empathy-accounts crashes on launch

[Kane DAAAA]

Bringing up the accounts windows just causes it to crash, no account management can be performed. There is a popup about "Ubuntu just stopped working..."

The title of the crash report is "empathy-accounts crashed with SIGABRT in raise()"

StacktraceTop has the offending line "raise() from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6"

Ubuntu release:
$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 12.10
Release: 12.10

package version:
empathy:
  Installed: 3.6.0.3-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 3.6.0.3-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 3.6.0.3-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Expectation: the "Online Accounts" window would open normally, and allow me to create/remove accounts

Actual outcome: The window crashed as soon as it opened. Invoking 'empath-accounts' directly from the command line results in:
$ empathy-accounts
**
ERROR:empathy-user-info.c:252:fill_contact_info_grid: assertion failed: (spec != NULL)
Aborted (core dumped)

[Xavier Claessens (zdra)]

For some reason, my Google self vcard has an "url" field and gabble claims it is not supported (missing from SupportedFields property).

[Xavier Claessens (zdra)]

Ok, this is because gabble hardcodes the fields supported by google in gabble_vcard_manager_can_use_vcard_field() and now google decided to add 'url'.

[Xavier Claessens (zdra)]

Patch: http://cgit.collabora.com/git/user/xclaesse/telepathy-gabble.git/log/?h=google-vcard

[Will Thompson (wjt)]

There's a comment right above the condition which stops being true as of this patch.

[Xavier Claessens (zdra)]

Yep, fixed that and amended the commit, it's just a matter of cgit being slow to refresh... ;-)

[Simon McVittie (smcv)]

Ship it.

In future, if you only have a single commit, linking to the commit (including its SHA1) will mean you don't have to worry about whether cgit still has old cached data.

[Xavier Claessens (zdra)]

ok merged in master.

[Kane DAAAA (annonm)]

I think this may have been a problem with Ubuntu itself, and not Empathy...

I just finished upgrading to 13.04, and now I'm able to manage accounts via Users > Online Accounts

[Kane DAAAA (annonm)]

Spoke too soon! The problem persists, and only happens when the Online Accounts window is opened from Empathy.

[Malachi de AElfweald (malachid)]

The other day, Google notified me that my password needed to be reset. I did so. Empathy couldn't connect, so I was going to change the password. I started having the same problem you are reporting on two different machines both running 13.04.

From the command line, I was able to launch empathy-accounts once and delete what I believed to be the offending account, but it still isn't working. Now I can't launch it from the command line either.

The only remaining account is one that has the 2-factor authentication turned on. Maybe that's where it's falling down? It used to work, but...

[Malachi de AElfweald (malachid)]

I rebooted and was able to launch empathy-accounts again. Both accounts were still there. I tried to delete what I thought was the offending account, and it crashed:
malachi@beast:~$ empathy-accounts

(empathy-accounts:2917): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer

(empathy-accounts:2917): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_handler_disconnect: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
**
ERROR:empathy-user-info.c:252:fill_contact_info_grid: assertion failed: (spec != NULL)
Aborted (core dumped)

Now, I'm back into the situation of the original reporter again.

[Malachi de AElfweald (malachid)]

Went into the gnome-keyring UI and deleted all the Ubuntu Web Accounts.

malachi@beast:~/bin$ empathy-accounts
**
ERROR:empathy-user-info.c:252:fill_contact_info_grid: assertion failed: (spec != NULL)
Aborted (core dumped)

Does not appear to have made a different to Empathy.

[Malachi de AElfweald (malachid)]

malachi@beast:~$ sudo apt-cache policy empathy
empathy:
  Installed: 3.6.4-0ubuntu4
  Candidate: 3.6.4-0ubuntu4
  Version table:
 *** 3.6.4-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Malachi de AElfweald (malachid)]

Preferences - told it to not autostart on boot
Managed to click the "disable account" switch
rebooted
empathy-accounts

I clicked on the other entry (I was going to disable it too) and got the same error:
malachi@beast:~$ empathy-accounts
**
ERROR:empathy-user-info.c:252:fill_contact_info_grid: assertion failed: (spec != NULL)
Aborted (core dumped)

[Malachi de AElfweald (malachid)]

sudo apt-get purchase empathy
rm -rf ~/.config/Empathy
reboot
sudo apt-get install empathy
launch empathy
delete the two accounts still there

starting over. seems stable so far.

[Malachi de AElfweald (malachid)]

rebooted - everything is working fine now

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Miklos Juhasz (mjuhasz)]

This is caused by Google adding support for the <URL> vCard
field, which telepathy-gabble doesn't think is supported or exists.

I attached the links to the freedesktop and debian bug.

This is fixed in telepathy itself by this commit: http://cgit.collabora.com/git/user/xclaesse/telepathy-gabble.git/commit/?id=57e62a7871be3209fca3046aaf99cdd055fef59d

Someone will have to backport this.

[Malachi de AElfweald (malachid)]

Today, it was doing the failing again. I saw the update here and apt-get upgraded. It's working again. I think that confirms the fix.

[Ihor Kaharlichenko (madkinder)]

Well, if it's working on 12.10 then it should be fixed in 12.04 as well, it is an LTS afterall...

[aldobelus (aldobelus)]

Forgiveness if awkward... does this mean that I have to add backports to my repositories? I have Trisquel (based on Ubuntu 12.04) and do not accept those things very well. Is it necessary to do this to fix the bug, please? Because I have updated like usually (safe-ugrade too) and continues the same situation...Thank you

[michal lepicki (michal-lepicki)]

Will it be fixed in 12.04 anytime? It affects me too -,-

[Daniel Que (daniel2que)]

This is still a problem for me as well. I tried updating with apt-get but got "empathy is already the newest version." Will this be fixed soon? Thanks.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue has been fixed in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/telepathy-gabble/0.16.5-1ubuntu1