Pidgin won't start after upgrade to Hardy

[Kostya]

I've upgraded to Hardy and it came with pidgin 2.4.1. Pidgin no longer starts. When you click on an icon it flashes for a split second in the notification area of GNOME panel and goes away. If I run it from terminal with -d switch it crashes with following "final words":

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...
(12:31:56) Session Management: ICE initialized.
(12:31:56) Session Management: Connecting with no previous ID
(12:31:56) Session Management: Handling new ICE connection...
(12:31:56) done.
(12:31:56) Session Management: Connected to manager (GnomeSM) with client ID 117f000101000120922751600000069120023
(12:31:56) Session Management: Using pidgin as command
(12:31:56) dbus: Need to register an object with the dbus subsystem. (If you are not a developer, please ignore this message.)
(12:31:56) dbus: The signal "gtkblist-unhiding" caused some dbus error. (If you are not a developer, please ignore this message.)
(12:31:56) signals: Signal data for account-error-changed not found!
pidgin: symbol lookup error: pidgin: undefined symbol: purple_account_get_current_error
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've also noticed the following:

I can delete .purple/accounts.xml file and pidgin will start and will ask me to add new accounts. At that point, I can add my accounts and pidgin appears to be working fine until I close it and try to open it again. Then it fails with the same errors.

Deleting the entire .purple folder causes the same results as deleting just accounts.xml file

finch (terminal window alternative to pidgin) works fine with all of my settings (not that I am necessarily enjoy using IM in a terminal window. ;-)

[Kostya (kostya1)]

I have just realized that the reason finch is still working is that I have an older version of finch - 2.2.0

[Kostya (kostya1)]

I removed pidgin and corresponding packages, then I downloaded source for 2.4.1 and built it and installed it from source. This appears to have fixed the problem. I am not sure why this is. I guess something in the official build was conflicting with something on my system...

P.S. I did try to remove and reinstall pidgin before and it wasn't helping.

[Greg Copenhaver (greg-gcopenhaver)]

I'm having these exact same problems. I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 i386 Desktop (upgraded using the Alternate CD). I just now checked my amd64 machine (also recently upgraded to 8.04), and it's NOT having this problem at all.

[Bryce Nesbitt (bryce2)]

I have this also. It worked great when the machine was new, now it's not starting ever.
See also http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=813584&page=3

Even after purging and reinstalling, I get:

$$ pidgin --debug
(16:23:28) prefs: Reading /home/bnesbitt/.purple/prefs.xml
(16:23:28) prefs: Finished reading /home/bnesbitt/.purple/prefs.xml
(16:23:28) prefs: purple_prefs_get_string: /pidgin/browsers/command not a string pref
(16:23:28) dbus: okkk
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/iconaway.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/notify.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/musicmessaging.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/gevolution.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/timestamp_format.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/ticker.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/xmppconsole.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/nautilus.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/timestamp.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/history.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/cap.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/pidginrc.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/gestures.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/spellchk.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/extplacement.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/convcolors.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/markerline.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/pidgin/gtkbuddynote.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/offlinemsg.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/log_reader.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libyahoo.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/tcl.so
(16:23:28) plugins: /usr/lib/purple-2/tcl.so is not loadable: libtcl8.4.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libsimple.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/joinpart.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/statenotify.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libxmpp.so
(16:23:28) util: Reading file xmpp-caps.xml from directory /home/bnesbitt/.purple
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libicq.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/psychic.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libsametime.so
(16:23:28) plugins: /usr/lib/purple-2/libsametime.so has a prefs_info, but is a prpl. This is no longer supported.
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libgg.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/idle.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libmyspace.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libnovell.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libmsn.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/buddynote.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/libzephyr.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/liboscar.so
(16:23:28) plugins: /usr/lib/purple-2/liboscar.so is not usable because the 'purple_init_plugin' symbol could not be found. Does the plugin call the PURPLE_INIT_PLUGIN() macro?
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/ssl.so
(16:23:28) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/ssl-gnu...

[Bryce Nesbitt (bryce2)]

The important bit is:

(16:23:28) plugins: Unloading plugin AIM
(16:23:28) gtkblist: removed visibility manager: 0
(16:23:28) docklet: destroyed
(16:23:28) Gtk: gtk_main_quit: assertion `main_loops != NULL' failed

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you run
- dpkg -l | grep pidgin
- which pidgin
- ldd `which pidgin`

and copy the logs to the bug?
usually such errors are local installations taking over the ubuntu version

[J. Austin Rodriguez (jeanaustinr)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu and Pidgin better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu and Pidgin since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test the current development versions. If you can test it, and it is still an issue, we would appreciate if you could upload updated logs by running apport-collect <bug #>, and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

For more details, check http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/FullChangeLog