ejabberd administration from command-line, XMPP client, and more

ProcessOne - Nicolas Vérité - September 23, 2009

ejabberd has a powerful set of commands for administrative purposes that you can use on the command-line or your standard XMPP client.

ejabberd provides two handy administration interfaces to execute commands:

  • ejabberdctl command line script: for use in your regular terminal or via SSH
  • Ad-Hoc Commands (XEP-0050): for use in your regular standard XMPP client

You can get the full list of available commands by launching the ejabberdctl command list script when ejabberd is running. For example, in ejabberd 2.1.0, you have those commands:

$ ejabberdctl
Usage: ejabberdctl [--node nodename] [--auth user host password] command [options]

Available commands in this ejabberd node:
  backup file                                                         Store the database to backup file
  connected_users                                                     List all established sessions
  connected_users_number                                              Get the number of established sessions
  delete_expired_messages                                             Delete expired offline messages from database
  delete_old_messages days                                            Delete offline messages older than DAYS
  dump file                                                           Dump the database to text file
  dump_table file table                                               Dump a table to text file
  export_piefxis dir                                                  Export data of all users in the server to PIEFXIS files (XEP-0227)
  export_piefxis_host dir host                                        Export data of users in a host to PIEFXIS files (XEP-0227)
  get_loglevel                                                        Get the current loglevel
  help [--tags [tag] | com?*]                                         Show help (try: ejabberdctl help help)
  import_dir file                                                     Import users data from jabberd14 spool dir
  import_file file                                                    Import user data from jabberd14 spool file
  import_piefxis file                                                 Import users data from a PIEFXIS file (XEP-0227)
  incoming_s2s_number                                                 Number of incoming s2s connections on the node
  install_fallback file                                               Install the database from a fallback file
  load file                                                           Restore the database from text file
  mnesia [info]                                                       show information of Mnesia system
  mnesia_change_nodename oldnodename newnodename oldbackup newbackup  Change the erlang node name in a backup file
  outgoing_s2s_number                                                 Number of outgoing s2s connections on the node
  register user host password                                         Register a user
  registered_users host                                               List all registered users in HOST
  rename_default_nodeplugin                                           Update PubSub table from ejabberd trunk SVN to 2.1.0
  reopen_log                                                          Reopen the log files
  restart                                                             Restart ejabberd
  restore file                                                        Restore the database from backup file
  status                                                              Get ejabberd status
  stop                                                                Stop ejabberd
  unregister user host                                                Unregister a user
  user_resources user host                                            List user's connected resources

Examples:
  ejabberdctl restart
  ejabberdctl --node ejabberd@host restart

Commands to start an ejabberd node:
  start  Start an ejabberd node in server mode
  debug  Attach an interactive Erlang shell to a running ejabberd node
  live   Start an ejabberd node in live (interactive) mode

You also have access to all these commands with any standard XMPP client that supports Ad-Hoc Commands, and XEP-0004: Data Forms. Of course your Jabber account must have admin privilege in ejabberd to execute the commands.

image

The dialog box for Ad-Hoc Commands, and below, the list of available commands:

image

In addition to the ejabberdctl script and the XMPP client interface, you can execute commands in several other ways if you install the corresponding modules:

  • ejabberd_xmlrpc allows XML-RPC calls
  • mod_rest allows HTTP POSTs
  • mod_shcommands provides a new page in ejabberd’s WebAdmin
  • service discovery

Here is the service discovery under Psi+:

image

Here is there ejabberd’s WebAdmin interface:

image

And finally, you can install mod_admin_extra, which provides many more commands for specific tasks, like modify roster, vCard, and shared roster groups. There is also mod_muc_admin, which provides commands to administer the MUC service: create, destroy, list, configure rooms…

Note: the concepts and features described in this post apply to ejabberd 2.1.0 and newer. Older versions do not include all the commands described here.



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