Fixing the Pidgin Yahoo problem.

[lee8oi]

***This here is a copy of the blog I wrote on my website. I wanted to detail upgrading Pidgin for a buddy of mine. Guess enough work put into it I thought it would be nice to post here for the linux Mint users since it also applies to us.***

We have all been through a recent destruction of our yahoo connectivity through the pidgin messenger. Very annoying this is indeed. A few of you were quick to move on to temporary solutions. My solution was to use meebo until I found a fix with yahoo's Pager Server address. Course implementing the fix took care of it, but then I would have to do it for every yahoo account I make because its a problem in the default program. Well the problem has been fixed in pidgin and a new release of pidgin is out. It is version 2.5.7 available on thier website. Ubuntu based systems are directed to upgrade through the package manager. For Mint users the Ubuntu upgrade code doesn't quite work for alot of people. So how do we upgrade? Well I have a couple ways to mention here. The easy one first.


Upgrading using package manager.

If you have an Ubuntu based system the fix will be applied to the package manager's repositories. More specifically we will be adding a repository. In order to use the repository we will need the key. So open a terminal and copy and paste the following code(shift+ctrl+v should 'paste' in most terminals. Or you can just right click and select paste):

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sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 67265eb522bdd6b1c69e66ed7fb8bee0a1f196a8

Ok now we have the key installed the next step is to add the repo. This is where we'll have to make sure we are using the right code. If you are using Linux Mint you will need to chose the correct code for your version. Again just copy and paste the appropriate code into the terminal.

Linux Mint 6 repository:

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echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pidgin-ppa.list

Linux Mint 7 repository:

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echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pidgin-ppa.list

Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu,Edubuntu.....(all releases):

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echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu `lsb_release --short --codename` main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pidgin-ppa.list

So now we got the repository. We need to update the package manager. To do that we type the following:

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sudo apt-get update

Now we are ready to actually do the upgrade. The upgrade is pretty simple as you could just type "sudo apt-get upgrade". But this might not be desired in some cases because it may update packages that you don't wish to update. So I have written up a quick code to specifically remove the currently installed version, and install the currently available one(which would be the new one now that we have updated the repositories). So for the last step in the job copy the following code:

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sudo apt-get --yes purge pidgin ; sudo apt-get --yes install pidgin

Now pidgin is upgraded! the only thing left to do is to open pidgin. On the buddy list click on "Accounts" then click "Manage Accounts". Here you will delete your yahoo account and recreate it. Note: you may also have to disable and re-enable the account if pidgin has already attempted to sign you in. you could also just close pidgin and open it up again to make sure auto-login works correctly, and to reset the connections. Congrats! And enjoy. Pidgin should be back to normal. You can go about your life

Upgrade from source code:

The second way to upgrade pidgin is by downloading and compiling the source code. Here I will lay out the few easy steps but I won't hold your hand quite so much cuz if you are compiling from sources I would hope you know what you are doing. This will also be done in the terminal.

Download and extract the source code using the following code:

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wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pidgin/pidgin-2.5.7.tar.bz2 ; tar -xjvpf pidgin-2.5.7.tar.bz2

Before we jump right into compiling we need a few more libraries installed to satisfy all of pidgins needs. To do that copy the following code into the terminal:

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sudo apt-get --yes install build-essential intltool libxss-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgtkspell-dev libxml2-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libmeanwhile-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libavahi-client-dev libavahi-glib-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev network-manager-dev libperl-dev libgnutls-dev tcl-dev tk-dev

Now to get to the actual compiling. here I'll lay out the steps for you in a bullet list.

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Enter the directory by typing:

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cd pidgin-2.5.7

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Configure the makefile by typing:

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./configure

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Compile the program by typing:

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make

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Install the program using:

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sudo make install

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Update library links by typing:

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sudo ldconfig

Now you should have the pidgin 2.5.7 installed and ready to use. You should now recreate your yahoo account in pidgin. Quick way to do this is to open the buddy list and press ctrl+a. Then highlight your yahoo account, and click 'delete'. Now you can 'Add ' your yahoo account again. Personally at this point I like to test the auto-login so I would just close pidgin completely then reopen it. Thats it. Congrats you did it. You can now delete the source code, and the download too if you like. I have personally tested all of these commands. The developement libraries the code above installs allows all of pidgins features compile successfully. So everything should work just fine.

[Alpha-Geek]

Wonderful tutorial. This will spare a LOT of Mint users needless aggravation.

[bytebandit01]

@lee8oi
i carefully followed your very good tutorial. it seemed i got a positive response from the terminal after every execution of the commands you posted. now i loading up pidgin and checked the menu -> Help -> About, it says Pidgin 2.5.5, which is the same version as i had before i tried the upgrade. checking on pidgin's site am expecting 2.5.8, thier latest release.

any idea on this?

i'm running Gloria - 64bit..

thanks ahead

[exploder]

You can get the latest version of Pidgin here.

removed/search.php?keywords=pidgin

Make certain you remove your old packages before installing the new ones.

[bytebandit01]

do we have a single package for this? one package that we can simply install..

[exploder]

do we have a single package for this? one package that we can simply install..

No, if you want the latest version it is available from removed. Just download the packages, go into Synaptic and remove the current corresponding packages, close Synaptic and click on the downloaded files one by one to install them. There is an order to the install, if you get an error the error tells you which package to install first. It is really very easy and you will have the latest version.

[bytebandit01]

do we have a single package for this? one package that we can simply install..

No, if you want the latest version it is available from removed. Just download the packages, go into Synaptic and remove the current corresponding packages, close Synaptic and click on the downloaded files one by one to install them. There is an order to the install, if you get an error the error tells you which package to install first. It is really very easy and you will have the latest version.

i followed your advice and i've successfully upgraded to pidgrin 2.5.8. thanks so much.

[exploder]

That's great! I am glad you posted back your results!

[PaulBC]

I followed the steps to upgrade using the package manager and successfully (as far as I can tell) installed Pidgin version 2.5.8. However, I still cannot connect to Yahoo. I get unknown error 1013.

Any ideas what might be wrong? I'm running Mint 7.

[sticky0144]

Ok the first time it didn't work and I can't figure out why, it kept installing version 2.5.5 for some odd reason. The compile steps worked beautifully, lovely.

Linux is Lovely.

M.

[Sanjima]

Yayay! I thought that problem was with my internet, 'cause for a while I just couldn't connect to the wireless network I used on Windows 7 (very weird connection still, constant disconnects, etc.) and couldn't figure out how to fix it, 'cause I'm basically brand new to Linux.

Thank you so much ^^ it works perfectly now <3

[PaulBC]

I followed the steps to upgrade using the package manager and successfully (as far as I can tell) installed Pidgin version 2.5.8. However, I still cannot connect to Yahoo. I get unknown error 1013.

Any ideas what might be wrong? I'm running Mint 7.

I get the same error too , but somehow I manage to fix that. See if this helps: Try not to append @yahoo.com/@ymail.com on your username.

Leaving the @yahoo.com off my username did the trick! Thanks.