying :-)

HTH,
Kenny