MSN authentication error if email ID is @superig

[Fábio Lima]

Binary package hint: empathy

Empathy and Emesene can't connect to MSN messenger protocol. Tried to retype login and password many times. Always returns "Authentication Failure" message.

But aMsn, another messenger available at synaptic, works fine. It connects withou troubles.

A friend told me today that he experienced the same trouble on Fedora some time ago. He said that It happens when login name doesn't end with "@hotmail.com" (my login ends with "@superig.com"). He said that the problem was fixed later.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: empathy 2.30.0-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-19.28-generic 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-19-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
CheckboxSubmission: b9ce55731bce4169eec9caa859a2d3c7
CheckboxSystem: 2954e74ba17fb0e37fc942cd1d9fab4e
Date: Fri Apr 9 20:15:39 2010
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/empathy
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta amd64 (20100318)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=pt_BR:pt:en
 LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy
XsessionErrors: (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1461): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed

[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=615540

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Empathy and emescene can't connect to MSN messenger protocol. Tried to retype
login and password many times. Always returns "Authentication Failure" message.
A friend told me today that he experienced the same trouble on Fedora some time
ago. He said that It happens when login name doesn't end with "@hotmail.com"
(my login ends with "@superig.com"). He said that the problem was fixed later.

originally reported at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/empathy/+bug/559692

[Jonny-lamb (jonny-lamb)]

This isn't entirely true. My passport address does not end in hotmail.com and works perfectly with butterfly.

If you get an authentication failure in both empathy and emesene, then you've probably typed something wrong.

What version of mission-control and gnome-keyring are you using? There was a bug about password store unlocking in g-k recently which you might be hitting.

If this is indeed a butterfly problem then I'll need logs before I can do anything more:

    http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/Debugging

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Also keeping the empathy task for tracking purpose. Butterfly bugs get lost many times

[Olivier Le Thanh Duong (olethanh)]

Like said in the upstream report this is not related to the fact your ID doesn't hand in @hotmail.com, could you get us the butterfly log so we can identify the issue? see http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/Debugging

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

you can also get the log in the empathy debug dialog

[Fábio Lima (fhl)]

I've done a new test: Tryed to connect using my login <email address hidden> - didn't work. Then I tryed using another's person login <email address hidden> and worked fine!!! The same happened to emesene. The log generated in the debug menu dialog is right above ("log in the empathy debug dialog 1" and "log in the empathy debug dialog 2).

[Olivier Le Thanh Duong (olethanh)]

@Fábio thanks for the logs but you need to select "butterfly" in the debug windows to get useful logs

[Fábio Lima (fhl)]

Ooops.... you're right! There goes log os butterfly!

[Kemp (kemp-iualdii)]

I'm currently having the same problem, but with a @hotmail.com address. I'm attaching the debug output from the butterfly connection manager and the butterfly related parts of the debug log from empathy also. I know they're largely duplicates, but maybe some of the unique parts are useful to you?

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Kemp your logs there suggest you are putting the wrong password. That came
from #telepathy

[Kemp (kemp-iualdii)]

Have confirmed that the failing password does not fail in Pidgin or the official Live client. My password includes special characters (punctuation), could that be an issue?

[Olivier Le Thanh Duong (olethanh)]

@Kemp : What kind of special characters? regular .-_=+ ? or something that could be not in ANSI? Could you please provide us a similar password that also fail so we could reproduce the bug?

@Fábio: That's strange the debug log you posted in #10 say you are actually connected properly, are you sure you took the log of a failing connection or that you had the complete log?

[Kemp (kemp-iualdii)]

The password I was using was

E5#AXu3aSAa7]8rM"W;6

So the characters involved are # ] " ;

I also tried a password including | ^ ` ! ] \ , and that failed too. I noticed that the ] is common between the two and removed that, it still failed though.

Also tried using a password only contained letters (shorter than the previous ones also) and that succeded. It seems to be either a punctuation or a password length issue.

[Fábio Lima (fhl)]

@Olivier

Yes, I'm sure my login fails. You're probably seeing another login (@hotmail) I used in order to demonstrate that my connection and configuration is ok.

[Kemp (kemp-iualdii)]

Is this bug being investigated at all? I'm not meaning to sound like I'm demanding a solution, just curious as to what sort of priority it has, or if the right people have enough information yet?

[Brian Curtis (bcurtiswx)]

@Kemp, it's only been 4 days. Give Olivier some time to reply

[Kemp (kemp-iualdii)]

It's fine. Like I said, I'm not expected a quick response or immediate solution. I'm just curious as to how this lines up against other things. I fully expect there to already be things of a higher priority (and of course real life).

[Olivier Le Thanh Duong (olethanh)]

Hey,
sorry for the late answer, I hav been busy with work recently so I couldn't work a whole lot on butterfly and papyon
First for Fabio problem the password are effectively limited to 16 characters, the official client crop them before sending them, would be easy to do the same in papyon.
For Kemp problem we probably escape some of theses chars wrongly, to fix this we would probably have to check with wireshark how the officials clients do it or check the sources of other free client.

[Kemp (kemp-iualdii)]

Taking a hint from your mention of maximum password length, I took a look around at mine (as I use 20 character passwords by default). It seems that when I paste a new password into the hotmail site, the entry box cuts it down to 16 characters. I noticed this when I was changing it to 16 characters to test just now and my old and new passwords pasted in at the same length. I have a suspicion therefore that me and Fabio have been encountering the same problem, and that both the official client and pidgin have been truncating my password before sending it (thus why they both succeeded). I will be able to check this later today and get back to you. If that is the issue then I apologise for sending you down the wrong path with the special characters. It would probably have helped me if the hotmail site had mentioned any sort of length limit instead of just silently correcting behind the scenes.

[Olivier Le Thanh Duong (olethanh)]

From the downstream bug report and discussing with Youness, the problem is that the password are limited to 16 chars. The official client accept longer passwords but crop them to 16 chars before sending them we should do the same in papyon

[Kemp (kemp-iualdii)]

Confirmed, I've been bitten by the password length limit. Thanks for the pointer in the right direction, the special characters seem to have been a red herring.

[Fábio Lima (fhl)]

Worked for me, too. I'm using the first 16 characters and, finally, I could connect using empathy.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

seems the issue is the limit described before?

[Louis-francis-ratte-boulianne (louis-francis-ratte-boulianne)]

Fixed in git master