Thursday, December 06, 2007

10 steps to a multi-protocol iChat.

Problem:


I know that setting up iChat to communicate with MSN, Yahoo, AIM and other users has been discussed in many other places. There are a couple of issues, however, that I have with this process:
  1. Security - you are trusting 3rd-parties with your login information

  2. Stability - the transports many times go up and down

  3. Consistency - sometimes, you're required to sign up for transports from different servers - I don't like that
Up until now, my solution on Mac has been to use Adium for chat. It is an excellent program - and I love everything about it. However, there are a couple of things that I think iChat does a bit better. Since it's integrated with the OS, it has a more consistent look-and-feel across all the other applications. I also like the way that it integrates with Mail.app (you can see who is online from within your mail messages). It's just a more "polished" solution, in my opinion.

I've always thought that the way to go would be to run a jabber server locally, and connect to it with my own transports. This would solve all my issues (Security, Stability, and Consistency), and at the same time, allow me to access all my contacts via iChat (giving me the nice integration). However, up until now, I have not had time, and setting up a jabber server is not the easiest thing to do.

Enter Openfire. I don't know where this program has been - it's by far the easiest jabber server to set up - and it has excellent Mac OS Integration (It uses LaunchDaemons and has a PreferencePane). Below, I list instructions on how I got my iChat to communicate multi-protocol, using Openfire.

These instructions are taken from my installation process on a MacBook Pro running OSX 10.5.1 (Leopard). It should work for previous versions - but the prompts may be somewhat different.

Instructions:


1 - Install Openfire

Download Openfire for Mac from here. The version I used is 3.4.1. Mount the disk image and run the installer. It's really that easy!

2 - Configure Openfire

Open your System Preferences and choose the Openfire preference pane. Make sure that Openfire's status is listed as "Running". Check the box to "Start Openfire When System Turns On". Then click the button to "Open Admin Console".

The Admin Console for Openfire is web-based - it is very easy to use, and very powerful. The first time you open the console, it will ask you some initial setup questions.
  • Choose the language you want

  • For server settings, set your "Domain" to be "localhost". This will simplify adding contacts later. You can leave the other settings as they are.

  • Choose to use the "Embedded Database". Since we will not be exposing our server to other users, we don't really care about the performance level - there will generally be just a single user logged in at once, and it greatly simplifies the setup process.

  • Keep "Default" selected for how to store user and group profiles. We don't want to set up LDAP.

  • Enter in a valid email address and an admin password. REMEMBER THIS PASSWORD

Setup is now finished - you can go ahead and log in to the admin console (the username is "admin" - the password is the one you just set up).

3 - Secure Openfire

We don't want to let other people connect to our jabber server - just those who are on the computer we are setting this up on. That is one of the reasons (security) that we wanted to run our own jabber server.

Under "Registration & Login" set "Inband Account Registration" and "Anonymous Login" to "Disabled". Then click "Save Settings"

4 - Create a jabber user (or users)

You now need to create a user for your jabber server. This is the user that you will use to log in to the jabber server. I suggest you create an account for every account that exists on your Mac. Do the following:

Click on the "Users/Groups" tab at the top of the management console. Choose "Create New User" on the left. Enter in a username and a password (Name and Email are optional). It is called your "JID" (Jabber ID), and is the username and password you will use in iChat. I use the same username as my Mac user name. Then Click "Create User"

5 - Install the IM Gateway Plugin

In order to communicate with other services, we need to install the "IM Gateway Plugin". Do the following:

Click on the "Plugins" tab at the top of the management console. Choose "Available Plugins" on the left. Click on the "plus" sign under "Install" for the "IM Gateway". You can ignore the other plugins - they are more useful for a "real" jabber server. We are only using our server for the transports.

