Thomas Runge

thomas@nbg.vffsm.de

Thomas Runge

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 18:42:31 +0200

!Hubzilla Support Forum Hello!

I see that there is an #XMPP addon for #Hubzilla. Where do I find information about how this works and how I need to set it up?

Actually I would be interested in this question in general: where do I find information about Hubzilla addons, how they work and how to set them up?

Thanks! :)

show all 21 comments

poVoq

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:10:07 +0200

That is just a xmpp web client (actually an severly outdated version of ConverseJS) that you can connect to an external xmpp server like Ejabberd.

Thomas Runge

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:32:25 +0200

So I would need an XMPP Server and can connect to my account there from within Hubzilla?

That does not sound very comfortable :)

poVoq

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:40:10 +0200

Yes, more or less. ConverseJS is a pretty good javascript based XMPP client though.

I think there is also a way to link up accounts through the external auth function in Ejabberd, but I have not tried that.

muppeth

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 09:24:20 +0200

I'm planning to integrate jsxc to hubzilla. Jsxc is now supporting omemo as wel as voip and number of other features. Plus ir looks very cool and modern. I hope i will be able to eventually make autologin to our xmpp server just like jsxc plugin on nextcloud does.

Thomas Runge

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 13:17:50 +0200

Sounds good.

Could it be possible to use the Hubzilla ID also as Jabber ID (like it is in joindiaspora.com)? That would be great.

Do you need any help? I have no experience in web development nor Hubzilla development nor with xmpp servers... but besides that... ;)

Michael MD

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 17:15:53 +0200

years ago I managed to get metronome/prosody to work with the same logins as the website logins.
(and back then a Friendica instance too)

I managed to figure it out by looking at other addons that were available to do some of this in other contexts.

I should really spend some time and set up xmpp here again anyway .
(then could have another look at this stuff)

OK I didn't do it with Hubzilla back then but I'd say its definately possible to do if you don't mind writing/modifying a little bit of lua code in a prosody/metronome addon.

I think someone out there also had something like this happening with ejabberd

poVoq

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 15:42:16 +0200

Might be a good starting-point to get account integration: #^https://github.com/mitchellurgero/ejabberd_gnusocial

Carlos Solís

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 20:24:33 +0200

I've tried to set it up several times on my server, but every time it requests a BOSH address that I don't know if my server provides at all. How do I find my BOSH address?

poVoq

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 21:16:46 +0200

Which server are you using? Prosody or Ejabberd are providing it on default on port 5280 for http and 5281 for https. Typically the address will look like this:
#^https://example.com:5281/http-bind

Some server reverse proxy the port so it might not be needed. Sometime the subdirectory is called /bosh instead.

poVoq

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 15:31:12 +0200

I looked into this a bit more as I remembered reading about an integration in the HubZilla source.
The XMPP plugin was actually ported from Friendica, which seemingly has a working user integration with Ejabberd:

https://git.friendi.ca/friendica/friendica/src/branch/develop/bin/auth_ejabberd.php

I am not quite sure how it works, but it seems to be relying on the older OAuth1 part Friendica shares with Hubzilla?
Was there a reason this (and the "individual" part what ever that was) was never ported to Hubzilla?
Thanks for the help!

poVoq

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 16:41:08 +0200

poVoq hat Thomas Runges Beitrag mit ⋕XMPP, ConverseJS, Ejabberd verschlagwortet

Mike Macgirvin

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 22:14:21 +0200

Was there a reason this (and the "individual" part what ever that was) was never ported to Hubzilla?

I don't know of any oauth integration, but there was a way to link jabber identities to local webfinger identities and basically connect with your Hubzilla friends automatically. I ported this in 2013 iirc and this part was working then. I stopped there because jabber won't work with nomadic identity (a recurring problem with every service on the internet in case you're new here). Anyway since then about once every two months somebody mentions that the chat options are awful and shouldn't "somebody" do something about it. I don't actually use chat myself for a number of reasons, so I'm not that somebody. There's possibly been a regression since a lot of code has changed between 2013 and now.

poVoq

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 23:21:35 +0200

Updating the xmpp chat to use a newer version of conversejs should actually be quite easy and I will probably give it a try when the unified 4.0 release of Converse is out soon. This would even give a nice slack like chat to replace the irc plugin. And that XMPP uses the same webfinger addresses is quite cool (despite not being nomadic).

The problem is that the xmpp server has to know about the users somehow. Once the same users exist in it's database the existing xmpp plugin seems to be able to auto login, which I think is what you are referring to.
But the linker script for the xmpp server (ejabberd) to pull the users from the hubzilla database was never ported from friendica according to the commit log.

Sadly this script seems to require a quite indept knowledge of the workings of Hubzilla, which is way beyond my skills to figure out.

Although I guess much of this script could be simplified now that Hubzilla can do OAuth2, which is meant for something just like this I believe.

muppeth

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 11:21:08 +0200

@poVoq Having both jsxc and conversejs in hubzilla might be interesting. While jsxc is more like facebook messeging on the sidebar, entering converse (fullscreen) would get you to slack/matrix like chatroom.

