hyperstruct » Jabber

Purplebridge

bard — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:21:19 +0000

After writing it in a couple of afternoons and letting it wait for attention (alas, in vain) for months, I decided to release purplebridge so that others may play with it. Quoting from the wiki:

purplebridge is a GUI-less client for IM networks based on libpurple that disguises as a local XMPP server. Once ready, an XMPP client will be able to launch it, connect to it, and through it reach the foreign networks supported by libpurple.

The wiki has more information about status and rationale.

[SamePlace] Importing contacts: transports, anyone?

bard — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 06:00:00 +0000

Cross-posting from the SamePlace blog:

It would be great to import contacts from Yahoo, AIM, MSN etc with just a couple of clicks. The client-side code is here—we just need server-side transports.

The server at sameplace.cc hosts an MSN transports but it’s unlikely that it will be able to handle more. Any Jabber administrator out there would like to have his or her transports as defaults in SamePlace, or anyone with machines and spare CPU/RAM would like to host them? Please get in touch if interested.

SamePlace: sneak peek 2007/7/30

bard — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:00:00 +0000

To help interested users and developers be a little more aware of what is going on development-wise with SamePlace, I posted a first update (of hopefully many) on the SamePlace blog.

SamePlace 0.7

bard — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 06:00:00 +0000

Version 0.7 of SamePlace, the instant messaging client for Firefox, Flock and Thunderbird, is available.

It’s late over here, and I’m still on the lookout for subtle transition issues (who said that writing code is the hard part? Release engineers get all my respect…), so I hope you’ll forgive me if I spend some more lines at the server’s console and fewer blogging.

Packages are in the download section. In a few hours I’ll flip the switches to enable automatic update for those who are running release candidate or old stable. Uploads to addons.mozilla.org will follow shortly.

If you find any problems, post to the forum/mailing list or drop by the users’ chatroom (access it via Jabber or on the web). If you like SamePlace, consider supporting it; there’s no “Donate” button, but there are many equally precious things you can do: suggest features, report bugs, spread the word, tinker with the code.

Enjoy!

SamePlace: new site and release candidate available

bard — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 06:00:00 +0000

After many, many weeks of “should be ready real soon now”, the new SamePlace web site and a release candidate of SamePlace Suite 0.7 are available.

The first thing you’ll probably notice about both is the user interface. Most of the merit for it goes to Andrea Cuius. I’ll talk more about this and the numerous other changes that happened under the hood in the release notes for 0.7.

If you find any glitch or problem in the release candidate, please take a moment to join the users’ chatroom (via web or via jabber) and tell me, or leave a message on the forum, or even file a bug.

Notice to feed subscribers: SamePlace-related announcements will be cross-posted on the usual section of the hyperstruct blog and on the SamePlace blog for a few weeks, then will move to the SamePlace blog. (I’ve also backported some past articles from the former to the latter.) Articles about the programming side of SamePlace will stay on the hyperstruct blog.

Enjoy!

Installing the StartCom SSL certificate in ejabberd

bard — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 06:00:00 +0000

The XMPP Software Foundation established an intermediate certification authority with StartCom. If you run a public federated XMPP server, in order to provide secure communication, you no longer need to buy an SSL certificate (or resort to a self-signed certificate): simply register an account at http://www.xmpp.net and follow the certificate request process.

At least up to ejabberd ~~1.1.2~~ 1.1.4, however, there is an extra step which involves patching a file and recompiling. (Update: the patching step is no longer required in ejabberd 2.0.0.)

Here is the complete procedure I followed.

After the certificate request process, you should have these files:

ssl.key (resulting from the certificate request process)
ssl.crt (idem)
ca.crt (available from StartCom)
sub.class1.xmpp.ca.crt (available from StartCom)

Decode ssl.key. openssl will ask you for a password, provide the one you gave during the certificate request process:


$ openssl rsa -in ssl.key -out ssl.key

Concatenate your server’s certificate plus key and the intermediate certificate into a single file:


cat ssl.crt ssl.key sub.class1.xmpp.ca.crt >ejabberd.pem

Place the resulting file where the ejabberd server is able to access it.

