libqca2-plugin-gnupg breaks psi

[Andreas Olsson]

Binary package hint: psi

Having installed Psi (0.12-2) in Jaunty I've experienced all kinds of strange behavior from it's interface. Usually it doesn't work to toggle View -> Show ___ contacts while being connected. Sometimes when I double click on name on the contact list, I receive a chat window to a totally separate person. When changing Options, and selecting different "areas" (Application, Chat, Events, etc) the "selection color" sometimes stick on the old selection.

I haven't yet managed to find a pattern on when and when not these symptoms occur. All I can say for sure is that it happens often, but not all the time. Also, I've installed Psi (and Jaunty) on a few different computer, with the same result.

EDIT/UPDATE: This might be related to QT incompabilities

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: psi 0.12-2ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=sv_SE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: psi
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic x86_64

[Sascha Bendix (scrubb)]

I got the same problems on amd64, too. On another system with xubuntu 9.04 and i386 I only have had a problem with the scrollbar which does not behave as expected. Have you tried both architectures with the same effects?

The problems especially occur when I go online and there's a lot of xml messages between server and client. Then mostly the contactlist just didn't get updated after a while.

[Sascha Bendix (scrubb)]

According to http://forum.psi-im.org/post/35562 support for qt version 4.5 (which was shipped with jaunty) is incompatible with the current psi version 0.12. The support for Qt 4.5 is planned for version 0.13.

[Andreas Olsson (andol)]

I've had problems on both i386 and amd64. Haven't compared enough to actually say in what regards it matter.

Anyhow, based on our combined experiences, as well as that upstream forum post I'd say we have enough information to mark this bug as confirmed. Will you do the honours? :) Wouldn't really be proper for me to confirm my own bug.

[Sascha Bendix (scrubb)]

I tried to reproduce the problem on several i386 Ubuntu installations with all my accounts, but never got the same behaviour.

Due I only have my laptop with x86_64 Architecture I reinstalled it with a fresh ubuntu 9.04 and got the same error. Even a new ~/.psi-folder didn't help.

In the meanwhile I compiled Psi 0.12.1 out of the box and got no problems. Could you perhaps try that, too?

[Andreas Olsson (andol)]

Thanks for the tip. I'll do some tests with 0.12.1 this weekend.

[uhu (w2q)]

Same to me. I did a upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04. Compiling the source from scratch (0.12.1 downloaded from the psi-homepage) after installing qt-dev4.5 solved my problem.

[uhu (w2q)]

By the way, I have a 32Bit-OS (although an AMD64 CPU)

[Sascha Bendix (scrubb)]

I've done a little more debugging and found out, that the problems only occur if psi is configured with --disable-bundled-qca (which is the case in the ubuntu packages) and the package libqca2-plugin-gnupg is installed.

After uninstalling the package my problems were gone.

With knowing this I could recreate the bug on another system simply by installing libqca2-plugin-gnupg.

Please rename the bug something like 'libqca2-plugin-gnupg breaks psi'.

[Andreas Olsson (andol)]

Wow, what a difference it made removing libqca2-plugin-gnupg. Without it the standard Psi package really works the way it should. Thanks for discovering this!

I'll take care of renaming the bug.

[Sascha Bendix (scrubb)]

The same problem seems to be in the debian upstream package according to (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=525765).

The author told me, that uninstall the gnupg support seems to help, but nevertheless sometimes his roster hangs for a small while.

[jdb2 (jonathanbusby)]

I use Kubuntu and when I upgraded from Hardy to Jaunty the upgrade script installed the latest Jaunty package for Psi , specifically 0.12 . I noticed strange behavior as well as lockups when trying to enter text into a chat window which basically rendered Psi useless.

The solution : Build Psi 0.13-dev from the Git repository sources after extracting the needed QCA 2.0 packages/plugins to their required locations under psi/thrid-party/qca . (qca, qca-cyrus-sasl, qca-gnupg, qca-ossl ) The latest tarballs for these packages can be found at http://delta.affinix.com/qca/ .

I've been running Git revision

'
commit 487e3d461a128f46e91225dcdfe7921eecc47b94
Author: Justin Karneges <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Apr 23 23:44:22 2009 -0700
'

with no problems so far.

[Sascha Bendix (scrubb)]

Does the git version work with the system lib qca as well?

As I said the problem only occurs if you use not the bundled libqca and qca-gnupg. So either it's a bug in Psi 0.12 oder the libqca-gnupg. To really fix it, we have to know which of them it is.

[Arseny Klimovsky (arseny.klimovsky)]

I also have this bug, can I help to investigate the problem?

[Nexus (nexus-hoth)]

Same problem here (and after remove libqca2-plugin-gnupg works fine)

[Tornio (tornios)]

I have the same problem with my Kububtu Jaunty both in the graphic interface and with the GnuPG plugin(libqca2-plugin-gnupg)... I use the psi(0.12-2ubuntu1).

[Andreas Olsson (andol)]

Well, a newer libqca2-plugin-gnupg does seem to help.

Keeping the jaunty psi 0.12-2ubuntu1 etc and installing a new libqca2-plugin-gnupg package built from the most resent upstream (beta) version does the trick for me. Now Psi, including its openpgp support, works just the way it should.

Just to be clear, the only things changed/updated is libqca2-plugin-gnupg. Everything else is standard packages from Ubuntu 9.04.

Feel free to try out my newer builds of libqca2-plugin-gnupg

https://launchpad.net/~andol/+archive/private/+files/libqca2-plugin-gnupg_2.0.0~beta3-0ubuntu1~andol_amd64.deb
https://launchpad.net/~andol/+archive/private/+files/libqca2-plugin-gnupg_2.0.0~beta3-0ubuntu1~andol_i386.deb

[Justin Karneges (jkarneges)]

Currently we have reason to believe that Qt 4.5.[0,1] is ABI incompatible with the version of Qt used to compile the Debian Psi and QCA packages. It is possible that the only reason updating qca-gnupg worked for you is simply because you built it against Qt 4.5, and not because you're using a newer qca-gnupg version. Could you try rebuilding the older source version used by the Debian package, and see if that works too?

If there is an ABI break in Qt 4.5, it's important that we try to find it, otherwise all software (not just Psi and friends) built against earlier Qt versions could have all become buggy in subtle ways.

[Andreas Olsson (andol)]

@Justin: I just did a rebuild of qca2-plugin-gnupg 0.1~20070904-2, and it didn't help. Using it still gives me the problems originally reported.

[Justin Karneges (jkarneges)]

Thanks, Andreas. I guess the ABI-break theory remains inconclusive.

Good to know that upgrading qca-gnupg helps though. Probably it's about time for debian to update that package.

[Andreas Olsson (andol)]

@Justin: Well, just let me know if there is any other test you want me to run.

[Andreas Olsson (andol)]

This bug is fixed in Karmic, as of libqca2-plugin-gnupg 2.0.0~beta3-1.