I hope we can start working on conversejs look soon (at disroot we are planning to make a theme to make the chat look more interesting) and hope to port jsxc to hubzilla soon. We use ldap so for us authentication on both is not that big of a problem because bith hubzilla and xmpp use it. So yeah not nomadic, but xmpp is something we plan to implement on the entire stack of disroot and promote it as goto chat solution.

poVoq

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 19:26:30 +0200

Conversejs also as a non-fullscreen chat is probably the lower hanging fruit, but ultimatly why not have both as a choice? Of course WebRTC and OMEMO speak in favour of JSXC, but other than that I actually like Conversejs better.

Since I don't have the luxury of LDAP for my system (nore the patience and pain tollerance to set it up), a direct authentification script would be really nice to have. For now I'll probably patch something together through Nextcloud (user_sql app to access Hubzilla's database and the JSXC app to speak to ejabberd) since I am running that anyways.

muppeth

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 10:43:24 +0200

@poVoq A person I know has develop nextcloud conversejs app. Not sure its already in the store, but you can have a look here:
https://gitlab.com/lil5/nextcloud-conversejs

M. Dent

Sat, 21 Jul 2018 15:07:49 +0200

Another thought might be to try to turn Mattermost into an add-on. It is MIT licensed.

More than just basic look & feel, integrating Mattermost would get almost all of Slack's functionality including hooks and some other very helpful features.

muppeth

Sun, 22 Jul 2018 13:16:04 +0200

but it does not federate so imo useless as it requires everyone to be on the same server.

M. Dent

Sun, 22 Jul 2018 23:52:30 +0200

There are times when you don't want the underlying messaging platform to federate, however, and you only want the ability for remote users to authenticate to your server with their personal channel. This is the case with most (though admittedly not all) of the applications I can conceive of in the commercial and non-profit arena. You don't always want bits of the conversations spread around different servers - but you also don't want your users to need to set up separate usernames/passwords - and it would be better to just add their channel to a privacy group and permit access that way.

Admittedly, this is a "different solutions for different problems" type situation, but there are numerous applications that make it not "useless".

Also - I haven't looked at the MM code, but since it is MIT licensed it's a potential good starting point for what you want to do. It may be at least a source for front-end look/feel - you may be able to nab the JS and write a simple plugin to interface with Hubzilla in order to present the full-screen chat view.

poVoq

Mon, 23 Jul 2018 00:07:14 +0200

Fair enough, but there is little Mattermost can do that isn't possible with XMPP, thus why limit yourself to a platform that doesn't federate? Federation is anyways optional with XMPP. Another strong point is that you can setup ConverseJS with anonymous logins (no registration required) and thus use it as a really convenient public support chat as sometimes seen on commercial e-commerce sites. There are even some quite good chat-bot integration systems for XMPP.

@muppeth My plan to link ejabberd to HubZilla though Nextcloud's user_sql is not working right now, as HubZilla uses a pretty uncommon "whirlpool" hashing algorithm for the passwords in the database. It will be supported in version 4.0 of the user_sql plugin though and that will come out together with Nextcloud14 in a few weeks. I believe I can wait until then ;)

M. Dent

Mon, 23 Jul 2018 00:26:45 +0200

Not at all arguing the benefits of XMPP... If you have the time and ability, I'm all for any work done to make Hubzilla better! And I think a well integrated XMPP solution would be GREAT!

My only thought was that MM is a fairly full fledged product that gains significant functionality for the HZ platform in the general direction you are looking without the need to recreate large portions of the wheel. As a wheel recreator myself, I have no basis to say it is bad/wrong - but I know for me it always takes longer than expected and if there is something "off the shelf" that can be modified (or canibalized), I've learned that it's at least worth considering in order to "bootstrap" and gain the functionality and buy time for a more robust solution. That's all.

Wow!

Thomas Runge

Sat, 24 Mar 2018 18:14:57 +0100

Was lese ich grad auf tagesschau.de?

Welche Alternativen gibt es zu Facebook?

Es gibt alternative Dienste, die mehr Wert auf Datenschutz legen - die sind allerdings nicht ansatzweise so weit verbreitet. Für Facebook selbst sind Diaspora und Nebenan.de mögliche Alternativen. Anstelle von WhatsApp gibt es beispielsweise Threema, Telegram und Hoccer. Eine Alternative zur Bilderplattform Instagram ist EyeEm, das dem deutschen Datenschutz unterliegt. Andere große Netzwerke, wie Twitter oder Snapchat, funktionieren ganz anders als Facebook.

Nicht unbedingt meine erste Wahl an Alternativen, aber dass Diaspora und Telegram erwähnt werden finde ich schon beachtlich!

Herbert Thielen

Sat, 24 Mar 2018 19:03:23 +0100

#Hubzilla fehlt - schade

Aber stimmt, ist gut, dass bemerkt wird, dass es neben Facebook auch noch andere Möglichkeiten gibt.

Thomas Runge

Sat, 24 Mar 2018 19:05:44 +0100 last edited: Sat, 24 Mar 2018 19:28:08 +0100

#Hubzilla fehlt - schade

Genau! ;)

Allerdings ist die Einstiegshürde zu Hubzilla leider auch ein ganzes Stück höher, solange es nicht mehr public Server gibt...