does not connect to Jabber: "XML is not well-formed"

[Martin Pitt]

Binary package hint: pidgin

I have an ICQ and a jabber account. Both had worked well for years, Since Ubuntu switched to Pidgin I cannot connect to jabber any more, it spins on the connection attempt for some seconds, then goes offline again with the error message 'XML is not well-formed".

This is reflected in this log snippet:

jabber: Sending (ssl): <iq type='get' id='purpleb2abc2ab' to='jabber.org'><query xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/disco#items'/></iq>
jabber: Sending (ssl): <iq type='get' id='purpleb2abc2ac' to='jabber.org'><query xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/disco#info'/></iq>
jabber: Recv (ssl)(111): <stream:error><xml-not-well-formed xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-streams'/></stream:error></stream:stream>
account: Disconnecting account 0x746cd0

I attach the entire log (pidgin -d output) in case it is helpful.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I also tried to move my old configuration away and set up the accounts from scratch again, with the same result.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Just for the record, this still happens in 2.2.0.

[Daniel Atallah (datallah)]

I don't see anything malformed about the xml sent in that log.

Which server is this? It appears that it may be a server problem.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

pidgin does not even allow me to specify a server. The log says Connecting to jabber.org:5222 / Connected to login.oscar.aol.com:5190

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Ah, found the input line for specifying a server. However, I tried with several on http://www.jabber.org/user/publicservers.shtml, both with host name and with IP address, and pidgin immediately fails with 'unknown host'. However, they aren't:

$ echo 'hello' | nc jabber.ccc.de 5222
<stream:stream version='1.0' from='jabber.ccc.de'[...]

[Daniel Atallah (datallah)]

Try not assigning a buddy icon for that account (by checking the "Use this buddy icon for this account" checkbox and checking the "Remove" button).

If that doesn't work, try creating a new account within Pidgin (and also assigning a blank buddy icon to it). It is possible there is something in the vCard data that the server doesn't like.

[Myk Melez (myk-melez)]

Unassigning a buddy icon fixed the problem for me, and reassigning an icon doesn't seem to bring it back, although it also doesn't give my account a buddy icon (no icon appears next to my entry in my buddy list when I add myself as my own buddy), so it's not clear that the problem has really gone away. Perhaps it would come back if reassigning an icon actually worked.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Indeed, removing the buddy icon did the trick. Thanks for the hint!

[Daniel Atallah (datallah)]

It looks like the problem is that the server doesn't like you specifying a 140KB image.

The xmpp standard doesn't specify a limit for this, so there isn't a whole lot that we can do as far as I can see.
http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0054.html