Snikket Server - Your own messaging server in a box

[3699n]

@murgero Are there any updates on your app? I would love to use it!

[djxx]

@murgero - sorry, not seeing an option to PM you. Can you give us an update here on how Snikket is working for you? I'm willing to put some money towards making a custom app for this. I think doing Snikket + 2-3 more configuration options will be enough for more self hosters.

[archos]

Hi, I just want to dust off the XMPP discussion a bit. It's a real shame that there is no XMPP on Cloudron yet. I've been using Snikket for maybe 4 years on another VPS and in all that time there hasn't been a problem. I'm just doing server updates. Snikket is really fast and hassle free for a smaller group. Unfortunately I am not skilled enough to install Snikket on Cloudron. It would be really great if an app could be added to Cloudron.

[girish]

@archos running prosody is a big challenge with so many options. Unfortunately, we (cloudron team) has no expertise in this to even package prosody reliably. It's one of the reasons we gave up on jitsi too. It's too complex and not clear what is needed and what is not.

[LoudLemur]

@girish We have been running Jitsi on Cloudron for agest and it still works well.

I hope somebody can manage XMPP on Cloudron for us soon.

[archos]

@girish Yes, I understand. Thank you for the information.

[LoudLemur]

Snicket seems to only have clients for Android and Mac:
https://github.com/search?q=topic%3Aapp+org%3Asnikket-im&type=repositories

[jdaviescoates]

Here is the web portal:

https://github.com/snikket-im/snikket-web-portal

And here are the self-hosting instructions:

https://github.com/snikket-im/snikket-selfhosted

And here is the source repository for building Snikket service Docker images:

https://github.com/snikket-im/snikket-server

[murgero]

@LoudLemur Snikket is just an XMPP server - any XMPP client that supports the same XMPP Extensions it uses it will work fine.

[LoudLemur]

Lets support XMPP on Cloudron by packaging Snickket! There is an ai summary of progress since @robi made the original request here:

https://privatebin.demo.cloudron.io/?39e1a2ac0124f319#7wVtyc66t51BK2SpX7TudDPVpZm5sDqSmJCDvsrBqCXn

[djxx]

Thanks for the upvote! I'm biased, but I think Prosody is the better choice. Snikket has too many things they do not (and possibly never will) support. The #1 reason I didn't package Snikket is not being able to use my TLD for accounts. It's a common convention to use user@domain.com for both e-mail and XMPP, but Snikket doesn't support this. The #2 reason is SSO - Snikket doesn't support it but SSO is one of my favorite features of most Cloudron apps.

[jdaviescoates]

@djxx said in Snikket Server - Your own messaging server in a box:

The #1 reason I didn't package Snikket is not being able to use my TLD for accounts. It's a common convention to use user@domain.com for both e-mail and XMPP, but Snikket doesn't support this.

Really? That sounds very odd. Does it require subdomains, or what?

[djxx]

@jdaviescoates What it requires is that your username matches the TLD it is deployed to, which means it needs to be installed as the "root" application on that domain. This is incompatible with Cloudron, and frankly with how many organizations operate. It's very common to have XMPP installed somewhere like xmpp.domain.com , and the protocol supports configuration to use the TLD for accounts. This is one of the areas where Snikket is firmly standing by "it should be so simple and require no configuration" - so either you install it at the root or you live with ugly usernames like user@xmpp.domain.com.

I don't think it's worth the time to customize something that doesn't want to be customized - but rather use something that is meant to be configured and come up with sane defaults that fit Cloudron. That's what I've tried to do with my Prosody packaging.

[robi]

Maybe it's a simple thing to adjust in the code and have a fork.

Then there is the maintenance issue.

[djxx]

@robi said in Snikket Server - Your own messaging server in a box:

Maybe it's a simple thing to adjust in the code and have a fork.

Then there is the maintenance issue.

Yes, the maintenance would be quite an issue. I guess Snikket will put 0 effort into not breaking customizations they told people not to make in the first place.

Prosody (and ejabberd) take care to be backwards compatible with older configurations, and follow a well-documented deprecation process when they're going to make breaking changes.

[jdaviescoates]

Thanks for explaining. A shame as I liked the sound of Snikket (and it's by one of the lead devs of Prosody, I think)

[robi]

@jdaviescoates can you ping him and ask how hard the upkeep would be for a new fork the way we need it?

Perhaps call it Snicketteer

[djxx]

At this point, I don't think the issue is having something that can be packaged. I've already packaged Prosody and it's working fine on my Cloudron. The problem is all the "hacky" things I had to do to make it work that aren't currently compatible with how packaging works - and Snikket will need to do some of those same things. So, our issue is still getting enough attention from the Cloudron team to get XMPP over the finish line.

[murgero]

@djxx Do you have a repo link? Would love to see if there is a way to start moving away from the hacky stuff and get this on the store!

[djxx]

@murgero https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/10465/xmpp-server-prosody/44?_=1769150280326 This is the best place to look. I've pushed a repo, I've made a docker image, and I've listed the steps I followed to set it up on my own server. It's been running for over 8 months now and I haven't had issues, other than the workarounds I have to do for Cloudron packaging limitations.