First steps

First, try running prosodyctl check, which may be able to diagnose some common issues.

Second, find where Prosody logs go. E.g. /var/log/prosody/prosody.log is a common location. If you have a separate prosody.err then check there first for errors.

I can't contact people on other servers (eg. jabber.org, gmail.com)

Prosody requires no extra configuration to communicate with other servers. Usually the problem is due to network or DNS issues.

• Check that Prosody isn't running behind a firewall, or a NAT router. These block incoming connections to Prosody by default, and will cause the attempts by other servers to verify your server to fail. Configure your firewall or router to allow or forward incoming connections on port 5269 to Prosody.

• Check that you have the correct domains pointing at the machine running Prosody, and that these domains are listed in the config file (like VirtualHost "example.com"). If you can't run Prosody on the domain you want, then look into setting _xmpp-client and _xmpp-server DNS SRV records, which will let you redirect Jabber traffic to another domain.

Further debugging:

If you have access to a command line, run: telnet yourdomain.com 5269

If telnet just appears to hang, then it is likely your DNS is not configured properly, or more likely port 5269 is firewalled. If telnet prints "connection refused" then it indicates Prosody is not running, or you are connecting to a machine without Prosody (yes, it happens…).