6 - Configure the IM Gateway Plugin

We want to secure the services for our IM Gateway plugin. For each of the third-party services you want to connect to (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, etc.), you need to do the following:

Click on the "Server" tab at the top of the management console. Choose "Settings" under the "Gateways" section on the left. Check the services you wish to use. For each one of them, you can choose "Options" and uncheck mail notifications if you like. Mail notifications BOTHER ME! Under the "Permissions" for each of the services, select "Manual registration only". This will simplify the registration process (and eliminates the need to download or use Psi, as other tutorials have you do. Remember to click "Save Permissions" after each one you change. You can also test your connection to the services, if you want.

7 - Register for your "multi-protocol" services

We now need to enter in your login information for the various multi-protocol services. This information is stored locally on your computer, so it's somewhat secure, but you should be aware that anyone who has physical access to your computer and enough know-how can still find out your login information if they dig enough. This is, however, not any less secure than storing your passwords in your keychain for iChat or Adium anyway. Do the following for each service:

Click on the "Server" tab at the top of the management console. Choose "Registrations" under the "Gateways" section on the left. Click on "Add a new registration". Enter in your "user (JID)" that you use to connect to jabber, the gateway you want to use (MSN/AIM/Yahoo/etc), the username and password that you use to log on to that service, and an optional nickname. Click on "Add". NOTE:On my system, clicking "Add" says that the registration was added, but it doesn't show up in the list until I refresh the web page. I found, however, that you can add all your registrations at once (even if they aren't showing up in the list) and then hit "refresh" at the end to verify that they are all there. After logging in to iChat (below), you can come back here and verify that the "Last Login" reflects that you have correctly logged in to the service.

8 - Set up iChat

Now we have all the information that we need. You can now set up iChat to connect to your jabber server. Do the following:

Open iChat and set up a new jabber account. For "Account Type" choose "Jabber Account", "Account Name" should be jid@localhost - where jid is your jabber ID that you set up above. The password is the password for your jabber id.

9 - Connect!

The first time you connect to your jabber server, you will get a certificate error - this is because the certificate that Openfire uses is a self-signed certificate. You will probably want to click "Show Certificate" and choose to "Always trust localhost when connection to localhost" so you won't get that warning every time you connect.

10 - Add Contacts

OK - so this really isn't a step - but I thought that "10 steps" is better - and it's a bit odd how you need to add contacts. When you want to add a contact to iChat, you need to format it in a way that jabber will know what service to add that chat with. Add your contacts in the form serviceusername@service.localhost - where serviceusername is your contact's name, and service is one of "aim", "gadugadu", "icq", "irc", "msn", "yahoo", "gtalk", "sip", or "xmpp". If your contact's name contains an @ sign (as do MSN and GTalk accounts), you need to replace the "@" in the username with "\40" - so, user@hotmail.com on the msn account would be added as user\40hotmail.com@msn.localhost .

Suggestions/Comments:


I would love to hear feedback, suggestions, and/or comments. Please leave some below!

100 comments:

Barney said...

You didn't specify whether or not your method requires manual addition of each MSN contact. Do your current MSN contacts get added automatically? Lastly, how can you create a JID without using a Jabber client? OpenFire does this for you?

Thanks

Nathan Toone said...

Yes - all your contacts (already-existing) get added automatically. At least, they did for me.

Also - as the steps outline, you create the JID within Openfire for you...Step 4 above is where you create that. You actually have to do it from within the Openfire configuration screens.

If you want, you set up Openfire to allow open registrations. Above, I explain how to do it without open registrations because I wanted it to be a bit more secure - and I didn't want to use Psi. However, you can skip steps 3, 4, and 6 - and replace step 7 with the "Psi process" that other sites explain (get Psi, discover services, log on to them, etc) I just don't like the complexity of downloading an additional piece of software to configure my iChat. That was one of the main draws of using Openfire, to me.

Arthur Lawrence said...

this is amazing, way way way easier than using PSI. I gave up trying that. Thanks for all your amazing details. Here are a few of my problems.

1>>My googletalk works fine before I found this article. So when I created localhost for my yahoo and msn, i didnt include googletalk (since its working, i didnt wanna fix whats not broken), i notice now i have 2 contact list window 1. Googletalk 2. Localhost. Am I right to say that if I want to combine them, I would have to abandoned my working googletalk and install on localhost?

