In this article I am going to show you how to install and run an infinote server so that Kobby and Gobby can communicate with one another.

Installation

There are two packages you must install for this to work. One of those packages will have been installed when you install Gobby. That package is libinfinity. If you did not install Gobby on the machine that will act as your infinote server you will need to install the libinfinity package as well as the package listed below. Follow these steps for installation:

1. Fire up your package management system (Synaptic, Ubuntu Software Center, gnome-packagekit, etc).
2. Search for “infinoted” (no quotes).
3. Mark infinoted for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it! You are now ready to begin.

Usage

There are two ways to use infinoted: with or without encryption. If you want to offer password-protected sessions you will have to run with encryption. No passwords = no encryption. Let’s start off with the non-encrypted session first.

To launch an encryption-less session open up a terminal window and issue the following command:

infinoted –security-policy=no-tls

NOTE: When launching this session you will not be returned your prompt. Even if you add the “&” to the end of your prompt (which usually places the command in the background) you still won’t get your prompt back. When you issue this command the command will instruct you which port the server is listening on. By default infinoted will listen to port 6523 (in case you do not issue the command from the terminal window – more on that in a bit).

Now let’s take a look at starting the server with encryption. To do this you will issue two commands, the first command creates the necessary keys, the second launches the daemon. Let’s take a look at the commands. The first command:

infinoted –create-key –create-certificate -k KEY_NAME.pem  -c CERT_NAME.pem

Where KEY_NAME is the name of the key and CERT_NAME is the name of the certificate. When you issue that command infinoted will generate the necessary key/cert pair and then you are ready to start the server with the command:

infinoted -k key.pem  -c cert.pem

Now when you start up your Gobby and/or Kobby instances, you can host your server with password protection.

Starting your server

If you are like me, you don’t want to have a terminal window open in order to run the server. No matter which type of server you run (with or without encryption), you can add the startup line to your /etc/rc.local file so the server will start up at boot. If you don’t want to go that route you can always just hit <Alt>F2 and then enter the run line in the command dialog box.

Final thoughts

If you are looking for a very simple way to host a collaborative server for Gobby or Kobby, the Infinoted server is all you need for simplicity and reliability. Once the server is up and running all you will have to do is point your clients to the server (and the correct port) and your clients will be collaborating immediately.

Gobby was released in 2005 by the Ox539 developer group and features a client/server architecture that allows for easy remote connection between two peers. Gobby contains its own server (Sobby) so there’s no secondary installation or configuration.

Getting and Installing

As Gobby is very common, it is generally in repositories for every distribution. This makes installing Gobby simple. Open up your distributions’ Add/Remove Software application and do a search for “gobby” (no quotes). Once you find Gobby, select it and click Apply.

Once Gobby is installed you should find the executable entry in the Internet menu.

Starting a Gobby Session

When you first start Gobby you will see an empty Gobby window. From this window you can either “Create session” (become a host for a session) or “Join Session” (join a remote Gobby host).  Click on the “Create Session” button which will open up a session configuration window.

Create Session

If you don’t enter a password anyone starting up Gobby can join your session. If this is a “private” collaboration, it’s best to set up a password.

Now for those wishing to join an already running click on the Join Session button and the Join Gobby Session window will open.

Join Session

You can select your Gobby server from the list or you can enter the Host manually. Once you have entered the correct information click OK and you will join the session.

Once you have joined the session you will want to open up two extra windows: Document List and User List. The Document List window will show you all available Gobby documents available to you. If you are not the creator of a document you can click on a document and subscribe to that document. When you subcribe to a document a new tab for that document will open in your Gobby window.

Gobby Session

As you can, in the image above, Gobby does syntax highlighting. If you click on the Edit menu you will see a Syntax submenu. From that submenu you can select from any of the 65 different types of syntax highlighting.

Another nice feature of Gobby is that it includes a chat window. With a chat window you can actually communicate as you collaborate.

Gobby Chat

After you have done all of your work you have to  save  each document individually and, if you want, you can save the chat session. To save a single document just click on the tab of the document to save, go to the Session menu entry, and click Save Document. To save the chat session go to the Gobby menu entry and select Save Session.

Final Thoughts

Gobby has a number of possible applications from development collaboration to document collaboration. If you have a need for an easy to use, free collaboration software, this is what you want.