Tons and tons of "Unable To Retrieve Buddy List" dialogs.

[rtaft]

I reported this many years ago, in GAIM 0.75 and again in 1.5.0. It happened again, and I was able to get a debug log of it. Basically I get a crap load of "Unable To Retrieve Buddy List" dialogs on AIM. It continues until I get disconnected. After a minute, it tries to reconnect and the process starts all over again. At least this time, once I get disconnected, the dialogs go away. If you don't they just stay there. Anyway, it looks like it is related to the rate limit. I have noticed a similar problem where I keep getting disconnected, claiming I am over my rate limit. I am not doing anything on the account when this starts, so whatever puts me over the rate limit is not something I am doing. I put it in debug mode when it was disconnecting me, the GUI showed some windows socket error a few times, I don't remember the number ... #100?? #10038 maybe. I had it in debug mode and was watching the rate limit warnings. After a few watching it try to connect a few times, it started in with the many "Unable To Retrieve Buddy List" dialogs that I saw a long time ago. The rate limit has happened a few times recently, but I haven't seen the dialog issue in a while.

I found an email with this bug report in it, but the link is not public, so I will post the original bug report:

Bugs item #998677, was opened at 2004-07-27 08:42
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by rrtaft
You can respond by visiting:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=100235&aid=998677&group_id=235

Please note that this message will contain a full copy of the comment thread,
including the initial issue submission, for this request,
not just the latest update.
Category: win32
>Group: v1.5.0
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Rob Taft (rrtaft)
Assigned to: Mark Doliner (thekingant)
Summary: Infinite "Could not retrieve buddy list" popups.

Initial Comment:
OS: Windows
Protocol: OSCAR
Service: AIM
Versions: .75, .80 (i had .75, then upgraded after error).

GAIM was running, I was disconnected.  When the auto
login logged back into AIM, a popup came up stating
that GAIM could not retrieve the buddy list.  About 1/2
a second to a second later, another one popped up.
This continued at a regular interval until a popup stating
that I was over my ?rate? limit and to try again in 10
seconds.  I proceeded to close all of these errors, there
was at least 50 to 100 popups.  I upgraded to .80 and
the same thing happened.  After a short period, I was
disconnected, and the auto reconnect logged in
successfully without any errors.  This is probably not
easy to reproduce, in that the buddy list down time was
caused by the AIM service.  GAIM handled it incorrectly
by continuing to poll for the buddy list when the error
occurred.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

>Comment By: Rob Taft (rrtaft)
Date: 2005-09-21 20:40

Message:
Logged In: YES
user_id=588658

I just got hit with this issue again in 1.5.0

[rtaft]

purple-debug log with names and emails removed

[MarkDoliner]

I really don't see how this could have happened. And I haven't heard of it happening for anyone in a while. It's quite strange.

[bernmeister]

Does this still occur in 2.5.1? Can you please verify?

[Leak]

Replying to bernmeister:

Does this still occur in 2.5.1? Can you please verify?

I've just got bitten by this - while I only got one such message window every 30 seconds (one per "oscar: ssi: SNAC error 5" line in the debug window), it's quite annoying; shouldn't pidgin remember that I dismissed this window and not show it again until it has successfully retrieved the buddy list at least once?

(Also, trying to copy text out of the debug window when it's not paused is a sure-fire way here to crash pidgin, but that's probably for another bug report...)

[bugmenot]

(posted using general BugMeNot? account)

I've too just had the same problem, with Pidgin 2.5.0 under Windows. I'm now upgrading tho.

[zxmon21]

I see it in pidgin 2.5.1 under WinXP pro SP2.

I have been using 2.5.1 since it came out a few days ago, this morning was the first time I saw this. I don't know if it means anything, but I had left Pidgin running overnight. Normally I logout for the night.

I'll attach a log of a login-attempt with ICQ in a second.

[zxmon21]

start pidgin without accounts, activate ICQ account, get error message

[zxmon21]

Sorry to write so much, but maybe my first post was... premature.