On Debian:


chown ejabberd.ejabberd ejabberd.pem
chmod 400 ejabberd.pem
mv ejabberd.pem /etc/ejabberd

Configure ejabberd.cfg:


% Ordinary client-2-server service
 [{5222, ejabberd_c2s,     [{access, c2s},
                            {max_stanza_size, 65536},
                            starttls, {certfile, "/etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.pem"},
                            {shaper, c2s_shaper}]},

% SSL-enabled client-2-server service
  {5223, ejabberd_c2s,     [{access, c2s},
                            {max_stanza_size, 65536},
                            tls, {certfile, "/etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.pem"},
                            {shaper, c2s_shaper}]},

% [...]

% Use STARTTLS+Dialback for S2S connections
{s2s_use_starttls, true}.
{s2s_certfile, "/etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.pem"}.

Restart the server.

At this point, the certificate is installed but ejabberd is not presenting it correctly. If you run the following:


openssl s_client -connect your.server.org:5223 -CAfile /path/to/ca.crt

You will get an incomplete certificate chain:


[...]
verify error:num=21:unable to verify the first certificate
verify return:1
CONNECTED(00000003)
---
Certificate chain
 0 s:/C=US/ST=Your State/L=Your Location/O=Your Name/OU=Domain validated only/CN=your@server.org/emailAddress=hostmaster@server.org
   i:/C=US/ST=Colorado/O=Jabber Software Foundation/OU=Secure Certificate Signing/CN=StartCom Class 1 Intermediate CA - Jabber Software Foundation/emailAddress=certmaster@jabber.org
---
Server certificate
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
[...]

To fix it, you have to apply a small patch. Start by downloading ejabberd source.

On Debian:


apt-get source ejabberd

Now you could grab the patch from the ejabberd bug tracker and use the “patch” tool to apply it, however as of ejabberd 1.1.2 line numbers have shifted and it won’t apply cleanly. Since it’s a one-liner, just open the file src/tls/tls_drv.c and locate the following line:


res = SSL_CTX_use_certificate_file(d->ctx, buf, SSL_FILETYPE_PEM);

Replace it with the following:


res = SSL_CTX_use_certificate_chain_file(d->ctx, buf);

To compile it, either go to the src/ directory and type:


make

Or, on Debian, generate a new package:


fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage -uc -nc

Reinstall, and you’re done.

To verify that it’s working, run again:


$ openssl s_client -connect sameplace.cc:5223 -CAfile /path/to/ca.crt

This time you should get:


[...]
verify return:1
CONNECTED(00000003)
---
Certificate chain
 0 s:/C=US/ST=Your State/L=Your Location/O=Your Name/OU=Domain validated only/CN=your@server.org/emailAddress=hostmaster@server.org
   i:/C=US/ST=Colorado/O=Jabber Software Foundation/OU=Secure Certificate Signing/CN=StartCom Class 1 Intermediate CA - Jabber Software Foundation/emailAddress=certmaster@jabber.org
 1 s:/C=US/ST=Colorado/O=Jabber Software Foundation/OU=Secure Certificate Signing/CN=StartCom Class 1 Intermediate CA - Jabber Software Foundation/emailAddress=certmaster@jabber.org
   i:/C=IL/ST=Israel/L=Eilat/O=StartCom Ltd./OU=CA Authority Dep./CN=Free SSL Certification Authority/emailAddress=admin@startcom.org
---
Server certificate
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
[...]

Which is a complete certificate chain and openssl is able to verify it against the root certificate.

