NAME
ejabberdctl -- a control interface of ejabberd Jabber/XMPP server
SYNOPSIS
ejabberdctl [--node nodename] [--auth user host password] [command
[options]]
DESCRIPTION
ejabberdctl is a front end to the ejabberd Jabber/XMPP server. It is
designed to help the administrator control the functioning of the
running ejabberd daemon.
This command must be run either by a superuser or by the user ejabberd,
otherwise it will fail to start or to connect to the ejabberd instance.
OPTIONS
--node nodename
Specifies remote Erlang node to connect to. Default value is
ejabberd. If the node name does not contain a symbol @ then the
actual node name becomes node@host where host is short hostname
(usually it coincides with `hostname -s`). If the node name
contains a symbol @ and its hostname part is a FQDN then
ejabberd will use so-called long names (see erl(1) manual page
and look for options -name and -sname for details).
Examples of --node option:
ejabberd Connect to locally run ejabberd server at node
ejabberd@`hostname -s`.
ejabberd@otherhost Connect to remotely run ejabberd server at
node ejabberd@otherhost.
ejabberd@localhost Connect to locally run ejabberd server at
node ejabberd@localhost.
ejabberdctl honors ERLANG_NODE environment variable from
/etc/default/ejabberd, see below.
--auth user host password
If restriction of access to ejabberdctl commands is configured
(see the "Restrict Execution with AccessCommands" section in the
Installation and Operation Guide), this option must be used to
authenticate the entity requesting execution of the command.
user and host are the respective parts of the entity JID and
password is either a plain text password to authenticate that
JID or the MD5 hash of that password.
--concurrent
Due to the way ejabberdctl is implemented, it is normally not
possible to run two instances of it in parallel-the second one
will fail. This is OK in a common case when ejabberdctl is only
run manually from time to time by a server administrator; if,
conversely, there is a chance for several instances of
ejabberdctl to be active at the same time (say, automated
registration of new users on an actively used site), you can
pass the --concurrent option to ejabberdctl which will ensure no
clash will ever occur.
Usage of the --concurrent option creates additional pressure on
the server resources, and that is why the behaviour it
implements is not the default. This issue is described in more
detail in /usr/share/doc/ejabberd/README.Debian
Note that the semantics of this option can be changed in a
future release.
COMMANDS
Some commands to ejabberdctl are single words, like status, and some
are multi-word, like reopen-log; to join the adjacent words of the
multi-word commands you can use either the underline ("_") symbol or
the minus sign ("-") or a mixture of them, so all the following forms
are valid: status_list_host, status-list-host, status_list-host.
When run without any command specified, ejabberdctl prints the list of
available commands and their short descriptions.
The following commands can be used:
help [--tags [tag] | PATTERN]
The help command without any options does the same thing as
running ejabberdctl without any command specified -- it prints
the list of available commands along with their short
descriptions.
The --tags option specified alone makes the help command print
the list of supported "help tags" which group ejabberdctl
commands on the basis of their purpose (such as debugging
commands, backup commands etc).
The --tags option specified with a tag tag makes the help
command print the list of commands associated wih the help tag
tag along with their short descriptions.
If the help command is followed by a word other than "--tags",
this word is interpreted as a pattern specifying a set of
commands to print the help on. In this pattern, a "*" character
matches any number of characters, including zero, and a "?"
character matches any single character. Note that when running
ejabberdctl with this form of the help command from the shell,
you have to protect the characters in the pattern from being
interpreted by the shell.
debug Attache an interactive Erlang shell to a running ejabberd
server. To detach it press Ctrl+G, then input a character "q"
and hit <Return>.
status Request status of the Erlang virtual machine where ejabberd
server is running.
stop Stop the ejabberd server and its Erlang virtual machine.
stop-kindly delay announcement
Broadcast an announcement announcement to all connected users,
wait delay seconds and then stop the ejabberd server and its
Erlang virtual machine.
This command is interactive: it dumps the progress of the
shutdown sequence to stdout (including waiting for the grace
period to pass).
