Running a Chat Server

[raghavendra]

Hi
This article is for setting up of a chat server.
I have setup the chat server on my computer running Fedora Core 3.
The example taken here is RealChat

Download RealChat from
http://www.realchat.com/download.php

Installing the server
Extract it and go to the folder server
Now extract the file rcserver222b.tar.gz
Go to folder rcserver222b
Give the command as root
./configure


Installing the Client
Go to the folder
......../realchat-351e-222b/client
Extract the file rcclient351e.tar.gz
Rename the extracted folder as chat

Copy the chat folder to
If you have installed Apache from source
/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/
or to the respective Apache folder depending on your installation

Now installing JRE for Firefox
Download jre-1_5_0_01-linux-i586-rpm.bin
Install it
After that give these commands

cd /usr/lib/firefox-1.0.3/plugins
ln -s /usr/java/jre1.5.0_01/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so


Now open Firefox and give
http://yourdomainname/chat/
And you have a chat client running by selecting any of the 3 examples.........

If you dont want to choose the examples always........
In the chat directory
delete index.html
rename example1.html to index.html

To see an example you can visit this
http://raghu.homelinux.com/chat/example1.html
or
http://raghu.homelinux.com/chat/

Hope this is of some use :)

[jim]

very cool!!!!

[mbdayton]

Once the server is up can I use something like Gaim to access it?

[raghavendra]

Hi
No I dont think so, once the server is running you have to use RealChat Client( A Java Applet) to access it.
I dont know whether it will be possible using Gaim bcos Gaim supports Yahoo, ICQ etc

[rae]

A different option would be to run a jabber server. It is open-source and gaim runs on it just fine. There are a number of options when choosing a server as you can tell here (http://www.jabber.org/software/servers.shtml) but the one I chose go with was jive messenger mostly because it had an rpm available. Getting it running was no chore at all. It had a nice web interface that allowed for easy configuration of the server. The rpm comes with its own internal db (HSQLDB) but one has the option of using an outside db such as PostgreSQL, LDAP, or MYSQL. If anyone has a problem setting this up just ask and I would be glad to help

rae

[cruiseoveride]

can windows clients access this server

[raghavendra]

Hi
Yes Windows Clients can access the server...........
It does not depend on the OS.

[cruiseoveride]

but i thought it only uses a browser, and os independent

[raghavendra]

but i thought it only uses a browser, and os independent

Hi
Sorry, i think i put it the wrong way
Yes it only uses a browser (JRE installed)
It is OS independent :)

[gavinw6662]

A different option would be to run a jabber server. It is open-source and gaim runs on it just fine. There are a number of options when choosing a server as you can tell here (http://www.jabber.org/software/servers.shtml) but the one I chose go with was jive messenger mostly because it had an rpm available. Getting it running was no chore at all. It had a nice web interface that allowed for easy configuration of the server. The rpm comes with its own internal db (HSQLDB) but one has the option of using an outside db such as PostgreSQL, LDAP, or MYSQL. If anyone has a problem setting this up just ask and I would be glad to help

rae

Jabber works well, we use it at my work. I don't know if it was a configuration problem or not, but every so often all the contacts in the DB disappear, and we have to call out engineers to rebuild the DB to get them back. But that is only a minor problem. Jabber is nice as you can use gaim to access it, along with all your other chat accounts.