Jun/092
How to use Google Apps Chat in Beejive / Adium / Pidgin
… or any third party instant messaging client for that matter. So that you can use Google Talk on your Google Apps domain on your iPhone (through Beejive or IM+), or through your instant messaging client of choice. Even iChat!
First of all, you’ll need to update your SRV records. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of them before, it’s really easy. Log into your domain control, and, in the same way you would add DNS records, add the following SRV records (replacing domain.com with your domain):
_xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.domain. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.domain. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.domain. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.domain. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.domain. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 5 0 5222 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.domain.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.
The last five are the most important, and they’re not included in Google’s article on the topic. They are the part that lets you log in from a different instant messaging client.
Next, just add a Google Talk account, with the username being ‘username@yourdomain.com’ . It should all be good from there.
Let me know how you go, if this works for you (or if it doesn’t).
November 7th, 2009
Thanks for posting this – very helpful.
However, I believe the “_jabber._tcp.gmail.domain.” lines should read “_jabber._tcp.domain.com.”
June 2nd, 2010
Unless I’m missing something, you don’t need to do this if you just want to chat in Beejive, Adium, iChat, or Pidgin. We can do that on our google apps domain without making any changes to our DNS records. You only need this stuff if you want google’s talk servers federate with other services.