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Ok, so you are bit tired of having one application for AIM and one for MSN because iChat does not support MSN. Of course you can use Adium, but then you don’t have the video in iChat when you talk with your AIM buddies. There is a way you can have both. Since iChat now has support for jabber accounts (since Tiger I believe), you can just register to a jabber server with a MSN gateway and everything is as it should be. However there is a downside to this solution. When registering to a jabber server you often don’t know who’s behind that server, what security precautions they are taking, and also what they are doing with the information you are giving them when you register, for that is actually quite a lot. You give them among other things the ability to read all the messages between you and your contacts and all of their email addresses. So what can you do…. here’s an idea: Setup your own jabber server locally which only you can access. It’s very easy and you can be up an running in no time.

I was curious and did this only for testing purposes. You follow this at your own risk. I do not claim that this leaves your computer in a secure state, but I think it may be better than registering to a server which you know nothing about. At least if you just want to test MSN through jabber, then this is the way to do it.

First you have to download and install a jabber server. There are several to choose from. I chose Openfire. Download and mount the Openfire dmg file. As of writing the current version is 3.5.0. Double click on the Openfire package, and go through the installation wizard. If you get questions about java and incoming connections choose deny. You don’t need it for basic MSN functionality. When that is done open System Preferences and you’ll find a Openfire preference pane at the bottom. Click on that and then choose open admin console. This will start a five step server setup wizard.

1. Language: Your choice
2. Server settings: Domain, enter the name of you computer
3. Database settings: Choose Embedded database
4. Profile settings: Default
5. Email and Password: Enter email and password (this will be the password for your jabber account, your username will be admin)

It’s usually a bad idea to use the admin account as your regular user, but just for testing it’s ok. You can just create another regular user later if you want to.

Now you can log into your jabber server and we will disable a few services, and also setup the MSN gateway. Go to the Server Settings menu and choose Server to server and disable the service. Now go to HTTP Binding and disable this, and finally Registration & Login and disable everything again. Now nobody can register to your server on their own. You will have to do it manually for every user.

Now choose the Plugins menu, and we will install the MSN gateway. Go to Available Plugins, find the IM Gateway plugin and press the install button next to it on the right. The plugin will now be downloaded and installed. You should see a plugin successfully installed messages after a few seconds. Go back to the Server menu and you should now have a Gateways link to the right. Click on that and you will be brought to the gateways settings menu. Here you can select which gateways to allow, and also which user who gets to use them. This is about MSN, so enable MSN Messenger by clicking in the checkbox next to it. Still under MSN Messenger you now have test, options and permissions. Go to options an enable the features you want. Under permissions choose Manual Registration Only. Now go to the Registrations menu (still under Gateways) and we shall enable the MSN Gateway for your user. Press Add a new registration. User (JID) is admin, gateway is MSN and the rest is properties from your MSN account. Fill out the form and press add.

That’s it.. now we can configure iChat to use your new account.

Start iChat go to preferences and accounts and press + to add a new account.

Account Type: Jabber Account

Account Name: admin@TheNameOfYourComputer

Password: YourJabberAccountPassword

Press done.

Now you probably get a messages about the certificate because it is self signed. Just press Ok. You can setup iChat to accept this automatically later if you want to. Under server settings of your account set port 5223 and check use SSL. If you now change your status in iChat to Available you should be logged in and all of your MSN contacts should appear.

Now you have your own jabber server with a MSN gateway.

Use it, secure it and share it with your friends.. but don’t read their messages unless they allow you to do so.

Uninstall:
If you later want to uninstall Openfire, open the preference pane and stop Openfire. Open and terminal type the following: (Enter password when prompted)

sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.jivesoftware.openfire.plist
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/openfire/
sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/Openfire.prefPane/