ejabberd won't startup

[tom at diogunix.com]

update on the issue with Jails and Erlang 14B:


> > Hi everybody dealing with ejabberd and/or erlang in a FreeBSD8-Jail !
> > 
> > I've built the ejabberd port (with ODBC support / the Erlang MySQL
> > driver) two days ago but can't get it to run.
> > 
> > # ejabberdctl start
> > 
> > spits out a huge bunch of Erlang error messages (unreadable for most
> > humans), obviously saying that it can't connect properly to the
> > loopback interface on Port 4369 (respectively connects but then
> > immediately stops, causing a crash dump and not able to "register it's
> > node"). Tcpdump shows 8 pakets captured when pointing to the lo0
> > interface.
> > 
> > The jail is an ordinary Jail with no special configuration (just 1 IP
> > and a proper hostname, running Postfix/Dovecot with MySQL just fine).
> > PF or it's ruleset too seems not to be the cause as Erlang's behaviour
> > is the same even with a switched off PF. Restarting the Jail and
> > triple-checking it's parameters did not help too.
> > 
> > As the error can be reproduced solely with Erlang (without even
> > starting ejabberd), the ejabberd.cfg file however does not seem to
> > play any role.
> > 
> > I was told, this actually was an Erlang issue and so I first went to
> > the Erlang folks (erlang mailing list). At least until now, they
> > unfortunately could not help me making a real step.
> > 
> > So, I got stuck and now am in search for people successfully running
> > ejabberd in a Jail. I have seen reports from the web on success and
> > even I too had a test installation in a Jail running half a year ago
> > (unfortunately did not note all details  before I wiped that testing
> > machine).
> > 
> > My suggestion is, it might have something to do with the file
> > /usr/locaal/etc/ejabberd/inetrc
> > (responsible for name resolution for Erlang)
> > 
> > So, are there any Jail/ejabberd experts out there ?
> > Or just people having it up and running ?
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I believe we are facing the same issue. Our setup is ejabberd-2.1.5 in
> a FreeBSD 7.3 amd64 jail and the workaround we found is running an
> older version of erlang (erlang-r13b04_3,1). You can find the old
> erlang port files in the FreeBSD CVS repository or here:
> 
>   http://noc.ntua.gr/~christia/erlang.tgz
> 
> Regards,
> Panagiotis

I experienced the phenomenon with Erlang 14B:

# erl
Erlang R14B (erts-5.8.1) [source] [smp:4:4] [rq:4] [async-threads:0] [hipe] 
[kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V5.8.1

The error message then is:

> ejabberd Start:
> 
> # ejabberdctl status
> {error_logger,{{2010,11,16},{9,56,20}},"Protocol: ~p: register error: 
~p~n",
> ["inet_tcp",{{badmatch,{error,epmd_close}},[{inet_tcp_dist,listen,1},

but the same pops up when just starting up an Erlang node without any 
ejabberd.

From the Erlang mailing list I learned:

"epmd in R14B was changed to allow some messages (like name registrations)
only from 127/8. "

So, this might explain why there are those problems with the new Erlang in a 
Jail.

The most recent report of a working Erlang/ejabberd in a Jail I have found 
via Google is from around Janary 2010. 

So, if there is no newer positiv experience with Erlang 14B in a Jail it 
might be a good idea to provide a Port for ejabberd with an older Erlang.

But still I'm not sure whether or not it is possible to get Erlang 14B to 
run in a Jail.

Any further hints / ideas out there ?

Tom