jabber?

[Tom Buskey]

I've had good success with an irc server listening only to localhost and
having everyone tunnel in via ssh with a key on the server.

That assumes everyone on the server can participate in any conversations and
there's no issues with that. It's secure enough for a group of sysadmins to
pass root passwords around.

It won't work if you need finer grained security, logging (you could use a
bot) etc.


On 10/17/05, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I seem to remember at one point that someone in the group was quite
> familiar with jabber, but can't remember who. Perhaps this will also
> spark some conversation helpful to others as well.
>
> Currently at work for "instant messaging", we use MIT Zephyr, which
> pretty much pre-dates any IM protocol currently in wide use anywhere.
> Some of the features of zephyr are:
>
> 1. Strongly authenticated service (uses Kerberos auth, albeit v4, not v5)
> 2. support for messages to:
> - individuals
> - multiple individuals (i.e. a Cc mechanism)
> - groups (called 'channels')
> 3. support for message classes (i.e. subject threads)
> 4. ability to send automated messages from cron, tests, etc.
>
> Some of the problems with Zephyr are:
>
> 1. limited clients
>
> - unix-based clients include a curses-based app 'owl' and a
> command-line client suite zwrite/zwgc gaim claims support it,
> but requires being compiled with kerberos support, something
> almost no distro does to my knowledge. There is also an emacs
> package for it, but it's rather limited in functionality.
>
> - Windows client is still beta after several years, and is a
> real pain to get working (I've never succeeded, but it's
> rumored to have worked somewhere at least once).
>
> - Mac client, MacZephyr, is okay.
>
> 2. uses Kerberos v4 authentication
> 3. support is being discontinued at some point in the not-too-distant
> future
> 4. no real central logging
> 5. not really under active development any more.
> 6. not secure (authenticated yes, but messages pass in the clear)
>
> 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.
>
> 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?
> 2. Is anyone familiar with it's level of support for kerberos auth?
> 3. How difficult is it to set up and maintain?
> 4. What else do I need to know :)
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
>
> Seeya,
> Paul
>
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>
>


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A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad
measures.
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