Error reading blist.xml

[frost_]

I'm using beta 7, and it also appears in 2.0, I'm on Vista Ultimate

[lschiere]

What is the text of the error?

[frost_]

error loading blist.xml

[datallah]

We're going to need more information than that, please follow the instructions here for obtaining a debug log.

[frost_]

ok, I downloaded the debug version and uploaded the debug.log if its any help you can check this screenshot of the error I'm getting.

http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/2973/sampleerrorcl3.jpg

[datallah]

Your debug log doesn't contain nearly enough information to be useful, please attach the whole debug log - we really what appears in it at the time the error message comes up.

[frost_]

that appears whenever I start pidgin, and that's the debug I only get

[frost_]

I suspect that it has something to do with permission, where blist.xml can't be read by pidgin

[frost_]

ok, this debug log contains "util: Error parsing file"

I think this is the error I'm getting on startup, error reading blist.xml

[datallah]

Can you attach the C:\Users\Swabelicious\AppData\Roaming\.purple\blist.xml~ file.

If you don't want to post it here, you can email it to me directly.

[frost_]

what's your email?

[datallah]

This was caused by an ICQ buddy alias that contained invalid utf-8 text. I'm waiting to hear back how the alias got set (apparently it is coming from the server).

[seanegan]

Milestone 2.0.3 deleted

[seanegan]

Ethan, can you trace through the ICQ alias path and make sure it gets validated UTF-8?

[Sim-on]

I closed #4756, #3897, #3849 and #4610 (includes some more debug-outputs) as duplicates of this...

[Meetloaf]

Hello, I am getting this error as well. Funny this is, I had this error 6 mos agao, and then after a clean install, it never happened (the last version I was running was Pidgin 2.2). I just did a clean install of my system again and this problem appeared with 2.2 with the latest Pidgin build (2.4.1). I attached my debug.log, it's happening the the file is being parsed for some reason.

If I delete the blist.xml file and THEN start pidgin, I do not get the error. Any subsequent start of Pidgin yields the error, until I delete the blist.xml file.

Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 4GB Ram Dell Vostro 1500

Hopefully my log helps.

Thanks.

[datallah]

Replying to Meetloaf:

If I delete the blist.xml file and THEN start pidgin, I do not get the error. Any subsequent start of Pidgin yields the error, until I delete the blist.xml file.

Which protocols are you using? What does the debug log say?

[mad_goldfish]

I'm getting the same error on Ubuntu 8.04 with Pidgin 2.4.1. Log attached.

I've got accounts on Jabber (including GTalk), Yahoo, MSN and MySpaceIM, but these problems have existed since before I added the MSN and MySpace? accounts, and the plugins shown in the log.

In response to datallah, the culprit appears to be a bad character in the blist.xml file, which is also reported to the console as:

(21:58:23) util: Writing file blist.xml to directory /home/can/.purple (21:58:23) util: Writing file /home/can/.purple/blist.xml (21:58:25) nautilus: don't save blist online. No change (21:58:27) Gtk: Failed to set text from markup due to error parsing markup: Error on line 1: Character reference '5' does not encode a permitted character (21:58:27) Gtk: Failed to set text from markup due to error parsing markup: Error on line 1: Character reference '5' does not encode a permitted character

I believe this line in the blist.xml~ file may be the culprit:

<group name='u&#x5;Chat Friends'>

Which is taken from my Yahoo Messenger list. The other Yahoo groups do not appear to have any entity escapes, and as far as my Windows and web-based Yahoo clients are telling me, the group name is "Chat Friends".

[selth]

Bug is present on fedora using a 2.4.3-1.fc9

[selth]

after looking at the xml file, the faulty line comes from an AIM entry :

<setting name='switchspell' type='string'>D����� 2</setting>

[elb]

selth, that error is most likely caused by the switchspell plugin. You should probably report that to the authors.

In the meantime, you can safely remove that line from your blist.xml while Pidgin is not running, and the problem may go away (if it does not occur elsewhere, as well).

Folks, I'm not really the one to be handling this -- it doesn't look like the Oscar plugin has incoming alias problems (at least, not any more). I think the ultimate problem we need to fix has to do with XML parser robustness. Would anyone like to look at that? (Sadrul?)

[selth]

If I can make a suggestion... if you enforce the way the settings are written in the file, less problems will occur.

[frost_]

please delete my debug logs