Contents



What is Dreambot?

Dreambot is a secure Instant Messenger (IM) robot that runs on your Dreamhost server and performs possibly any server related tasks for you on demand. Dreambot's core uses the XMPP protocol currently with Jabber Google Talk. Dreambot is fully customizable in that you can configure your Dreambot to respond to your specific set of commands sent to it. Dreambot is open source, object oriented, built in PHP5 and licensed under MIT.

Things you can do with your Dreambot:


Full Screen Example

Dreambot's Features:

Best of all it has multiple levels of security! Here's how the security works...



What is the current state of Dreambot?

Where can I get Dreambot?

You are able to download Dreambot here:

How do I install Dreambot?

  1. Download Dreambot here and extract it anywhere on your server. Where you installed your Dreambot on your server will be referred to as "{DREAMBOT_ROOT}" later in these instructions
  2. Create a Jabber or Gmail account at their respective sites.
  3. Install Dreambot by going to {DREAMBOT_ROOT}/setup/install.php
  4. Use the setup interface to configure your Dreambot
  5. SSH into your server and goto the {DREAMBOT_ROOT}
  6. Execute the following Apache Command "/usr/local/php5/bin/php index.php start"
  7. Let the good times fly !

FAQ

How is Dreambot useful ?

Imagine your on the bus and forgot to deploy your changes from your development environment to your clients production website. You can IM your Dreambot on your phone to do the deploy for you. Imagine if Josh (your Dreamhost System Point of Contact) took a vacation and is unavailable to help you backup your database. You can IM Dreambot to do it for Josh.

What are the system requirements to talk to Dreambot ?

Um you must have a desktop, Laptop, and/or any phone that has Jabber or Google Talk Instant Messenger or compatible and internet access.

What are the server requirements to host Dreambot ?

Apache, PHP5 and Unix/Linux

Do I need to setup a Jabber server ?

No. This is a Jabber Client application and requires nothing from anything having to do with Jabber on your server.

Can Google Chat people talk to Dreambot if Dreambot is online with a Jabber account and vice versa ?

Google Talk is technically a Jabber server so yes, this is possible and tested.

Dreambot terminates when I close my shell (terminal). Does Dreambot have Daemon capabilities ?

Dreambot has PHP Daemon built in, however currently will not run on the Dreamhost PHP CLI setup. This is from Dreamhost support:

> Also receiving error "Call to undefined function: pcntl_fork". From the PHP
> manual:
>
> Process Control support in PHP is not enabled by default. You have to compile
> the CGI or CLI version of PHP with --enable-pcntl configuration option when
> compiling PHP to enable Process Control support.
>
> Is there a way I can have this setup for me? or let me know if I can do this
> myself and how.

You would end up having to enable this yourself, you can find a script
for creating a custom PHP install here:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Installing_PHP5

Please note that if you decide to take this route we do not offer support
for installing or maintaining your custom configuration, in the case of
any problems you might want to check with the dreamhosters over on the
discussion forums.

http://discussion.dreamhost.com/

Thanks!
JJ G

Troubleshooting

Dreambot is infinitely sending and receiving

This happened to me too. Then I realized I was using "jabber.com" or "gmail.org". Check both your bot and user settings to make sure you got the right server address. This can also happen when Dreambot's user or password are wrong.

Parse error: parse error, expecting `T_OLD_FUNCTION' or `T_FUNCT

You need to have PHP5 on your server. If you have PHP5 it might be that the PHP CLI is still pointing to PHP4. This is from Dreamhost support:

> PHP CLI is at version 4.4.9 . I need it to match my current php version 5.2.6.
By default the php command will point to PHP4, in order to run PHP5 you'll need to use:

/usr/local/php5/bin/php

If you'd like you can also modify your PATH variable in the .bash_profile file and add "/usr/local/php5/bin/" as part of the path. If you have anymore questions please let me know.

Thanks!
JJ G

> I'm not sure how to use the .bash_profile to route PHP
> CLI to /usr/local/php5/bin/php . Can you please inform me?

You would need to add the following line to the bottom of your
.bash_profile file:

export PATH=/usr/local/php5/bin/:$PATH

...

Thanks!
JJ G

Contact us

Christian Blanquera - cblanquera@solutionset.com
Google Talk - cblanquera@gmail.com