First, make sure that your packages are up-to-date. Then install ejabberd from the official Debian repositories:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get install ejabberd

Initial configuration can be done via debconf:

dpkg-reconfigure ejabberd

This will prompt you for:

• A hostname – yourserver.tld.
• An administrative user – name it whatever you like.
• A password for the administrative user.

At this point, ejabberd is now functional, but you may want to do some fine-tuning. The configuration file is located under /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cfg. Open this file with your favorite text editor. Here you will see server variables, and you can edit them accordingly.

Ejabberd comes with three means of administrating it:

• The command-line tool ejabberdctl.
• The possibility to use your client (Pidgin, for example, supports this).
• A web interface listening on yourdomain.tld:5280.

If you don’t need the web interface, then you can comment out the following sequence:

{5280, ejabberd_http, [
                       %%{request_handlers,
                       %% [
                       %%  {["pub", "archive"], mod_http_fileserver}
                       %% ]},
                       %%captcha,
                       http_bind,
                       http_poll,
                       web_admin
                      ]}

The built-in certificate of ejabberd is not valid and will prompt a security warning from your client. If possible, you should replace it with a certificate from a valid certificate authority (CA).

{s2s_use_starttls, true}.
{s2s_certfile, "/path/to/your/certificate.pem"}.

After making any changes to the configuration file, ejabberd needs to be restarted:

service ejabberd restart

You are now ready to use your new XMPP server. We recommend reviewing the official documentation, as it has a lot of useful features that aren’t covered here. For example, shared rosters and transport functionality for other instant messaging services.