An xmpp4moz notebook

bard — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:00:00 +0000

I like documentation that looks like a laboratory notebook—not a linear and sure path from problem to solution, but a record of the paths tried, including the bad ones, reasons why they were bad, intuitions that led toward the solution, and ideas about where to go next.

So I was pleased to stumble on the blog about the development of TrueTalk. I’m still not sure about what TrueTalk is, but it is based on xmpp4moz and the authors frequently report about the challenges they meet and how they face them.

If you’re considering writing something on xmpp4moz and want to get an insider’s perspective, have a look at this blog.

SamePlace, meet Twitter. (Introducing scriptlets.)

bard — Mon, 07 May 2007 06:00:00 +0000

I don’t use Twitter, but some of my friends do and I also see them updating their IM status message often. I assumed that the Twitter bot was watching the status and updating accordingly, but it turns out you have to message it explicitly.

“Catching status changes in SamePlace”, I thought, “and forwarding them to the Twitter bot, that would need just a handful of lines”. And updating both IM and Twitter status with a hotkey looked attractive.

But how to distribute a handful of lines? An extension is too much, and yet it’s not generic enough to belong in the main application.

Thus, some hours later SamePlace got support for scriptlets, and it’s now available in the development branch.

Scriptlets are micro-extensions: self-contained JavaScript files that you can use by simply dragging them from a web page into the scriptlet manager (after having read and accepted a big fat warning, of course—after all they run with extension privileges). They don’t require browser restart.

They’re also ideal for quick, live prototyping: just create the JavaScript file under [firefox_profile_dir]/sameplace/scriptlets and enable it from the “Actions -> Scriptlets -> [name of scriptlet]” menu. When you modify the file, either disable and re-enable the scriptlet, or click on “Reload” in the scriptlet manager.

The Twitter scriptlet can be found here.

OpenID via XMPP… via Mozilla

bard — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 06:00:00 +0000

Gabriele periodically visits the continuum-B of the multiverse to chase obscure vernacular languages across the underground of Italian linguistics. (The time spent inside what I suppose is the continuum-A is devoted to chasing obscure programming languages across the underground of the Internet.)

I have the unfortunate tendency of listening, reluctantly but closely, to crazy people, so when he tells me “you should implement OpenID via XMPP in Firefox”, I reply “forget it, I don’t have the time”. A couple of evenings later, I’m trading two hours of sleep for a basic implementation. Oh well.

~~The package for Firefox and Flock is here (XPI install, 4KB) and the darcs repository is here. You’ll probably want to use this with SamePlace, but the only strict prerequisite is xmpp4moz.~~ Update 2007-05-25: This is now available as a scriptlet! (What are scriptlets?)

I tested it with the page at xmpp.za.net. Load the page, enter your Jabber ID or GMail address (the latter apparently needs the full ID, e.g. joe@gmail.com/SamePlace), make up a transaction identifier (e.g. “riffraff”) and soon you should see a confirmation dialog pop up and ask for your authorization.

At this time, the whole source is just one page long, so if you’re thinking of hacking it, have no fear and go ahead.

Update: For those who can read Italian, Gabriele has written a nice article about this for the Italian OpenID blog. There I learned that using XMPP in this context gives a serious stab at the issues with phishing usually brought up about OpenID. Cool!

SamePlace Suite 0.6.0: shared web applications now available at a click

bard — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 06:00:00 +0000

SamePlace Suite 0.6.0 is available; you can read more and download it here.

What’s new

In addition to the features introduced by the release candidate, the following ones also made their way into 0.6.0:

a default set of shared web applications is available with a single click from the application menu (see screenshot—currently Firefox 2.0 only):
- shared mouse pointer
- shared S5 presentations
- chessboard
- Google maps
- full-screen chat
- whiteboard
clicking xmpp: links in web pages will open conversations in SamePlace.

Many thanks to the people who have contributed to this release: dfd, ripley, intinig, the CDG (in particular Filippo, Fabio, and Giuseppe), Sten, Ryo, and Fabio.