Can't get jabber to start on installation

[Doctorcam <cam@ellisonet.ca>]

I have managed to get jabber installed, and running it from the command
line seems to work fine, following the instructions in the 1.4.x
administration guide.

Trying to get dpkg to finish installing it, however, or (more
specifically) trying to run it from the init.d script is another matter.
The script runs fine up to this portion, and then dies:

if pidof $DAEMON > /dev/null 2>&1; then
   echo "$NAME."

I don't know much about bash scripting, but I assume that it tests for
the PID, to make sure that it exists.

In fact, it does (I stuck a few "echos" into the script to track
progress), though sometimes it endures past the failure of the script,
and sometimes it does not.  When it has endured, the owner was daemon,
and permissions were 755

/var/run/jabber has jabber:nogroup permissions 755

I assume there is something wrong with this, though it does not differ
significantly from the other directories in /var/run.

I could use some help with this.

TIA

Cam