The announcement string is unconditionally interpreted as a
sequence of UTF-8 characters no matter what locale settings the
server and ejabberdctl processes see.
restart
Restarts the ejabberd server inside Erlang virtual machine. Note
that if you want to change VM options (enable/disable kernel
poll or SMP, increase number of ports or database tables) you
have to stop ejabberd completely and then start it again.
reopen-log
Force the ejabberd server to reopen its log files
(/var/log/ejabberd/ejabberd.log and /var/log/erlang.log by
default). If module mod_http_fileserver is loaded then force
the ejabberd server to reopen its weblog file.
register user server password
Register user user with password password at ejabberd virtual
host server.
unregister user server
Unregister user user at ejabberd virtual host server.
backup filepath
Backup user database of the ejabberd server to file filepath.
The directory in which filepath is located must be writable by
the user "ejabberd".
restore filepath
Restore user database of the ejabberd server from backup file
filepath.
The file filepath must be readable by the user "ejabberd".
install-fallback filepath
Install a backup to filepath as fallback. The fallback will be
used to restore the database at the next start-up.
The directory in which filepath is located must be writable by
the user "ejabberd".
dump filepath
Dump user database of the ejabberd server to text file filepath.
The directory in which filepath is located must be writable by
the user "ejabberd".
load filepath
Restore user database of the ejabberd server from text file
filepath.
The file filepath must be readable by the user "ejabberd".
dump-table file table
Dump the specified database table to the specified text file.
The directory in which file is located must be writable by the
user "ejabberd".
import-file filepath
Import user data from jabberd 1.4 spool file filepath. For
example, if filepath is .../example.org/user.xml then imported
username will be user and it will be imported to virtual server
example.org.
The file filepath must be readable by the user "ejabberd".
import-dir directorypath
Import user data from jabberd 1.4 spool directory directorypath.
Directory name should be the name of virtual server to import
users.
The directory directorypath and the files in it must be readable
by the user "ejabberd".
mnesia-change-nodename oldnodename newnodename oldbackup newbackup
Reads the backup file oldbackup (which should have been created
using the ejabberdctl backup command) and writes its contents to
the file newbackup while replacing in it all occurences of the
Erlang node name oldnodename with the newnodename.
This should be used to "migrate" the ejabberd database to the
new hostname of the machine on which ejabberd runs in case this
hostname is about to change. This is because ejabberd is
actually served by an Erlang node which is bound to the name of
the physical host to provide for clustering.
rename-default-nodeplugin
Since release 2.0.0 and up to release 2.1.0, the implementation
of publish-subscribe (pubsub) in ejabberd used a plugin named
"node_default" as the default node plugin. Starting from
release 2.1.0 this functionality is provided by the new plugin
named "hometree". In the case of upgrading from an older
version of ejabberd, its pubsub database might retain references
to the old name of this plugin, "node_default", and this command
can be used to upgrade the pubsub database, changing all these
references to the new name - "hometree".
Note that ejabberd automatically runs this command if you update
from an ejabberd release 2.0.5 or older.
Running this command on already updated database does nothing.
delete-expired-messages
Delete expired offline messages from ejabberd database.
delete-old-messages n
Delete offline messages older than n days from ejabberd
database.
mnesia info
Show some information about the Mnesia system (see mnesia(3),
function info).
mnesia Show all information about the Mnesia system, such as
transaction statistics, database nodes, and configuration
parameters (see mnesia(3), function system_info).
mnesia key
Show information about the Mnesia system according to key
specified (see mnesia(3), function system_info for valid key
values).
incoming-s2s-number
Print number of incoming server-to-server connections to the
node.
outgoing-s2s-number
Print number of outgoing server-to-server connections from the
node.
user-resources user server
List all connected resources of user user@server.
connected-users-number
Report number of established users' sessions.
connected-users
Print full JIDs of all established sessions, one on a line.
connected-users-info
Print detailed information of all established sessions, one
session on a line, with each session described as a list of
whitespace-separated values: full JID, connection string (such
as "c2s", "c2s_tls" etc), client IP address, client port number,
resource priority, name of an Erlang node serving the session,
session duration (in seconds).
connected-users-vhost server
Print full JIDs of all users registered at the virtual host
server which are currently connected to the ejabberd server, one
on a line.
registered-users server
List all the users registered on the ejabberd server at the
virtual host server.
get-loglevel
Print the log level (an integer number) ejabberd is operating
on.
