The sys admin's daily grind: Prosody
Speed Chat

Columnist Charly Kühnast has been looking into the options of running an instant messaging back end. He chose a particularly lean and easily extendable version.
Prosody [1] is a lean XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, formerly known as Jabber) server in Lua. It can speak IPv6, supports encrypted transport and – in the default configuration – very little else. You can, however, extend Prosody with modules to add virtually any kind of functionality you need. The number of modules is nearly into three figures [2].
Setting up a basic configuration is a two-step process: You need to create a user and then set up a domain. For my first steps on my home test network, I will be using example.com
as the domain, but you can easily replace this with another domain when you go live. The following command sets up the user:
sudo prosodyctl adduser charly@example.com
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
AerynOS Alpha Release Available
With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.
-
RingReaper Malware Poses Danger to Linux Systems
A new kind of malware exploits modern Linux kernels for I/O operations.
-
Happy Birthday, Linux
On August 25, Linux officially turns 34.
-
VirtualBox 7.2 Has Arrived
With early support for Linux kernel 6.17 and other new additions, VirtualBox 7.2 is a must-update for users.
-
Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Available for Testing
Some interesting new additions and improvements are coming to Linux Mint. Check out the Linux Mint 22.2 Beta to give it a test run.
-
Debian 13.0 Officially Released
After two years of development, the latest iteration of Debian is now available with plenty of under-the-hood improvements.
-
Upcoming Changes for MXLinux
MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.
-
A New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle, a Linux AI assistant, works with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.