2>>So if i wanna add googletalk into my localhost now, I just go back to the admin page and add another registration right? and reopen ichat?

3>>My localhost contact window shows only my yahoo contacts, my msn contacts are not there, am I right to say that msn is not connected? So how do I make it connect?

Thanks so much.

Arthur Lawrence said...

Ok forget those questions coz it worked out alright once I restarted my ichat. I got 2 more questions here.

1>> How do I set my nickname?

2>> Why can't I see the avatars of the users?

Nathan Toone said...

Yeah - I think if you want to have them combined, you'll need to add google talk to your openfire server - you can just go in and add the registration.

While you are there, you can see if your MSN is not connected. If it's not, you might want to try disconnecting your iChat and reconnecting it again. If that still doesn't work, you might have the wrong password set in the openfire administration.

I *think* (though I'm not sure) that you set your nickname in the openfire admin pages. I'm not sure where, though.

I don't know anything about the avatars - I have all my contact's pictures in addressbook - and so it uses those instead. I just ignore the ones that people send (they really bother me, anyway...)

Arthur Lawrence said...

so all your contacts uses their corresponding email address for their IMs? coz most of my friends doesnt, for example, Bree uses hotmail for her MSN but for her corresponding email, she uses YAHOO.CO.UK and she doesnt use yahoo messenger. So if this is the case, how do you get them to show their avatar?

and you say "you ignore the ones that people send" coz they bother you. You mean they actually send you avatars? doesnt it just show automatically on their nicknames? sorry if i sound dumb, If you do not think the comment is related to your article, dnt worry about publishing it. but I would appreciate if you can help me on the above questions. :) you can email me directly, joannekhow @ gmail.com

thanks again for your wonderful tip

Nathan Toone said...

In iChat, you can view the details of a contact - and it gives you the option to "Set Card" - basically, you choose someone from your address book who maps to that contact.

IE john uses john@hotmail.com for his IM, but he uses john@yahoo.com for his email. I have his email set in address book to john@yahoo.com In iChat, ctrl-click on the contact and choose "Show Info" On the "Address Card" tab, you now can click "Choose Card" (I think - all my contacts are associated already, so I don't remember what it was called). It will let you choose a card from your address book and associate the two.

It also pulls in their picture from address book (which I have set for all my contacts). I, personally, choose "Always use this picture" on the Address Card tab of the iChat contact info window. That way, I basically ignore the avatar that my buddies set - instead using the avatar that I choose for the buddy.

This integration is my main reason for wanting to switch to iChat from Adium. Adium, in my opinion is a MUCH better IM client than iChat - but when you have everything set up correctly, you can see your contact's IM status from within address book or within Mail - which is something that I really like.

Arthur Lawrence said...

I dunno if you have this problem but I notice that my ichat actually delays in sending out notifications and updating the contact list. I have some friends who has gone offline long ago but still remains online on my screen. And some friends who has come online remains offline untill I restart my ichat, that everything was updated.

Nejc Novak said...

Hey! Thanks for your instructions - they are great and very clear. However there is on issue that has been bothering me. When Openfire is started, my Macbook Pro won't go to sleep mode automatically. Do you have a solution to this problem?

Is there a way that Openfire would start and quit automatically when you start and quit the iChat?

thanks for your answer

Nathan Toone said...

I actually haven't noticed that (the sleep mode issue) - I'm not having the same issue on my MacBook Pro...

I think that you might be able to write an applescript that triggers off of iChat. I am not too familiar with iChat's applescript interface - but you can manually start and stop openfire. If you could somehow figure out how to trigger off of iChat starting and stopping, you'd be able to achieve what you are looking for.

Bigseal said...

