ejabberd: It sure is nice when it "just works"!

 (Note: Evening after the original post -- Oops!  I was dead wrong about our ejabberd server "just working".  It turns out that Sugar machines on the same network can "see" each other without a jabber server, so changing the server only removed us from interference from the pre-configured server.  Back to the drawing board :-(

With Ubuntu Sugar Remix (USR) now running on all the machines in our CS lab, here are the near term goals for our Sugar project:

1. Setup an XMPP server so users can connect with each other.
2. Increase our general level of "sugar culture" by using sugar in our day to day classroom activities.

My original thought was to use OLCP's School Server (or XS).  Two of our system administration students installed the XS software on one of our servers.  I had hoped that the XMPP (jabber) server would be active out of the box, but this does not appear to be the case. After talking to David Farning, the man responsible for getting USR ready for the Ubuntu Maverick release, I decided it would be better to look into running XMPP on an Ubuntu server instead.

A quick google server lead me to this page comparing available jabber servers.  I decided to try ejabberd, and after running:

$ sudo aptitude install ejabberd

on one of the Maverick workstations in the lab.  After setting the Sugar "learnstations" (it doesn't sound right calling them "workstations" ;-) to use the new sever, it just worked!  (note: I added a quick how to page on the Ubuntu wiki here showing how to set the jabber server).

It is a wonderful feeling when things "just work", but we have a lot more to do now.  Specifically, we need to:

1. Learn more about how ejabberd does what it does.  If something doesn't work, we lack the tools at present to figure out why.  This page from the ejabberd website may prove helpful.
2. Learn how collaboration works in Sugar.  This page from the floss manuals site may be a good place to start.

In both of these efforts, I'm hoping to coordinate with the David Farning, Caroline Meeks, and the rest of the USR community to make our work as effective as we can.