For advanced configuration use the following files:

  • mongooseim.cfg for pure MongooseIM settings,

  • vm.args to affect the Erlang VM behaviour (performance tuning, node name),

  • app.config to change low-level logging parameters and settings of other Erlang applications.

Since you've gotten this far, we assume you're already familiar with Erlang syntax.

mongooseim.cfg

This file consists of multiple erlang tuples terminated with a period. In order to configure it, go to [MongooseIM repo root]/rel/files/ (if you're building from source) or [MongooseIM install root]/etc/ if you're using a pre-built version.

The tuple order is important, unless no host_config option is set. Retaining the default layout is recommended so that the experienced MongooseIM users can smoothly traverse the file.

mongooseim.cfg is full of useful comments and in most cases they should be sufficient help in changing the configuration.

Options

  • All options except hosts, host, host_config, pool and the RDBMS options can be used in the host_config tuple.

  • There are two kinds of local options - those that are kept separately for each domain in the config file (defined inside host_config) and the options local for a node in the cluster.

  • "global" options are shared by all cluster nodes and all domains.

  • Options labeled as "multi" (in this page) can be declared multiple times in a row, e.g. one per domain.

  • Section names below correspond with the ones in the file.

Override stored options

  • override_global, override_local, override_acls - optional
    • Description: Will cause MongooseIM to erase all global/local/acl options in database respectively. This ensures that ALL settings of a specific type will be reloaded on startup.

Debugging

  • loglevel (local)
    • Description: Log level configured with an integer: 0 (disabled), 1 (critical), 2 (error), 3 (warning), 4 (info), 5 (debug). Recommended values for production systems are 2 or 3 (5 is for development).

Served hostnames

  • hosts (global)

    • Description: List of domains supported by this cluster.
    • Warning: Extension modules and database backends will be started separately for every domain. When increasing the number of domains please make sure you have enough resources available (e.g. connection limit set in DBMS).
    • Example: ["localhost", "domain2"]

  • route_subdomain (local)

    • Description: If a stanza is addressed to a subdomain of the served domain and this option is set to s2s, such a stanza will be transmitted over s2s. Without it, MongooseIM will try to route the stanza to one of the internal services.
    • Note: s2s is the only valid value. Any other will simply disable the feature.

Listening ports

  • listen (local)

    • Description: List of modules handling the incoming connections. By default, 3 are enabled: ejabberd_cowboy, ejabberd_c2s and ejabberd_s2s_in. They accept XMPP, BOSH, Websocket and S2S connections (plus queries to metrics API).
    • Syntax: List of tuples: {Port, Module, ModuleSpecificOptions}
    • See also: Listener modules

  • s2s_use_starttls (global)

    • Description: Controls StartTLS feature for S2S connections.
    • Values:

  • s2s_certfile (global)

    • Description: Path to X509 PEM file with a certificate and a private key inside (not protected by any password). Required if s2s_use_starttls is enabled.

  • s2s_ciphers (global)

    • Description: Defines a list of accepted SSL ciphers in outgoing S2S connection. Please refer to the OpenSSL documentation for the cipher string format.
    • Default: As of OpenSSL 1.0.0 it's ALL:!aNULL:!eNULL (source)

  • domain_certfile (multi, global)

    • Description: Overrides common certificates with new ones specific for chosen XMPP domains. Applies to S2S and C2S connections.
    • Syntax: {domain_certfile, "example.com", "/path/to/example.com.pem"}.

  • s2s_default_policy (local)

    • Description: Default policy for a new S2S (server-to-server) both incoming and outgoing connection to/from an unknown remote server.

  • s2s_host (multi, local)

    • Description: Allows black/whitelisting S2S destinations.
    • Syntax: { {s2s_host, "somehost.com"}, allow|deny }.

  • outgoing_s2s_port (local)

    • Description: Defines a port to be used for outgoing S2S connections. Cannot be random.
    • Default: 5269

  • s2s_addr (multi, global)

    • Description: Override DNS lookup for a specific non-local XMPP domain and use a predefined server IP and port for S2S connection.
    • Syntax: "{ {s2s_addr, \"some-domain\"}, { {10,20,30,40}, 7890 } }."

  • outgoing_s2s_options (global)

    • Description: Specifies the order of address families to try when establishing S2S connection and the connection timeout (in milliseconds or atom infinity).
    • Default: {outgoing_s2s_options, [ipv4, ipv6], 10000}.
    • Family values: inet4/ipv4, inet6/ipv6

  • s2s_shared (global)

    • Description: S2S shared secret used in Server Dialback extension.
    • Syntax: {s2s_shared, <<"shared secret">>}.
    • Default: 10 strong random bytes, hex-encoded.