I deactivated my ICQ account when I wrote the reply, and now (20 minutes later) tried to activate it again.

Pidgin logs in, and finds my buddies.

Maybe this error message should make pidgin reconnect after a LONGER period than it does currently?

[rtaft]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. This bug has been around a long time, and it happens so rarely that it isn't a huge deal. The next time someone sees it, grab a wireshark capture, maybe that will shed more light onto the issue. The 'outage' that causes this usually lasts about 5 to 10 minutes and does not effect everyone. I think I remember being able to sign onto other AIM names, but my primary one was having the issue. The way Pidgin is now, you actually have to be sitting at the PC to see the error, the error messages go away once things are working normally.

[eean]

This bug is annoying because of the error messages. In my opinion, unless specifically asked for it (eg a buddy pounce, or its implied that if you run pidgin you want chats to open) or in response to user input, a message box should *never* pop up. So really just take away the errors or make them passive notices, and this bug will go away (since it sounds like it caused by uncontrolled server outages, hardly anything pidgin could fix).

[deryni]

Ticket #6950 has been marked as a duplicate of this ticket.

[therearenoteams]

I ran into this problem this morning (Windows/2.5.1). I got the "Unable to Retrieve Buddy List" dialog every 30 seconds or so. Disabling/reenabling the account had no effect. An hour later, no problem, so likely an outage. The dialog really should only come up once for the whole Pidgin session.

[rtaft]

From the comments from 2008-04-16 on oscar.c, it attempts to get the buddy list every 30 seconds. So work has been done recently to make this not so nasty, I'll take one popup every 30 seconds over getting hammered with a ton of them at once any day. According to the log, you should still be able to message buddies by manually entering their SN into a chat window, but the overall server issue tends to go away within 15 minutes.

Perhaps since this is still bothering people, just show the error once.

@@ -4915,10 +4915,12 @@ static int purple_ssi_parseerr(OscarData?

purple_debug_error("oscar", "ssi: SNAC error %hu\n", reason);

if (reason == 0x0005) {

- purple_notify_error(gc, NULL, _("Unable To Retrieve Buddy List"), - _("The AIM servers were temporarily unable to send your buddy list. Your buddy list is not lost, and will probably become available in a few minutes.")); +

if (od->getblisttimer > 0)

purple_timeout_remove(od->getblisttimer);

+ else + purple_notify_error(gc, NULL, _("Unable To Retrieve Buddy List"), + _("The AIM servers were temporarily unable to send your buddy list. Your buddy list is not lost, and will probably become available in a few minutes."));

od->getblisttimer = purple_timeout_add(30000, purple_ssi_rerequestdata, od); return 1;

}

[rtaft]

diff of potential fix

[cole]

I have to say, this is an incredibly annoying problem. I got it today for the first time after several months of use. I upgraded to 2.5.5 hoping for a fix but alas, the windows started amassing after logging back in.

Creating a new blinking dialog box every 30 seconds is never a good idea :)

[studio308]

Everything was ok just half an hour ago. It's again some kind of manipulations with ICQ protocol. It's not a problem of Pidgin.

[eean]

ICQ doesn't reach into our computers and trigger dialogs, lol.

[timberbt]

I definitely second this. I'm using 2.5.2 and this happens maybe once or twice a week for me on AIM. When it happens I get a window about every 30 seconds that steals focus from whatever I'm doing.

If I disable AIM I *STILL* get this window...

Could this be changed to not pop up a window but to just put it into the main pidgin window like a contact request or something.

this is *VERY* annoying. So annoying in fact that when it happens have to close pidgin entirely so that I can keep working.

[jcopenha]

Because of the AIM server issues today, this is happening a LOT to me. Running Pidgin 2.5.5 on XP64. I disabled my AIM account and am no longer getting the popups, but I was getting them every 30 secs when logged in.

[therearenoteams]

Replying to timberbt:

If I disable AIM I *STILL* get this window...