Hi, I can use my digital movie camera with iChat instead of a Webcam, which gives enhanced images but will Open Fire allow my iChat (I am an OSX Intel user)to video chat with Yahoo and MSN PC users now, as well as text message? Also will their video images come through to iChat now from their PC Yahoo/Msn instant messengers? I would be very grateful for a solution as I have been trying for ages to make this come true.

Allison said...

Thanks for the great info! I got to step 6 but there was no AIM option... only MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Gadu and IRC. I'm trying to use my ichat to talk with MSN and Yahooers so really need the AIM option. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks so much!

Bigseal said...

there is this option in the drop down box as Apple/iChat deals with AIM or .mac as its main client. Have you got a movie camera working with iChat to PC Yahoo/MSN users yet?

cam970 said...

Hi, I'm totally new to macs! I was able to do everything in thiis incredible step by step instructional, but I'm really struggling with adding my contacts into IChat. I don't really use the address book provided with my IMac, so I'm really confused as to how to import my contacts. Can someone be so kind as to be a bit more specific on the "how to" at this step? Thanks in advance from a struggling newbie!

Carlos Teixeira said...

Just tried this easy step by step and everything went perfect but how can i send files to others hotmail buddy's in my contact list?Is it my Ichat?Thanks

Al said...

I was hoping this would be a lot easier than using Psi, and I liked your instructions, but is there any way to auto-authorize? I have about 45 people in my Yahoo buddy list and don't want to add them all individually and then have them all say "waiting for authorization."

Also, neither Yahoo nor MSN contacts auto-loaded for me. I'm on a macbook running 10.5.1. Any ideas?

Neil said...

I have successully registered my MSN buddies and can chat to them, but I cannot send files. The options are greyed out.

I'm using Mac OS Tiger.

James said...

Wow... amazing, truely amazing. The Microsoft MSN Client is hit-and-miss on weather I'm connected or not, and Adium is ... well, it's good, but it's not great.

iChat is wonderfully awesome. Thanks for laying this groundwork!

daoist said...

Does this address the issue of iChat being unable to enter password protected jabber chatrooms?

We have a local Openfire server we use internally, could I do the same thing on it (it's on Debian Etch).

I've been using Spark to connect to the password protected jabber chat and iChat to do ICQ. My preference would be to do everything with iChat.

Shawntain said...

Thanks Nathan, This really worked out great and I like how you set your own avatar for your contacts. Hope I can get video chat working too!

Ed said...

I cannot seem to get the ichat video to work for my contacts on googletalk - have not tried for ICQ or AIM yet. Everything else seems to work fine. I am not very technical but your step by step instructions have worked well so far.
Thanks.

m.s. said...

OUTSTANDING walk-through. Thank you! Of course, the web junkies always want MORE, MORE, MORE! :-)

Wish List
---------
* Video chat with all services via iSight.
* Encrypted connections for at least ICQ and AIM (a la Trillian).
* Multiple Service/Username's under Openfire Gateway Registration.

Item three may merit clarification. If I have two Yahoo ID's, one personal and one business, for instance ... then when I click Add Registration for the second, Openfire presently replaces the first. Hence, only one YIM ID at a time. Make sense?

mt said...

How awesome is this? I love it!

It worked perfectly, thanks to the GREAT and very thorough walkthrough.

Thank you!

Steven said...

Hi this is great but just to clarify there is no webcam support?

Nathan Toone said...

No - no webcam or video support. The plugins to openfire (jabber) that allow cross-platform communication aren't written to support video at this time (nor encryption).

Satyan said...

how do i setup one account say e.g.

xyz

to authenticate

abc@gmail.com - gtalk
def@msn.com - msn
pqr@yahoo.com - yahoo

also to setup only one single gtalk acc:

are this steps correct?

1. Create a user in User/Groups in Openfire tab as
userid : xyz
2. Add registration for gtalk user as
jid = xyz uname=abc@gmail.com pwd=xxx

My question is, do we need to create both these userid and jid to be same?

Kaizen said...

Thank you so much for the great help. U r article is fantastic and it is accurate and easy to follow. Couldn't do it without ur help. Thanks a bunch.

