Changes between Version 4 and Version 5 of Protocol Specific Questions

Timestamp:

Jun 3, 2007, 5:44:32 AM (17 years ago)

Author:

John Bailey

Comment:

--

Protocol Specific Questions

@@ -136 +136 @@
 
 While in Web Messenger mode, several things work differently or not at all.  Adding, moving, and removing buddies doesn't work, and the only available statuses are "Available" and "Invisible".  In addition, the Yahoo! server seems to ignore all Yahoo! Chat related packets.  For this reason, we use the YCHT protocol to join Yahoo! Chat rooms while connected using the Web Messenger method.
+
+== MSN Protocol ==
+
+=== Why are file transfers so slow? ===
+MSN file transfer support is limited to the proxied version of file transfer support in the protocol.  This means that the files are sent to MSN's servers, then the server sends the data to the other user.  We don't know if or when we will ever support any of the peer-to-peer file transfer methods available in the MSN protocol.
+
+=== Is there a way to invite more than one person to a chat? ===
+Yes, but this is a case where our design differs from the official clients.  In the MSN world, there is no distinction between an IM session and a chat.  Within libpurple and Pidgin, however, there is.  If you start an IM with one user, then you cannot invite someone else to the conversation.  If, however, you right-click the buddy and select Initiate Chat, then you can invite as many people to the chat as you want using Conversation->Invite.  Unfortunately, Pidgin does not yet provide a convenient way to select multiple buddies at once to invite.
+
+=== What version of the protocol does Pidgin use? ===
+Pidgin uses MSNP9.
+
+=== Is MSNP11 (MSN 7) or MSNP14 (Windows Live Messenger) going to be supported? ===
+MSNP14 support is a work in progress.  It is not yet ready for general consumption.  Don't try to use it.
+
+=== Why can't I log into MSN? ===
+You probably did not compile Pidgin with SSL support, or the SSL plugin failed to load.  The MSN protocol requires the use of SSL, which Pidgin provides by either GnuTLS or the combination of NSS and NSPR from the Mozilla project.  See [wiki:FAQssl these notes] to get SSL up and running.
+
+=== Why isn't MSN in the list of protocols? ===
+If you're running Gentoo, rebuild with the "msn" USE flag enabled.  For some reason, it was deemed necessary to make the MSN protocol an off-by-default USE flag.  If you don't like this behavior, complain to the Gentoo maintainers.
+
+For other distributions, it is probably that the MSN protocol plugin didn't load.  See the next question.
+
+=== The MSN plugin won't load, but I have Mozilla NSS or GNUTLS or both! ===
+See [wiki:FAQssl these notes] on getting SSL up and running.
+
+=== What does "MSN: S: 911 3" in the debug window mean when I can't connect? ===
+Unhandled command '911' indicates some form of authentication error. This could be simply that your password is wrong.
+
+Other reports of this error seem to indicate that it could be a timeout problem, if the authenticaion process takes too long to complete, the authentication fails.  Slowness could be caused by a number of factors, including:
+ * being on dialup
+ * slow DNS resolution
+ * network problems.
+
+Please check that your configured DNS servers are correct, and are resolving hostnames reasonably quickly. On Linux these are specified in /etc/resolv.conf - At least 5 people resolved the '911' error by removing incorrect DNS servers from here.
+
+If you are still having problems please try these tests to try to identify any potential network problems: using telnet, try connecting to
+ * port 1863 on messenger.hotmail.com
+ * port 443 on loginnet.passport.com
+ * port 443 on login.passport.com
+If any of those fail, or take a long time to connect, then this is probably not a bug in Pidgin.
+
+=== How do I set an avatar? ===
+We call these buddy icons.  You can use the global icon selector on the buddy list or use the account editor, both of which are described [wiki:"Using Pidgin" here].
+
+=== What does "Has You" in the buddy list tooltip mean? ===
+ It shows you if that MSN user has added you to his/her buddy list. "Has you: No" does ''not'' mean you can't talk to that person.
+
+=== How do I set my MSN Friendly Name (the name other users see)? ===
+In the Buddy List window, go to Accounts->'' your MSN account''->Set Friendly Name.
+
+=== What does "Error reading from switchboard server" mean? ===
+We haven't fully figured that out yet, but even Microsoft's client seems to get similar errors, although with less frequency than we do.
+
+== Gadu-Gadu (GG) Protocol ==
+
+=== What is Gadu-Gadu? ===
+Gadu-Gadu is an IM protocol popular in Poland.  You can find more about it at [http://www.gadu-gadu.pl/ www.gadu-gadu.pl] (website in Polish).
+
+=== I compiled Pidgin from source.  Why doesn't it have Gadu-Gadu support? ===
+We now use an external libgadu.  Install your distro's libgadu-dev or libgadu-devel package and rebuild Pidgin (making sure to rerun `./configure`).  If your distro doesn't provide libgadu, you can download it from
+[http://toxygen.net/libgadu/files/libgadu-1.7.0.tar.gz here].  Unpack the tarball and run:
+{{{
+~/libgadu-1.7.0$ ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --disable-libgadu-openssl \
+> --disable-static --enable-shared
+~/libgadu-1.7.0$ make
+~/libgadu-1.7.0$ su -c "make install"
+}}}
+
+== Zephyr Protocol ==
+
+=== What is Zephyr? ===
+Zephyr is an IM protocol developed at MIT for use with Project Athena.  Its features include Kerberos IV authentication and multi-level chats (aka "subscriptions").  You're probably using this because your college/employer/organization uses it as a local IM/chat system.  If not, you probably don't have a server to connect to.
+
+=== Other Zephyr clients (zwgc, owl, tzc) work, but Pidgin dies with "Couldn't initialize zephyr" ===
+Your site might require the use of Kerberos 4 for authentication, though few prepackaged Pidgin binaries use Kerberos.  One solution is to compile Pidgin with the --with-krb4 flag to point to the location of your Kerberos 4 devel files, usually one of `/usr`, `/usr/local`, or `/usr/athena`, e.g.
+{{{
+~/pidgin$ ./configure --with-krb4=/path/to/kerberosIV
+}}}
+
+
+=== Pidgin isn't working, but I never got any other Zephyr client working ===
+You need to have zhm (which comes with the standard Zephyr distribution) installed, and running, and pointed at your Zephyr servers.  e.g.
+{{{
+zhm z1.example.com z2.example.com z3.example.com
+}}}
+
+Alternatively, there might be a firewall or a NAT between you and the Zephyr servers.  Zephyr generally doesn't work in an environment where incoming connections cannot be made to arbitrary UDP ports.
+
+=== How do I use Zephyr from behind my firewall? ===
+You can use tzc ("Trivial Zephyr Client") and ssh to run Zephyr from a machine that is behind a firewall or NAT.  First, make sure that tzc is installed and working on the remote machine.  The best version of tzc to use can be found [http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/debian/dists/testing/contrib/source/tzc-cclub_001-3.tar.gz here].
+
+Make sure that you can make a passwordless ssh connection to the remote machine and get kerberos 4 tickets.  Then, click the Advanced tab in the account editor, enable "Use tzc", and set the tzc command to
+{{{
+/path/to/ssh username@hostname /path/to/tzc -e "%s"
+}}}
+
+Alternately, if you have tzc working on your machine, you can enable "Use tzc", and set the tzc command to
+{{{
+/path/to/tzc -e "%s"
+}}}