empathy makes accounts invisible on keyring failure

[David Given]

Binary package hint: empathy

If empathy cannot access the keyring to fetch a password, then the account vanishes from the accounts list until the authorization is granted.

1. Set your keyring password to be non-empty.
2. Add a number of accounts to empathy.
3. Log out. Log back in. Start empathy.
4. Pick 'deny' each time empathy prompts for the keyring password.
5. empathy will now give you the initial setup dialogue, acting as if there are no accounts. If you get past this and look at the accounts page, it will indeed be empty.
6. Quit empathy. Start t up again. The accounts page will still be empty.
7. Log out. Log back in. Start empathy.
8. Give authorization when prompted.
9. The accounts will have returned.

This is particularly awkward as it's tempting to add all your accounts to empathy again when they are apparently 'deleted'. This'll end up having multiple copies of each account, and as removing accounts in empathy is extremely non-obvious (#441409), it's decidedly not a good user experience.

empathy ought to just mark them disabled if it can't log them in (as Pidgin does).

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Nov 1 11:35:19 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: empathy 2.28.1-1ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: empathy
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:3268): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:3268): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (nautilus:3301): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:3318): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments at: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=609222

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

marking this triaged as the report has been sent upstream.

[pointydog (scarlet)]

I am most concerned with the saved messages. If I re-add my accounts, the old messages are lost. (well, at least I am not able to find them)

[Usama Akkad (damascene)]

also on Lucid 10.04

[Usama Akkad (damascene)]

I don't know if this is related but empathy doesn't work for me from the first time at all. I need to do quit and run it again many time to work.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Usama, that would be bug 532446

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 118800, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Marked Duplicate as per Upstream comment