EXPORTING DATA TO PIEFXIS (XEP-0227) FORMAT
The commands described in this section require availability of the
exmpp library which is not shipped with ejabberd. Your can download
its source code from http://exmpp.org.
export-piefxis dir
Export data of all users registered on all virtual hosts of the
server to a set of PIEFXIS files which will be stored in the
directory dir.
The directory dir must be writable by the user "ejabberd".
export-piefxis-host dir host
Export data of all the users registered on the specified virtual
host host to a set of PIEFXIS files which will be stored in the
directory dir.
The directory dir and the files in it must be readable by the
user "ejabberd".
import-piefxis file
Import users' data from a PIEFXIS file file.
The file file must be readable by the user "ejabberd".
EXTRA OPTIONS
An optional module mod_admin_extra adds a number of other commands.
While it is enabled by default, you might want to check it is actually
enabled in the configuration file (especially if you're upgrading from
pre-2.1 series of ejabberd).
To enable these additional commands add mod_admin_extra to the
{modules} section of ejabberd config file and make it looking as the
following:
{modules,
[
...
{mod_admin_extra, []},
...
]}.
Most of additional commands possess extended descriptions which can be
printed using ejabberdctl help command
The new commands are:
add-rosteritem localuser localserver user server nick group
subscription
Add to the roster of the user localuser registered on the
virtual host localserver a new entry for the user user on the
server server, assign the nickname nick to it, place this entry
to the group group and set its subscription type to subscription
which is one of "none", "from", "to" or "both".
delete-rosteritem localuser localserver user server
Delete from the roster of the user localuser on the server
localserver an entry for the JID user@server.
ban-account user host reason
Ban the user user registered on the virtual host host. This is
done by kicking their active sessions with the reason reason and
replacing their password with a randomly generated one.
kick-session user host resource reason
Kick the session opened by the user user registered on the
virtual host host and having the resource resource bound to it
providing the reason reason.
change-password user host newpass
Change password of the user user registered on the virtual host
host to newpass.
check-account user host
Exit with code 0 if the user user is registered on the virtual
host host, exit with code 1 otherwise.
check-password user host password
Exit with code 0 the user user registered on the virtual host
host has password password, exit with code 1 otherwise.
check-password-hash user host passwordhash hashmethod
Exit with code 0 if the user user registered on the virtual host
host has a password, the hash of which, calculated using the
hashmethod is equal to the hash passwordhash; exit with code 1
otherwise.
Allowed hashing methods are "md5" and "sha" (for SHA-1).
compile file
Compile and reload the Erlang source code file file.
The file file must be readable by the user "ejabberd".
load-config file
Load ejabberd configuration from the file file.
The file file must be readable by the user "ejabberd".
Note that loading config to a database does not mean reloading
the server -- for example it's impossible to add/remove virtual
hosts without server restart. In fact, only ACLs, access rules
and a few global options are applied upon reloading.
delete-old-users days
Delete accounts and all related data of users who did not log on
the server for days days.
delete-old-users-vhost host days
Delete accounts and all related data of users registered on the
virtual host host who did not log on the server for days days.
export2odbc host path
Export Mnesia database tables keeping the data for the virtual
host host to a set of text files created under the specified
directory path, which must exist and must be writable by the
user "ejabberd".
get-cookie
Print the cookie used by the Erlang node which runs ejabberd
instance ejabberdctl controls.
get-roster user host
Print the roster of the user user registered on the virtual host
host.
The information printed is a series of lines each representing
one roster entry; each line consist of four fields separated by
tab characters representing, in this order: the JID of an entry,
its nickname, subscription type and group.
push-roster file user host
Push items from the file file to the roster of the user user
registered on the virtual host host.
