GUI doesn't show when list_visible is 0

[Andy Stanford-Clark]

Binary package hint: pidgin

Sometimes, and it doesn't seem very predictable, the pidgin GUI fails to show on the screen.
There's a "pidgin" process running on the machine. Am not sure if I'm visible online at that stage.

Anyway, the fix is to go into ~/.purple/prefs.xml and change "list_visible" from 0 to 1. It always seems to be 0 when this problem occurs, and changing it to 1 fixes it.

You have to kill the pidgin process first, as it re-writes the file on exit, so kill pidgin, edit prefs.xml, change list_visible from 0 to 1, save the file, start pidgin. Works fine - the GUI appears.

In a note to myself, I also mentioned changing "show_empty_groups" to 0 - I haven't seen that at 1 recently, so not sure if that was a red herring.

Anyway, it's setting list_visible from 0 to 1 which makes the GUI reappear and everything work fine again

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Nov 9 14:30:52 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/pidgin
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: pidgin 1:2.5.0-0ubuntu2~hardy1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
SourcePackage: pidgin
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-21-generic i686

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Could you try to reproduce the same with Ubuntu 8.10 or 9.04? Thanks in advance.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[Andy Stanford-Clark (andysc)]

sorry - I tried to update this but it didn't work for some reason - the bug was fixed in the most recent version of Pidgin.

Thanks for your time and attention :)

[DeadVirus (amfcosta13)]

I also have this problem. If pidgin was closed while being minimized to the messaging indicator (running but not on the unity launcher), the list_visible property will be 0. Then, the next time it opens the pidgin icon will appear on the unity launcher (or gnome panel, if using it), but clicking the icon will not show its window.
What I usually do is right-clicking the icon on the unity launcher and the select "Exit" (or "Close"... I don't know what appears on the English localized interface). Pidgin will not be closed but minimized to the messaging indicator which can then be clicked to open pidgin's window.

[gene_wood (gene.wood)]

I've also seen this occur twice and had to manually re-enable the buddy list in prefs.xml as described in this bug.

Ubuntu 14.04
Pidgin 2.10.9 (libpurple 2.10.9)