[JDEV] jserver agent configuration dox

[Jonathan Sand]

I have just now gotten jserver running (whew!) on my linux (rh 6.2) 
machine, thanks to the friendly help from irc.jabber.com. You people have 
done an ABSOLUTELY AWESOME job! And your documentation is excellent in 
nearly all areas *except* jserver agent configuration, where the mini 
HOWTO was a tad too mini (as I know you already know). On irc, bigdoughb 
mentioned an upcoming (non-mini) HOWTO, and I got the impression that my 
questions and wish list items might be useful in its construction.

I'd also very much like to get an early release copy of the HOWTO, so I 
can finish configuring jserver for the various agents. Thanks in advance.

(a) Details on how to compile each agent; some of the agents didn't 
compile as downloaded (see below).

(b) Details on configuring jserver for each individual agent, 
particularly regarding the effect each child tag has on the agent in 
order to get them to do what we want (eg, I don't quite know what the and 
tags do; I was able to guess what is the precise role played by the jid 
attribute but a description will likely help others).

(c) Details on configuring the agents which have .xml configuration 
files, particulary what the hostname means (probably means the server 
providing the service, so mirabilis.com or jabber.com, but with what's 
written there, we can only guess).

(d) Instructions on how to incoporate jserver and its agents into the 
boot process (on redhat: providing a /etc/rc.d/init.d/jabber script) or 
as Deech suggested, a cron script.

(e) Suggestions as to how to test the entire rig to make sure all these 
pieces are configured correctly, have no 
just-checked-into-cvs-with-new-untested-features wrinkles, etc.

(f) Lots of troubleshooting tips (I can ask, can't I? :).

Feedback on the installation process

(g) The libtool (v 1.3.4) which downloads with the various libraris (eg 
libxode) is not recent enough for the agent compilation process. From the 
help via irc, I found that version 1.3.5 is required.

(h) For some of the agents (icq, smtp, yahoo) the "macros" directory 
needed by their respective autogen.sh is missing. I copied it from one of 
the other agent downloads and successfully compiled, and assume a 
straight copy will do.

Further questions:

(i) I noticed that the jabber.org jserver has several agents not listed 
in the jabber.org products page (rss, jud). What is rss? Will it improve 
my life? :)

(j) Where can I get the user directory agent? Is there such a thing? To 
get my jserver up, I seemed to need a user directory agent pointing to 
user.jabber.org. If this is true, it seems I need to store user 
information on jabber.org, which makes my services reliant on both our 
servers being up and present.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and thanks in advance for your help.


Jonathan Sand

sand at gizmolab.com

Hardware: n. that aspect of a computer system which can be hit.