Can't login to MSN using non hotmail domain

[The Pixel Developer]

Binary package hint: empathy

I'm having trouble logging into MSN using an @gmail.com email address. It seems Empathy wont even attempt to connect and will just return with a connection error. This was tested by changing the domain to hotmail.com and trying again. Empathy attempted to connect that time.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: empathy 2.32.0.1-0ubuntu1 [modified: usr/bin/empathy usr/bin/empathy-accounts usr/bin/empathy-debugger usr/lib/empathy/empathy-auth-client usr/lib/empathy/empathy-av]
Uname: Linux 2.6.36-020636rc8-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Nov 20 04:21:40 2010
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/empathy
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Release Candidate amd64 (20100419.1)
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.utf8
SourcePackage: empathy

[Frédéric Point (fredpoint)]

I do have the same issue here. I am also using @gmail.com email on a Maverick AMD64.

Traces done with wireshark shows that MSN server return an server error response. So I imagine this bug is similar to this one (663670)

------------
POST /abservice/abservice.asmx HTTP/1.0

Content-Length: 1779

Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive

SOAPAction: http://www.msn.com/webservices/AddressBook/ABFindAll

Host: contacts.msn.com:80

Accept: text/*

User-Agent: gnet/0.1 (Linux x86_64)

Connection: Keep-Alive

Cache-Control: no-cache

Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8

Accept-Encoding: gzip

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
...
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error

Connection: keep-alive

Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:07:57 GMT

Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

P3P:CP="BUS CUR CONo FIN IVDo ONL OUR PHY SAMo TELo"

X-MSNSERVER: BY2ABCHWB365

X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727

Content-Encoding: gzip

Cache-Control: private

Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8

Content-Length: 512
...

------------

[lpd (danbod)]

Same as https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/513346 ??

[Frédéric Point (fredpoint)]

I don't think so. But today I managed to understand what was wrong in my case.

The MSN server error was due to the fact MSN server can not find my address book associated to my acount. Since it was a very old MSN account which was created with an opensource MSN client (maybe it was Kopete) so I've never log in with that account directly on hotmail web server.

The solution was to log once on hotmail.com web. I think the address book is only created at this time.

[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=639361

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

those who are facing the issue please attach telepathy-butterfly to this bug report. you can get them from Debug>Help and select butterfly in the drop down menu and click save.

[requeth (requeth-hotmail)]

I found someone on ubuntu forums that has a workaround for this issue, it worked for me. I removed telepathy-butterfly via synaptic, reloaded empathy, and removed and re-added my MSN account. Issue resolved. I'm not sure what telepathy-butterfly does, but I only use empathy for basic chatting and that's working fine for me.