Binary package hint: empathy
When I launch Empathy, I have to manually login to each account and even after I'm logged on, I cannot see any of my contacts whether they are on-line or off-line. This happens on Lucid as well as Natty.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: empathy 2.34.0-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue May 3 07:29:10 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/empathy
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
SHELL=/bin/bash
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SourcePackage: empathy
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
XsessionErrors: (nautilus:1442): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_format_get_name: assertion `format != NULL' failed
Forgive my offering the simple solutions first...
On the matter of it not connecting when first run, have you gone into Edit Preferences and ticked the box "Automatically connect at startup". In this context startup means the starting of empathy, not the starting of Ubuntu.
On the matter of it not showing whether your contacts are available or not, you could try selecting from the menu "View | Offline contacts" and see if any appear.