  • s2s_dns_options (local)

    • Description: Parameters used in DNS lookups for outgoing S2S connections.
    • Syntax: {s2s_dns_options, [{Opt, Val}, ...]}.
    • Supported options
      • timeout (integer, seconds, default: 10) - A timeout for DNS lookup.
      • retries (integer, default: 2) - How many DNS lookups will be attempted.
    • Example: {s2s_dns_options, [{timeout, 30}, {retries, 1}]}.

  • s2s_max_retry_delay (local)

    • Description: How many seconds MIM node should wait until next attempt to connect to remote XMPP cluster.
    • Syntax: {s2s_max_retry_delay, Delay}.
    • Default: 300
    • Example: {s2s_max_retry_delay, 30}.

Session backend

  • sm_backend (global)
    • Description: Backend for storing user session data. Currently all nodes in a cluster must have access to a complete session database. Valid backends are mnesia and redis. Mnesia is sufficient in most cases, use Redis only in large deployments when you notice issues with the mnesia backend.
    • Mnesia: {sm_backend, {mnesia, []}}
    • Redis: {sm_backend, {redis, []}} Requires redis pool defined in outgoing_pools:
      {redis, global, default, ..., ...}. See redis section in outgoing connections doc

LDAP Connection

  • ldap_servers

    • Description: List of IP addresses or DNS names of your LDAP servers.
    • Values: [Servers, ...]
    • Default: no default value. This option is required when setting up an LDAP connection.

  • ldap_encrypt

    • Description: Enable connection encryption with your LDAP server. The value tls enables encryption by using LDAP over SSL. Note that STARTTLS encryption is not supported.
    • Values: none, tls
    • Default: none

  • ldap_tls_verify This option specifies whether to verify LDAP server certificate or not when TLS is enabled. When hard is enabled mongooseim doesn’t proceed if a certificate is invalid. When soft is enabled mongooseim proceeds even if the check fails. False means no checks are performed.

    • Values: soft, hard, false
    • Default: false

  • ldap_tls_cacertfile

    • Description: Path to a file containing PEM encoded CA certificates.
    • Values: Path
    • Default: This option is needed (and required) when TLS verification is enabled.

  • ldap_tls_depth

    • Description: Specifies the maximum verification depth when TLS verification is enabled. i.e. how far in a chain of certificates the verification process can proceed before the verification is considered to fail. Peer certificate = 0, CA certificate = 1, higher level CA certificate = 2, etc. The value 2 means that a chain can at most contain peer cert, CA cert, next CA cert, and an additional CA cert.
    • Values: Integer
    • Default: 1

  • ldap_port

    • Description: Port to connect to your LDAP server.
    • Values: Integer
    • Default: 389 if encryption is disabled. 636 if encryption is enabled.

  • ldap_rootdn

    • Description: Bind DN
    • Values: String
    • Default: empty string which is anonymous connection

  • ldap_password

    • Description: Bind password
    • Values: String
    • Default: empty string

  • ldap_deref

    • Description: Whether or not to dereference aliases
    • Values: never, always, finding, searching
    • Default: never

Authentication

  • auth_method (local)

    • Description: Chooses an authentication module or a list of modules. Modules from a list are queried one after another until one of them replies positively.
    • Valid values: internal (Mnesia), rdbms, external, anonymous, ldap, jwt, riak, http
    • Warning: external, jwt and ldap work only with PLAIN SASL mechanism.
    • Examples: rdbms, [internal, anonymous]

  • auth_opts (local)

    • Description: Provides different parameters that will be applied to a choosen authentication method. auth_password_format and auth_scram_iterations are common to http, rdbms, internal and riak.

      • auth_password_format

        • Description: Decide whether user passwords will be kept plain or hashed in the database. Currently the popular XMPP clients support the SCRAM method, so it is strongly recommended to use the hashed version. The older ones can still use PLAIN mechiansm. DIGEST-MD5 is not available with scram.
        • Values: plain, scram
        • Default: plain (for compatibility reasons, might change soon)

      • auth_scram_iterations

        • Description: Hash function round count. The higher the value, the more difficult breaking the hashes is. We advise against setting it too low.
        • Default: 4096

      • external backend options

      • http backend options

      • jwt backend options

  • ldap backend options are not yet a part of auth_opt tuple, so these parameters are top-level keys in mongooseim.cfg file.