600 University Blvd, Suite 200 said...

Thank you for your instructions! They are very good and effective. I'm having a minor issue with my iChat implementation after following your instructions. Have you experienced some lost/missing messages?

In a few instances, I've been chating with somebody and I seem to not being able to receive messages. It's a minor issue, but very annoying. :-(

Ravi (Global Reach) said...

The entire day today I was fighting with this problem of getting my Yahoo on the I-Chat and finally "all thanks to your step by step help" and Openfire it is working very well. I tried half a dozen other jabber sites and psi etc etc and was not happy. Thanks Mate. Your instructions were very clear.

Hardik said...

Thanks a lot, Nathan! I tried a couple of options using psi, but wasn't happy because my main issue was the security (just like you) on other jabber servers. Its great to have your logon info on a personal server and the integration with ichat works perfect! although, openfire should allow more than one user ids per IM service.

Bigseal said...

Can a movie cam working with iChat communicate with Yahoo users using Webcams? If so how do you set this up?

Meta said...

thanks a bunch. very clear. why isn't there a link to this on the openfire page??

Brad said...

Thanks a bunch! I used this post as a springboard to setting up OpenFire on a FreeBSD machine at my office; I connect my Mac to the Yahoo and GTalk services through it. Someday my company (very small company) may use the OpenFire server to run its own chat server (so we don't have to run everything through Yahoo or Google).

Excellent writeup, I "reviewed" the post for StumbleUpon.

jyoseph said...

This article was right on the money. Thanks so much for taking the time to put it together.

ali said...

hey

it works, well i followed all the steps and it connects but i dont have any contacts... why is that?

Ian Atkinson said...

I set up iChat to use an external jabber server with MSN transport and the reliability was crap! Followed these instructions to set up a local one and its working like a charm, thank you!

Ian.

Smides said...

Thanks for the tip. I had to change the yahoo server to scsa.msg.yahoo.com to get it to work. With the default (scs.msg.yahoo.com) I kept getting failures when testing the connection.

dynamitejet said...

hi,
i got the same as Ali, above... no contacts added... (I'm configuring just for msn at the moment)
i have a hell of a lot of contacts and really don't want to add them by hand, especially as your step 10 looks like gobbledegeek to me! (no offence)
i followed everything to the letter, or at least i think i did...)
whats going on? what have i done wrong? i'm using leopard
with thanks

dynamitejet said...

fantastic... i got it... just had to wait a little, log out of (close) and log in to (open) iChat a couple of times... my contacts are there!
now the test... does it work OK??? I had so much trouble with the psi equivalent, so i'm REALLY hoping this is better!
with many thanks

anders said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
thePervertedMonk said...

Thanks for the write up.
Works like a charm.
--
Has anyone had any luck setting up and connecting to any IRC servers and channels?

My gateway config for my irc server works (test completed fine).

But getting into rooms is currently a mystery.

qabalisticbass said...

im trying to add contact but im confused as to what to do im trying to add my msn contacts because it didnt do it automatically im new to all of this given i just got my mac today and none of my attempts to add my msn contacts have failed

dynamitejet said...

A nice easy way to have all contacts together is throught the Palringo app... its multi-protocol, but not iChat itself.
OK, it has no video (cam) possibility at the moment, but is incredibly easy to set up... although most advise to install on mobile device first to eliminate crashes on the Mac itself...
Yeah, same story for the security aswell, as you're trusting your accounts to the 3rd party (palringo) but then...
Highly recommended tho

Mark said...

I must have messed up somewhere... iChat keeps telling me that I need a valid Jabber account (even though I've gone back in to check in the admin console. Any suggestions?

Assi said...

This works excellent. But are you able to videochat with your contacts? My "videochat" option is all greyed out. Suggestions?

El Magnifico said...

This worked wonderfully, many thanks!

Using PSI, contact names were all messed up, but this method works great.