For me, if I disable the AIM account, the dialogs stop appearing. But I shouldn't have to disable the account to stop informational dialogs.

[timberbt]

Hmmm... I disabled AIM and I was still getting the messages. I left it disabled, closed pidgin and restarted and I still continued to get the messages every 30 seconds. I had to leave the application closed so I could keep working today. I'll start it back up after lunch.

Replying to therearenoteams:

Replying to timberbt:

If I disable AIM I *STILL* get this window...

For me, if I disable the AIM account, the dialogs stop appearing. But I shouldn't have to disable the account to stop informational dialogs.

[rtaft]

There is a timer that polls the buddy list every 30 seconds in this situation. I looked at the code myself and posted a potential solution. Only show the message after the first failure and continue trying every 30 seconds until the issue is resolved.

[timberbt]

Is that change included in a version that I can download now?

Thanks!

Replying to rtaft:

There is a timer that polls the buddy list every 30 seconds in this situation. I looked at the code myself and posted a potential solution. Only show the message after the first failure and continue trying every 30 seconds until the issue is resolved.

[MarkDoliner]

Hey, nice patch! I just checked it in. Is it ok if I credit you as "Rob Taft" in our COPYRIGHT file?

[markdoliner@…]

(In [e1b1e80d999e393a80f201a484ef61289c258fbe]):
Only show the oscar error "we couldn't fetch your buddy list, but don't worry it will probably show up in a few minutes" once. Thanks to rtaft for the patch. Fixes #4845.

[rtaft]

yes, that's fine, thanks for updating this.

[MarkDoliner]

No problem, sorry it took me 6 months :-(

timberbt: So that change is not included in a version that you can download, but it should be in the next official release, 2.6.0. We haven't scheduled a release date for that release, so it could be as soon as two weeks or more likely a month or two from now.

[timberbt]

Thanks...I'll keep an eyeball peeled for 2.6.0

It is an erratic issue but a very annoying one when it happens. :) So thanks.

Replying to MarkDoliner:

No problem, sorry it took me 6 months :-( timberbt: So that change is not included in a version that you can download, but it should be in the next official release, 2.6.0. We haven't scheduled a release date for that release, so it could be as soon as two weeks or more likely a month or two from now.

[darkyndy]

Hi, I see that this issue is now present (again) and it seems is from ICQ, I have multiple accounts, I've unchecked AIM account and the error message still popped out, I've unchecked ICQ account no pop-up, after that I've checked AIM and no pop-up so the problem is from ICQ and the message display's AIM :)

[MarkDoliner]

Ticket #8728 has been marked as a duplicate of this ticket.

[rtaft]

Replying to darkyndy: 2.6.0 has not been released yet, which should only show the popup once. AIM and ICQ use the same network, same protocol, and you can even message ICQ members from AIM, so I'm not sure that it matters which is displayed. This is like having 2 AIM accounts, and only 1 being affected by this bug (which is common) and not displaying which account it is.

[darkrain42]

Ticket #8729 has been marked as a duplicate of this ticket.

[obsoe]

Nice to hear that this issue is fixed in 2.6. The current fix is a small one which does not change existing code a lot and I understand that this is mostly a good thing. But finally it is not a good solution for handling this issue. IMO a pop up window is not a good choice at all, even if it only pops up once. A user cannot do anything when the buddy list is not available, so why is it necessary to capture a user's attention and force her to take some action like pressing O.k.? There are other notification ways. For instance within the buddy list window, like it is done when a login to an account failed or someone request buddy list authorization. Shouldn't that be the solution to go for in the 2.6 release?

[darkrain42@…]

(In [fbab3d52df9aff739254b5dcefec110084139ac8]):
Backport the buddy list error for ICQ/AIM, since the servers seem to be having problems on a regular basis.

*** Plucked e1b1e80d999e393a80f201a484ef61289c258fbe (markdoliner@…): Only show the oscar error \"we couldn't fetch your buddy list, but don't worry it will probably show up in a few minutes\" once. Thanks to rtaft for the patch. Fixes #4845.