The format of file containing roster items is the same as used
for output by the get-roster command.
push-roster-all file
The format of file containing roster items is the same as used
for output by the get-roster command.
push-alltoall host group
All entries for all the users registered on the virtual host
host to the rosters of all the users registered on this virtual
host. The created entries are assigned to the roster group
group.
process-rosteritems action subs asks users contacts
FIXME no information available. Do not use.
get-vcard user host name
Print the contents of the field name of a vCard belonging to the
user user registered on the virtual host host. If this field is
not set of the user did not create their vCard, and empty string
is printed (that is, containing only the line break).
For example name can be "FN" or "NICKNAME" For retrieving email
address use "EMAIL USERID". Names and descriptions of other
supported fields can be obtained from the XEP-0054 document
(http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-00.html).
get-vcard2 user host name subname
Print the contents of the subfield subname of the field name of
a vCard belonging to the user user registered on the virtual
host host. If this field is not set of the user did not create
their vCard, and empty string is printed (that is, containing
only the line break).
set-vcard user host name content
Set the field name to the string content in the vCard of the
user user registered on the virtual host host.
set-vcard2 user host name subname content
Set the subfield subname of the field name to the string content
in the vCard of the user user registered on the virtual host
host.
set-nickname user host nickname
Set the "nickname" field in the vCard of the user user
registered on the virtual host host to nickname.
num-active-users host days
Print number of users registered on the virtual host host who
logged on the server at least once during the last days days.
num-resources user host
Print the number of resources (that is, active sessions) the
user user registered on the virtual host host currently has. If
the specified user has no active sessions, print the string "0".
resource-num user host num
Print the resource of a session number num the user user
registered on the virtual host host has currently open. num
must be a positive integer, greater than or equal to 1.
If the session number specified is less than 1 or greater than
the number of sessions opened by the user, an error message is
printed.
remove-node node
Remove the Erlang node node from the Mnesia database cluster.
send-message-chat from to body
Send a message of type "chat" from the JID from to the (local or
remote) JID to containing the body body. Both bare and full
JIDs are supported.
send-message-headline from to subject body
Send a message of type "headline" from the JID from to the
(local or remote) JID to containing the body body and subject
subject. Both bare and full JIDs are supported.
send-stanza-c2s user server resource stanza
Send XML string stanza to the stream to which the session
user@server/resource is bound. The stanza must be well-formed
(according to RFC 3920) and the session must be active.
For example:
ejabberdctl send-stanza-c2s john_doe example.com Bahamas \
'<message id="1" type="chat"><body>How goes?</body></message>'
srg-create group host name description display
Create a new shared roster group group on the virtual host host
with displayed name name, description description and displayed
groups display.
srg-delete group host
Delete the shared roster group group from the virtual host host.
srg-user-add user server group host
Add an entry for the JID user@server to the group group on the
virtual host host.
srg-user-del user server group host
Delete an entry for the JID user@server from the group group on
the virtual host host.
srg-list host
List the shared roster groups on the virtual host host.
srg-get-info group host
Print info on the shared roster group group on the virtual host
host.
srg-get-members group host
Print members of the shared roster group group on the virtual
host host.
private-get user server element namespace
Prints an XML stanza which would be sent by the server it it
received an IQ-request of type "get" with the
<element xmlns="namespace"/>
payload from user@server.
For example:
ejabberdctl private-get john_doe example.com \
storage storage:bookmarks
would return user's bookmarks, managed according to XEP-0048.
private-set user server element
Allows to simulate user@server sending an IQ-request of type
"set" containing element as its payload; the payload is
processed by the code managing users' private storage (XEP-0049
"Private XML Storage").
The string element must be a well-formed XML obeying the rules
defined for IQ-request payloads in RFC 3920.
privacy-set user server element
Allows to simulate user@server sending an IQ-request of type
"set" containing element as its payload; this payload is
processed by the code managing privacy lists (XEP-0016 "Privacy
lists").
