Geek help! Kopete/MSN problems

[taimatsu]

Argh! Okay, for a while now Kopete (the Debian multi-protocol IM client) has been refusing to talk to MSN. Since many of my friends use MSN, this is seriously pissing me off. I have no idea how to find out what is wrong. I can see my contacts' online status (I don't know if they can see me) but when I try to message them the message cannot be sent properly and my MSN connection usually drops. Sometimes my MSN ID will not connect at all.

Can anyone offer help or suggestions?

(Edited to add: Suggestions which are equivalent to 'just use this other thing instead' are not ideal unless you genuinely know of a better integrated multi-IM client for Debian.)

Comments

[cultureofdoubt.livejournal.com]

Try http://www.amsn-project.net/ ? At least tell you if it's an issue with Kopete

[emperor]

That's the MSN client I use at home.

[taimatsu]

I could, I guess. Thanks.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Try seeing if there are any updates to the kopete package; Microsoft do little "improvements" to MSN on a semi-regular basis, and sometimes it takes a while for patches to catch up - I used to have this problem frequently when running Trillian, and often it would take a couple of days for the patch to become available.

I've never had this issue when running Gaim, mind you.

[v15u4l-3rr0r.livejournal.com]

Pidgin for the win.

[taimatsu]

Hmm, that looks rather good - thanks :)

[v15u4l-3rr0r.livejournal.com]

No worries.

[goodqueenmolly.livejournal.com]

I am having the same problem so I might investigate also.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I use pidgin (under Debian) too; it's what gaim turned into.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Seconded!

[cjwatson]

What does dpkg -l kopete say?

[diffrentcolours]

It's almost certainly because Microsoft have changed the protocol to break compatibility with other clients. Assuming it's fixed in a later version of Kopete, you can backport that (download and compile the source), which is a mild pain in the bum but not too terrible.

Or you could see whether one of the other IM clients uses a different version of the MSN protocol which has not been targetted; I don't seem to be having any problems with bitlbee via my VM. Unfortunately, the other graphical clients suck.

You might want to report the bug to Debian, see whether they'll release an update through the volatile project which you could install without any hassle.

But really, does anybody exist these days who doesn't have (a) a LiveJournal, (b) a Google Mail account or (c) the ability to register a Jabber account of their own?

[thinkstoomuch.livejournal.com]

Probably unnecessary, but another vote for Pidgin. Kopete is ugly - only benefit as far as I can see is it supports webcams. It doesn't actually *work* with my webcam, but hey.

Pidgin works fine, so the positive side here is that if Kopete is using an old version of MSN proto, the new version is understood by another opensource project, so Kopete will get updated soon. Well, you're using Debian, maybe in 6 months or so ;)

Your problems sound more like network problems to me. Oh, you're on NTL, aren't you? They have been quite broken the last few weeks. It has been so much fun.

Here we are:
http://status-cable.virginmedia.com/vmstatus/summary.do
At last, they're actually admitting they're having problems in this area!

[hey-judes.livejournal.com]

Try Adium if you are using a mac