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Pidgin 2.4 merges accounts with the same user

Hoa Trinh
2008-03-18
2013-01-14
  • Hoa Trinh

    Hoa Trinh - 2008-03-18

    I recently updated to version 2.4 and noticed that it merged all my accounts with the same username. I'm currently using 2 different IM XMPP servers at work. However, unlike version 2.3.1 which allows multiple protocols with the same user id, version 2.4.0 seems to require that every username be unique regardless of server. This prevents me from logging into 2 different servers with the same user id.

    This is absolutely a requirement for me as I need to contact different people on the two different XMPP servers at work. The protocols should not be uniquely identified solely on the user id, but the host and user id as a pair.

    The current workaround for me is to downgrade to 2.3.1 which is fine by me. However, it would be nice to see this issue resolved going forward from version 2.4.0.

    Thanks

     
    • Etan Reisner

      Etan Reisner - 2008-03-18

      XMPP accounts are unique by bare JIDs, that is the full username@server string (excluding resources and connect servers). If you are seeing two accounts username@server1 and username@server2 'merging' (whatever you mean by that, you weren't exactly clear) something is wrong but pidgin does not do that (I know, I have accounts exactly like that set up both at work and at home and they work just fine).

      So if you don't mean accounts like username@server1/res1 and username@server1/res2 being 'merged' then explain what you mean by 'merged' more clearly and give examples of the accounts.

       
    • Hoa Trinh

      Hoa Trinh - 2008-03-19

      I apologize for being unclear. I have have 2 account with the same userID, but on 2 different servers.

      user@domain.com on server1.domain.com
      user@domain.com on server2.domain.com

      server1.domain.com contains contacts ListA
      server2.domain.com contains contacts ListB

      When I upgrated to 2.4, it merged the contacts ListA and ListB into server1 and deleted my server2 account. The side effect to that merger is that ListB does not exist on server1 and I cannot add server2 because I get the following error:

      Unable to save new account: An account already exists with the specified criteria.

       
      • Etan Reisner

        Etan Reisner - 2008-03-19

        The "server1.domain.com" and "server2.domain.com" parts are in the Connect Server field or in the Domain field? Is the value in your Screen name field "user@domain.com" or just "user"?

         
    • Hoa Trinh

      Hoa Trinh - 2008-03-19

      The values I have are:

      Server1:
      Screen name: user
      Domain: domain.com
      Connect Server: server1.domain.com

      Server2:
      Screen name: user
      Domain: domain.com
      Connect Server: server2.domain.com

      The only difference is the server names. Everything is on the same domain and as I mentioned before, this worked fine in 2.3.1.

      Thanks for your replies.

       
      • Etan Reisner

        Etan Reisner - 2008-03-19

        Yes, as I said in my original response pidgin does not take connect server into account when normalizing account names (it also does not take resources into account). Accounts are identified by their fully qualified name, both of those accounts have the same name, that can lead to confusion and breakage so we have prevented it from happening. I am unsure how best to solve this for you since there really isn't a good way to use connect server as an account distinguisher since it stops being a feature of the account once it connects (more or less), I am less concerned by this case as I don't imagine many people run into it (what is your usage case for this anyway?). I am more concerned by the resource issue, because it should be perfectly possible to have multiple resources for the same account in pidgin at once. I believe there is a ticket filed on the resource part of this issue, feel free to comment there and file a separate ticket on your issue.

         
    • Hoa Trinh

      Hoa Trinh - 2008-03-19

      At my work, they've deployed 2 different connect servers for different groups. I'm a member of both groups, hence I have identical accounts on both servers. I understand my situation is rare, but no worries, I'll just continue to use version 2.3.1.

      Thank you for your insight and time.

      Cheers

       
      • Etan Reisner

        Etan Reisner - 2008-03-19

        I must confess to being confused as to why deplyoying two identically named servers for different groups was believed to be a good idea, but as I said I imagine such cases are rare (I would have been bitten by the new pidgin behaviour back when I was testing an xmpp server deployment at my last job, but that is also rare).