  • sasl_mechanisms (local)

    • Description: Specifies a list of allowed SASL mechanisms. It affects the methods announced during stream negotiation and is enforced eventually (user can't pick mechanism not listed here but available in the source code).
    • Warning: This list is still filtered by auth backends capabilities, e.g. LDAP authentication requires a password provided via SASL PLAIN.
    • Valid values: cyrsasl_plain, cyrsasl_digest, cyrsasl_scram, cyrsasl_anonymous, cyrsasl_oauth, cyrsasl_external
    • Default: [cyrsasl_plain, cyrsasl_digest, cyrsasl_scram, cyrsasl_anonymous, cyrsasl_oauth, cyrsasl_external]
    • Examples: [cyrsasl_plain], [cyrsasl_anonymous, cyrsasl_scram]

  • extauth_instances (local)

    • Description: Specifies a number of workers serving external authentication requests.
    • Syntax: {extauth_instances, Count}.
    • Default: 1

Outgoing connections setup

  • outgoing_pools (local) 
        [{riak, global, default, [], [{address, "127.0.0.1"}]},
         {http, host, auth, [], [{server, "127.0.0.1"}]}

RDMBS connection setup

RDBMS connection pools are set using outgoing connections configuration. There are some additional options that influence all database connections in the server:

  • pgsql_users_number_estimate (local)

    • Description: PostgreSQL's internal structure can make the row counting slow. Enabling this option uses alternative query to SELECT COUNT, that might be not as accurate but is always fast.
    • Syntax: {pgsql_users_number_estimate, false | true}
    • Default: false

  • rdbms_server_type (local)

    • Description: Specifies RDBMS type. Some modules may optimise queries for certain DBs (e.g. mod_mam_rdbms_user uses different query for mssql).
    • Syntax: {rdbms_server_type, Type}
    • Supported values: mssql, pgsql or undefined
    • Default: undefined

Traffic shapers

  • shaper (mutli, global)

    • Description: Define a class of a shaper which is a mechanism for limiting traffic to prevent DoS attack or calming down too noisy clients.
    • Syntax: {shaper, AtomName, {maxrate, BytesPerSecond}}

  • max_fsm_queue (local)

    • Description: When enabled, will terminate certain processes (e.g. client handlers) that exceed message limit, to prevent resource exhaustion. This option is set for C2S, outgoing S2S and component connections and can be overridden for particular ejabberd_s2s or ejabberd_service listeners in their configurations. Use with caution!
    • Syntax: {max_fsm_queue, MaxFsmQueueLength}

Access control lists

  • acl (multi)
    • Description: Define access control list class.
    • Syntax: {acl, AtomName, Definition}
    • Regexp format: Syntax for _regexp can be found in Erlang documentation - it's based on AWK syntax. For _glob use sh regexp syntax.
    • Valid definitions:
      • all
      • {user, U} - check if the username equals U and the domain either equals the one specified by the module executing the check or (if the module does a global check) is on the served domains list (hosts option)
      • {user, U, S} - check if the username equals U and the domain equals S
      • {server, S} - check if the domain equals S
      • {resource, R} - check if the resource equals R
      • {user_regexp, UR} - perform a regular expression UR check on the username and check the server name like in user
      • {user_regexp, UR, S} - perform a regular expression UR check on the username and check if the domain equals S
      • {server_regexp, SR} - perform a regular expression SR check on a domain
      • {resource_regexp, RR} - perform a regular expression SR check on a resource
      • {node_regexp, UR, SR} - username must match UR and domain must match SR
      • {user_glob, UR} - like _regexp variant but with sh syntax
      • {server_glob, UR} - like _regexp variant but with sh syntax
      • {resource_glob, UR} - like _regexp variant but with sh syntax
      • {node_glob, UR} - like _regexp variant but with sh syntax

Access rules

  • access (multi, global)

    • Description: Define an access rule for internal checks. The configuration file contains all built-in ones with proper comments.
    • Syntax: {access, AtomName, [{Value, AclName}]}

  • registration_timeout (local)

    • Description: Limits the registration frequency from a single IP. Valid values are infinity or a number of seconds.

  • mongooseimctl_access_commands (local)

    • Description: Defines access rules to chosen mongooseimctl commands.
    • Syntax: {mongooseimctl_access_commands, [Rule1, Rule2, ...]}.
    • Rule syntax: {AccessRule, Commands, ArgumentRestrictions}
      • AccessRule - A name of a rule defined with acl config key.
      • Commands - A list of command names (e.g. ["restart", "stop"]) or all.
      • ArgumentRestrictions - A list of permitted argument values (e.g. [{domain, "localhost"}]).
    • Example: {mongooseimctl_access_commands, [{local, ["join_cluster"], [{node, "mongooseim@prime"}]}]}.