Couple of things though:

- Can I disable/uninstall OpenFire after I've successfully added jabber account to ichat? Or atleast, disable logging etc (since I'd never use it anyway) to save sstem resources?

- Can I run multiple MSN accounts simultaneously? I can only run one account per provider atm.

Thanks again,
eb

El Magnifico said...

I got the same, to resolve this, enter your jabber id WITHOUT @localhost.

Enter: username
NOT: username@localhost

Hope it helps

William said...

That's really a wonderful tip! You are awesome, man.
Finally I can abandon those unstable third-party jabber servers, they always drop some messages.
Also, I am wondering, would you mind I translate this perfect article to a Chinese edition?

Assi said...

I have another problem. It seems like I am able to log in, but none of my contacts show in the window. They did before, but not anymore...

Please help!!!!

El Magnifico said...

If the (msn) contacts don't show for you, its probably an issue of openfire Gateway plugin.

Read: http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/community/plugins/im_gateway_support?view=discussions

Nathan Toone said...

@william - yes, feel free to translate this as you see fit.

@everyone else - I am actually surprised at how popular this post has become...I'm actually no longer running this setup, and am not very well-equipped (right now) to answer any questions. However, perhaps others have suggestions as well.

William said...

hi, Nathan
I put the Chinese edition on this webpage
http://mactigercat.blogspot.com/2008/08/ichat-msn.html
Thanks very much for your help and kindness.

Scott said...

For those that want to use aim or gtalk accounts without adding them as transports on your local jabber server and have them all appear in a single contact list, install Chax.

Angelica Joy said...

Thanks for this! It has been EXTREMELY helpful. I've recently installed the latest version of Adium and unfortunately whilst it shows me what I'm typing in the bottom/smaller window once I press enter I'm unable to view it on the larger window (despite the scroller moving down) and when a person replies to me via chat it shows it to me only because I've got Growlr notification but it doesn't show in the upper box where it's meant to be.

I've now permanently uninstalled Adium in lieu of using iChat. Don't know how much I like it at this stage but thanks for this option! Is there an option where I can put more than one MSN address? I've got a Gmail that I use through MSN Passport and an MSN account, trying to merge everything onto my GMail but there are some contacts that aren't merged over as yet.

Thanks very much for the time you have taken to find a solution for us all.

PS: BYU, such a beautiful University...my cousins went there before going on their missions.

sadill said...

I wanted to post a pointer to your tutorial if that's ok. Please let me know if the point is improper. And to thank you for a great tutorial. I expect thanks are due to the folks at openfire as well.
See here:
http://slmandr.wordpress.com/

Shajieuddin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Shajieuddin said...

I have username@msn.com account. I fairly new to all this and I'm facing a problem that I can't figure out. When I'm registering for multi-protocol services I get the error "Invalid username specified for legacy service". In JID text field,im entering my jid i just created and in username im entering my @msn.com username. What am I doing wrong? In gateway menu I have selected MSN.

Shajieuddin said...

Fixed the problem i stated earlier but there is an other problem. I logged into my msn account through iChat and saw all my contacts in that list. I talked to a friend and after a while, i went offline. and turned my computer off. Now after like 30 mins, I logged in again and now, there are no contact. In the admin console's gateway registration, jabber and msn accounts appear online. but no contacts in the ichat list. Can anyone help me out?

g said...

hey nathan, could you help me with sending files? i can't seem to do that ):

g said...

hey nathan, could you help me with sending files? i can't seem to do that ):

Mati said...

Nathan, thanks a lot for your help! I didn't like other approaches because they involved remote (and unknown) servers, so your guidelines were really clear and helpful!

NikNok said...

hello nathan,
thanks for this walk through
it works like a charm:)
cheers!

For others who want to add a contact, maybe u can try the same what i have done, i just added a name group of my contacts and voila it all added autmatically :D 07/11/08

Klara said...

THANKYOU! I can't believe it could be this easy? So much hassle with ISP or whatever that program was called and
This worked out (almost instantly)and I love it!!