The string element must be a well-formed XML obeying the rules
defined for IQ-request payloads in RFC 3920.
stats topic
Print statistics on the topic topic. The valid topics and their
meaning are:
registeredusers Print the number of users registered on the
server.
onlineusers Print the number of users currently logged into the
server.
onlineusersnode Print the number of users logged into the server
which are served by the current ejabberd Erlang node.
uptimeseconds Print the uptime of the current ejabberd Erlang
node, in seconds.
stats-host host topic
Print statistics on the topic topic for the virtual host host.
The valid topics and their meaning are:
registeredusers Print the number of users registered on the host
host.
onlineusers Print the number of users currently logged into the
server, which are registered on the host host.
status-list status
Print the users currently logged into the server and having the
presence status status. The entries are printed one per line;
each entry consists of the four fields separated by tab
characters, in this order: the node part of the user's JID, the
host part of the user's JID, the user's session resource, the
priority of the user's session and the user's status
description.
The status parameter can take the following values: "available",
"away", "xa", "dnd" and "chat".
status-list-host host status
Print the users currently logged into the server which are
registered on the virtual host host and have the presence status
status.
The available values for the status parameter and the format of
the output data are the same as of the status-list subcommand.
status-num status
Print the number of users currently logged into the server and
having the presence status status.
The available values for the status parameter are the same as of
the status-list subcommand.
status-num-host host status
Print the number of users currently logged into the server which
are registered on the virtual host host and have the presence
status status.
The available values for the status parameter are the same as of
the status-list subcommand.
user-sessions-info user server
Print detailed information on all sessions currently established
by user@server. For each session, one line of output is
generated, containing the following fields separated by tab
characters: connection string (such as "c2s", "c2s_tls" etc),
remote IP address, remote port number, priority of the resource
bound to this session, name of an Erlang node serving the
session, session uptime (in seconds), resource string.
NOTES
ejabberdctl starts distributed Erlang node ejabberddebug (if run with
debug option) or ejabberdctl (if run with any other options). If the
ejabberd server's node name to connect to includes FDQN as a hostname
Erlang option -name is used. Otherwise ejabberdctl uses short names
(-sname option).
Note that ejabberdctl does not append hostname to its own node name
leaving this to Erlang emulator. It usually follows `hostname -f` to
find a hostname if long names are used or `hostname -s` in case of
short names, but may fail in case of unusual networking settings. A
known case of failure is using long names when `hostname -f` doesn't
return FDQN. If ejabberdctl cannot create Erlang node then it cannot
control ejabberd server.
ejabberdctl does not do anything by itself except for connecting to the
running ejabberd instance and telling it about the action requested by
the user. Hence all the ejabberdctl's operations involving writing or
reading files or directories are actually performed by the server
process which runs with the uid and gid of the user and group
"ejabberd", respectively. This must be taken into account when
requesting such operations to be done.
OPTIONS FILE
The file /etc/default/ejabberd contains specific options. Two of them
are used by ejabberdctl.
ERLANG_NODE
Use specified string as Erlang node of ejabberd server to
connect. It overrides default ejabberd node name. The string may
take one of the following forms: nodename, nodename@hostname or
nodename@hostname.domainname.
FIREWALL_WINDOW
Use the specified range of ports to communicate with the other
Erlang nodes (namely, with the target Erlang node running
ejabberd). This can be useful when the system running the
target node has restricted firewall setup allowing only a
certain range of ports to be used by the Erlang nodes for
communication; in this case, you should specify that range of
ports in the FIREWALL_WINDOW setting.
FILES
/etc/default/ejabberd default variables
SEE ALSO
erl(1), ejabberd(8), mnesia(3).
The program documentation is available at
http://www.process-one.net/en/projects/ejabberd/. A copy of the
documentation can be found at /usr/share/doc/ejabberd/guide.html.
AUTHORS
This manual page was adapted by Sergei Golovan <sgolovan@nes.ru> for
the Debian system (but may be used by others) from the ejabberd
documentation written by Alexey Shchepin <alexey@sevcom.net>. Updated
by Konstantin Khomoutov <flatworm@users.sourceforge.net>.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation.
On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License
can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.