Default language

  • language (global)
    • Description: Default language for messages sent by the server to users. You can get a full list of supported codes by executing cd [MongooseIM root] ; ls priv/*.msg | awk '{split($0,a,"/"); split(a[4],b,"."); print b[1]}' (en is not listed there)
    • Default: en

Miscellaneous

  • all_metrics_are_global (local)

    • Description: When enabled, all per-host metrics are merged into global equivalents. It means it is no longer possible to view individual host1, host2, host3, ... metrics, only sums are available. This option significantly reduces CPU and (especially) memory footprint in setups with exceptionally many domains (thousands, tens of thousands).
    • Default: false

  • routing_modules (local)

    • Description: Provides an ordered list of modules used for routing messages. If one of the modules accepts packet for processing, the remaining ones are not called.
    • Syntax: {routing_modules, ModulesList}.
    • Valid modules:
      • mongoose_router_global - Calls filter_packet hook.
      • mongoose_router_localdomain - Routes packets addressed to a domain supported by the local cluster.
      • mongoose_router_external_localnode - Delivers packet to an XMPP component connected to the node, which processes the request.
      • mongoose_router_external - Delivers packet to an XMPP component connected to the local cluster.
      • ejabberd_s2s - Forwards a packet to another XMPP cluster over XMPP Federation.
    • Default: [mongoose_router_global, mongoose_router_localdomain, mongoose_router_external_localnode, mongoose_router_external, ejabberd_s2s]
    • Example: {routing_modules, [mongoose_router_global, mongoose_router_localdomain]}.

Modules

For a specific configuration, please refer to Modules page.

  • modules (local)
    • Description: List of enabled modules with their options.

Services

For a specific configuration, please refer to Services page.

  • services (local)
    • Description: List of enabled services with their options.

Per-domain configuration

The host_config allows configuring most options separately for specific domains served by the cluster. It is best to put host_config tuple right after the global section it overrides/complements or even at the end of mongooseim.cfg.

  • host_config (multi, local)
    • Syntax: {host_config, Domain, [ {{add, modules}, [{mod_some, Opts}]}, {access, c2s, [{deny, local}]}, ... ]}.

vm.args

This file contains parameters passed directly to the Erlang VM. To configure it, go to [MongooseIM root]/rel/files/.

Let's explore the default options.

Options

  • -sname - Erlang node name. Can be changed to name, if necessary
  • -setcookie - Erlang cookie. All nodes in a cluster must use the same cookie value.
  • +K - Enables kernel polling. It improves the stability when a large number of sockets is opened, but some systems might benefit from disabling it. Might be a subject of individual load testing.
  • +A 5 - Sets the asynchronous threads number. Async threads improve I/O operations efficiency by relieving scheduler threads of IO waits.
  • +P 10000000 - Process count limit. This is a maximum allowed number of processes running per node. In general, it should exceed the tripled estimated online user count.
  • -env ERL_MAX_PORTS 250000 - Open port count. This is a maximum allowed number of ports opened per node. In general, it should exceed the tripled estimated online user count. Keep in mind that increasing this number also increases the memory usage by a constant amount, so finding the right balance for it is important for every project.
  • -env ERL_FULLSWEEP_AFTER 2 - affects garbage collection. Reduces memory consumption (forces often full g.c.) at the expense of CPU usage.
  • -sasl sasl_error_logger false - MongooseIM's solution for logging is Lager, so SASL error logger is disabled.

app.config

A file with Erlang application configuration. To configure it, go to [MongooseIM root]/rel/files/. By default only the following applications can be found there:

  • lager - check Lager's documentation for more information. Here you can change the logs location and the file names (file), as well as the rotation strategy (size and count) and date formatting (date). Ignore the log level parameters - by default they are overridden with the value set in mongooseim.cfg.
  • ejabberd
    • keep_lager_intact (default: false) - set it to true when you want to keep lager log level parameters from app.config. false means overriding the log levels with the value set in mongooseim.cfg.
    • config (default: "etc/mongooseim.cfg") - path to MongooseIM config file.
  • ssl
    • session_lifetime (default specified in the file: 600 seconds) - This parameter says for how long should the ssl session remain in the cache for further re-use, should ssl session resumption happen.

Configuring TLS: Certificates & Keys

TLS is configured in one of two ways: some modules need a private key and certificate (chain) in separate files, while others need both in a single file. This is because recent additions use OTP's ssl library, while older modules use p1_tls, respectively.

  • Client-to-server connections need both in the same .pem file
  • Server-to-server connections need both in the same .pem file
  • BOSH, WebSockets and REST APIs need them in separate files

In order to create private key & certificate bundle, you may simply concatenate them.

More information about configuring TLS for these endpoints is available in Listener modules page.