Now I have gtalk, msn and icq in ichat! Its such a nice feeling!

Thankyou!

600 University Blvd, Suite 200 said...

Is it possible to add my Skype contacts to my iChat?

NICHOLAS said...

My friends keep saying I'm constantly going on and offline. I using a mac and its causing constant grief! Please help!

larsrasmusson said...

Thanks, your walkthrough worked like a charm. I added the MSN plugin, and it worked on the first attempt!
The added security was the main bonus for me.
Many thanks!

Marie said...

Hello Nathan

I have followed the steps to set up Openfire but once I try to log in, it says that it does not recognize me...
I am almost sure I put a valid email address and Im sure about my passport.

How can I go back?

nico said...

wow.. great.. it works.. lot lots easier than psi.. thanks bro..

Storm said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
oOo iMac oOo said...

OK, I have it working, but...

Everytime I open up iChat it prompts me to put in the password for the jabber account so I do, and check Remember this password in my keychain, then it works fine, until the next time I open up iChat and then it does it again. It never keeps it in the keychain for some reason. I removed the jabber account and recreated it and it does the same thing again.

oOo iMac oOo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Guillermo Ferrero Ferri said...

Thanks a lot for this guide. This is the best solution for chatting in the Mac. I love ichat and now finally I can use it with msn messenger and yahoo messenger. And combined with Chatx plugin, makes it even great.

Thanks a lot again!

Lawrence said...

i got to stage 7 but it said Invalid username specified for legacy service.
My username is lawrence
im admin
name is lawrence
and email is lawrencebottomley@gmail.com
the password was correct any help please???

Lawrence said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
codehead said...

This was really helpful--thanks!

One question... I just got

codehead said...

This was really helpful--thanks! Around the same time, I got friends (ah, lasses...) who wanted to chat with me from yahoo and msn, while I used iChat, and this vastly simplified life.

One question: I have Openfire running on my Mac G5 Quad. I still run that computer, but I've switch to my new Mac Pro as my main computer. Of course I could set up Openfire on it, but I already have it running on the computer right next to me on my network. I know this must be pretty easy, but I'm at a loss for the moment on how to do it.

In iChat, my Jabber account is set up as "codehead@localhost" on the G5, which obviously won't work from the other computer... I'm sure I need to involve the IP address of the G5, and maybe modify the Openfire configuration--any ideas? If not, I suppose I'll just install Openfire on the new computer.

Thanks again.

Howard said...

Just wanted to say thank you. Great tutorial, really takes the pain out of the process. You must have helped a lot of people with this blog- my thanks.

steven said...

Hello..
please help me..i've got some problem..
i can't login as an admin at step 7..
i sure that i tipe correct password...
and i've try much username, include admin too..
but still can't login..anyone can help me??

HappySpaceInvader said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
HappySpaceInvader said...

For version 3.6.4, on OS X Leopard, you may encounter a problem with logging in as "admin" in step 2. This is because the groupID throughout the OpenFire installation (215) does not map to any default groups in OS X.

After running through the set-up, but before attempting to log in to the Admin Console, you must do the following:

1. (in System Preferences) Stop OpenFire
2. (in Terminal) sudo su -
3. (in Terminal) cd /usr/local
4. (in Terminal) chgrp -R wheel openfire
5. (in System Preferences) Start OpenFire

Now you should be able to log in.

Alex B said...

Fantastic stuff!

Anyone know if this works under Snow Leopard?

Randy said...

It is now yet working on Snow Leopard, something to do with SL's 64bit Java.

Also, don't use IM Gateway any longer, use Kraken

Thomas said...

Worked perfectly on my Snow Leopard...

Thanks Nathan!

greg said...

Yes it works with snow leopard. Just needs some tweeking. See the above posts. I stopped openfire, re-installed it. Rebooted and it worked fine.

Jason said...

Thanks for doing this. I tried to follow the instructions, but despite being very careful to put in my email address and password exactly as I did during setup, I just can't seem to login to the administrator panel. It keeps saying invalid login.

