Openfire: installation on Linux CentOS 7 | Just my Notes... https://lipovetskiy.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/openfire-3-10-on-top-of-c...

Just my Notes…

Alexander Lipovetskiy
stay updated via rss

Openfire: installation on Linux CentOS 7

Posted: 28/04/2015 in Linux

Tags: CentOS, LDAP, Linux, mysql, Openfire, Spark, XMPP

i
1 Vote

“Openfire is a real time collaboration (RTC) server licensed under the Open Source Apache License. It
uses the only widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging, XMPP (also called Jabber). Openfire
is incredibly easy to setup and administer, but offers rock-solid security and performance.”

Ignite Realtime community

It’s a great opensource Instant Messenging system roughly saying and here I’d like to share my
experience of Openfire 3.10.0 installation and basic configuration on Linux Centos 7.
In this example Openfire stores all its se:ings in a MySQL database and users are taken from Microsoft
Active Directory.

1. CentOS 7 installation and setup

Get a latest stable CentOS distribution from here: h:p://centos.org/download/ (h:p://centos.org

/download/).
CentOS 7 minimal installation brings one confusing things: after the installation is completed, you log
into system via the console and probably would like to check which IP address was assigned to your

1 de 5 20/04/2016 01:24 p. m.
Openfire: installation on Linux CentOS 7 | Just my Notes... https://lipovetskiy.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/openfire-3-10-on-top-of-c...

server by DHCP, but “ifconfig eth0” is not working, because net-tools package is not installed by
default. Here is the alternative way to check your IP:

1 # ip addr show

Now you can close your VM console window or to leave your server room, fire up your SSH client and
connect to your freshly installed system remotely.

First thing which must be done after the installation is OS update:

1 # yum update

Let’s connect additional Epel repository and install some prerequisites and useful tools:

1 # yum install –y epel-release

2 # yum install zlib.i686 libstdc++.i686 mc lsof htop net-tools nano

As a default database CentOS 7 is using MariaDB instead of MySQL. It was promised that Mary brings
us performance improvements and something else, so we have to use it:

1 # yum install –y mariadb mariadb-server

2 # service mariadb start
3 # chkconfig mariadb on
4 # mysql_secure_installation

2. Openfire installation

Now it’s time to download and install Openfire:

1 # cd /usr/src/
2 # wget http://igniterealtime.org/downloads/download-landing.jsp?file=openfire/openf
3 # rpm -ivh openfire-3.10.0-1.i386.rpm

Before to start Openfire server we have to prepare a database for it:

1 # mysql -p
2 mysql> CREATE DATABASE openfire CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
3 mysql> GRANT ALL ON openfire.* TO 'openfire'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PasswordHer
4 mysql> flush privileges;
5 mysql> use openfire;
6 mysql> source /opt/openfire/resources/database/openfire_mysql.sql;
7 mysql> exit

Start Openfire:

1 # service openfire start

2 # chkconfig openfire on

3. Openfire setup

2 de 5 20/04/2016 01:24 p. m.
Openfire: installation on Linux CentOS 7 | Just my Notes... https://lipovetskiy.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/openfire-3-10-on-top-of-c...

Open your web browser and go to Openfire web administration interface. First time you’ll have to go
through the setup procedure:

h:p://IP_or_hostname:9090 (h:p://IP_or_hostname:9090)

After choosing you preferred language you enter your domain name, an abracadabra word as a
Blowfish encryption key.

Next you choose a Standard Database Connection as we store all Openfire information in our MySQL
database. Next step is to enter DB connection information:

(h:ps://lipovetskiy.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/op1.png)

Important thing, to avoid a problem with special characters, is to enter this database URL:
jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1/openfire?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-
8&characterSetResults=UTF-8

Next step is to configure a connection with Active Directory where we have all user accounts, so choose
Directory Server (LDAP) and configure the connection:

3 de 5 20/04/2016 01:24 p. m.
Openfire: installation on Linux CentOS 7 | Just my Notes... https://lipovetskiy.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/openfire-3-10-on-top-of-c...

(h:ps://lipovetskiy.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/op2.png)

A user you choose to bind Active directory must have read access on OU with your user accounts.
Base DN can be just a domain DN or more specific location with your domain user accounts.
If your domain controllers are configured for secure LDAP, you can choose 636 port instead of 389.

User and Group Mapping steps you can leave as is. I preferred to change in User Mapping Name to
{displayName} and put {City} to City.

Last step is adding your Openfire admins. Enter names using their SamAccountNames. If everything is
fine, you’ll be redirected to the admin panel login page. After a successful login you can browse your
server se:ings and adjust them according to your needs.

Here is a couple of useful configuration changes:

ldap.pagedResultsSize 50000 – if your Active directory has more than 1000 users
ldap.override.avatar true – to store avatars in your database
ldap.groupSearchFilter – put a LDAP filter here if you’d like to restrict Openfire users by a group

One important thing to mention about the setup: in case of any problems you can initiate setup again
and reconfigure the system without data loss. To do so, adjust the file “/opt/openfire/conf/openfire.xml”,
change there false and restart openfire service:

1 # service openfire restart

Now fire up your client software (Spark, Jitsi, whatever…) and connect to your Openfire server IP or
hostname using your domain credentials.

One more nice thing about Openfire, is that it’s not only a messaging tool, it’s also possible to perform
voice and video calls between clients. For the Spark lovers there is a recommendation to setup an
Asterisk server, connect it to your Openfire via couple of plugins, configure phone mapping and it will
work. But here is one trick about an alternative client named Jitsi – you don’t have to do anything of it,
just install Jitsi and you’ll be able to to call between Jitsi clients.

Enjoy.

4 de 5 20/04/2016 01:24 p. m.
Openfire: installation on Linux CentOS 7 | Just my Notes... https://lipovetskiy.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/openfire-3-10-on-top-of-c...

Comments
Openfire: Connection Managers | Just my Notes... says:
28/04/2015 at 11:32
[…] installation and configuration process is quite simple and is described below. In my first
Openfire post you can see how to perform a basic installation of Linux CentOS 7. By this moment the
OS must be […]

Openfire: Certificates | Just my Notes... says:

28/04/2015 at 13:22
[…] you install Openfire it’s shipped with self-signed certificates, which you can use or replace with
your own […]

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. | The Greyzed Theme.

5 de 5 20/04/2016 01:24 p. m.