Summary: Hands-on step-by-step guide that shows how to set up a federated chat server based on Prosody 0.11 configured for security, mobile messaging, rich features and ease of use.
[TOC]
Introduction
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This is a guide to set up a modern XMPP server focused on security and mobile messaging. The whole guide assumes Debian stable running on the server, the fact that you will end up hosting a few of your friends and that you have some basic skills working on a linux command line.
Please note that if you've followed this guide in the past you might need to have a look at [the update considerations](#attention-upgrading-from-previous-versions)
Set up firewall and DNS
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To make your server communicate make sure following ports are open in your firewall:
:::console
5000 (for proxying large file transfers between clients)
5222 (for client to server)
5269 (server to server)
5281 (default https port for prosody)
Additionally make sure you have set up a domain name and have A-records for the following subdomains:
Pick an authentication method that [best fits your situation](https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#getting-certificates-and-choosing-plugins). If you don't have a webserver running, using the 'standalone' option works well.
Should you succeed, you will be able to read something like:
Make a backup of the default prosody configuration and install [the one by the homebrewserver.club](https://homebrewserver.club/downloads/prosody.0.11.cfg.lua)
-- iOS typically end the connection when an app runs in the background and requires use of Apple's Push servers to wake up and receive a message. Enabling this module allows your server to do that for your contacts on iOS.
-- However we leave it commented out as it is another example of vertically integrated cloud platforms at odds with federation, with all the meta-data-based surveillance consequences that that might have.
"server_contact_info"; --add contact info in the case of issues with the server
allow_registration = false; -- Enable to allow people to register accounts on your server from their clients, for more information see http://prosody.im/doc/creating_accounts
Alternatively you can change `allow_registration = false;` to `allow_registration = true;` in the config (line 35) to allow users to register accounts on your server via their clients.
Now you can try connecting to your own server by using a client like Gajim or Conversations. Login with the above configured username and password.
If you have questions about Prosody, the project's [documentation](http://prosody.im/doc) is quite good. If you can't find answers there, try contacting prosody developers and users directly via [the Prosody XMPP chatroom](xmpp:prosody.conference.prosody.im?join)
This guide is a companion to our article [Have You Considered The Alternative?](http://homebrewserver.club/have-you-considered-the-alternative.html) on instant messaging. Also check out our guide on [XMPP clients](http://homebrewserver.club/picking-modern-xmpp-clients.html).
Previous versions of this guide[^1] included instructions how to set up a MySQL/MariaDB database back-end. That is because earlier versions of prosody had SQL as a dependency for message archiving. This is no longer the case. The new guide is lighter and leaves out MySQL/MariaDB in favor of the inbuilt file-based storage. This should be sufficient for hundreds of users.
[^1]: Previous articles descibed how to set up [Prosody 0.9](https://homebrewserver.club/drafts/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server-0.9.html) and [Prosody 0.10](https://homebrewserver.club/drafts/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server-0.10.html)