Any suggestions?? I'm on Snow Leopard.

Thanks!

Grant said...

Followed all the instructions but contacts do not appear automatically, all appear continually offline, and 'iChat couldn’t send the message to msn.localhost' message appears if try to send message

Anyone have any clues please?

Macbook + Snow Leopard

Alex B said...

Works great for me under Snow Leopard using OpenFire 3.6.4, Kraken XMPP IM Gateway 1.1.2, and Yahoo Messenger.

Kevin Fjelsted said...

I have successfully configured Openfire. Ichat logs in and I see the active Jabber session in Openfire. I have enabled one gateway for Yahoo and entered my Yahoo service logon info. However even when IChat has loggged in the register screen under OpenFire for the yahoo gateway states that the last logon for Yahoo was "never."
How can I confirm that the Yahoo logon is occurring? Are there error logs for the IM gateway plugin?
-Kevin

Scott said...

I used to use this method but now instead of running Openfire server I can add the transports using PSI to my gmail (jabber) address and get MSN as needed and hence it appears in iChat now.

rosh said...

Worked like a charm. Thank you very munch.

Jon said...

I'm stuck on Step #5. I don't see "IM Gateway" as a plug-in. Is there another way to find this plug-in?

Jon said...

Hi,

I get the following message. ichat couldn't send the message to msn.localhost.

I'm using MAC OS X 10.6.2

Any help would be appreciated

Jon

SLmanDR said...

Feb-2-2010
@Jon, et al
The old IM Gateway that is in these instructions has been deprecated. Go to http://kraken.blathersource.org/ for a new gateway. Follow the download or build your own instructions and upload the new one to your Openfire console. Resume instructions in the 10 steps.
SL

Joseph said...

I'm Joseph from Korea. I saw your advice for using ichat for yahoo or msn. and followed your 10steps. but i was stopped on step5.

5 - Install the IM Gateway Plugin
In order to communicate with other services, we need to install the "IM Gateway Plugin". Do the following:

Click on the "Plugins" tab at the top of the management console. Choose "Available Plugins" on the left. Click on the "plus" sign under "Install" for the "IM Gateway".

but there is no IM Gateway there.
what can i do next?
teach me how to use yahoo or msn on ichat.
please help me to do it.

white24s@msn.com

Joseph said...

I'm Joseph from Korea. I saw your advice for using ichat for yahoo or msn. and followed your 10steps. but i was stopped on step5.

5 - Install the IM Gateway Plugin
In order to communicate with other services, we need to install the "IM Gateway Plugin". Do the following:

Click on the "Plugins" tab at the top of the management console. Choose "Available Plugins" on the left. Click on the "plus" sign under "Install" for the "IM Gateway".

but there is no IM Gateway there.
what can i do next?
teach me how to use yahoo or msn on ichat.
please help me to do it.

white24s@msn.com

Dave said...

Hi, I had the same problem of not being able to login with "admin" and the password in the Admin Console. I tried to follow your Terminal instructions but those commands couldn't be found. What can I do? I have Snow Leopard.

I would appreciate your help.
Thanks.

David

stephen..Ü said...

Great news!

You'll finally be able to connect NATIVELY to Yahoo Messenger via iChat in Mac OS X Lion! Video & Voice chat will also be supported :)

Source:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/26/mac_os_x_lion_ichat_supports_yahoo_messenger_video_and_voice_chat.html

Nathan Toone said...

Just as a note (mostly to myself), the IM Gateway plugin has been removed, and is now developed separately as Kraken - kraken.blathersource.org

Adriel said...

Hi, I followed this steps in Mac OS X Leopard and it worked perfectly. But it is not working on Lion :( for me.

Thank for helping!

Adriel said...

Tried this (Openfire) in Lion but it did not work at all, now I use a plugin for iChat called Cocoon: http://cocoon.drinkbrainjuice.com/

It works. Just install it and go straight to iChat->Add account and there it is....

Thanks.