Yahoo version will expire

[anonymous]

Hi, when I connect to yahoo via BitlBee it provides me a message saying:

This version of Messenger will expire on August 15, 2009

If it helps, I'm using the public server @ im.uk.bitlbee.org

[wilmer]

Hmm, interesting, I also just noticed a Pidgin update coming to Ubuntu:

Version 1:2.5.5-1ubuntu8.2: 

  * debian/patches/50_yahoo_16_auth.patch: Add patch backported from upstream
    version 2.5.7 to fix connection problems connection to Yahoo! instant
    messenger. Previous versions of pidgin were using an old authentication
    method which was disabled by Yahoo!. This patch switches to using the new
    authentication method, version 16. (LP: #389322) References:
    - http://theflamingbanker.blogspot.com/2009/06/some-clarification-on-yahoo-issues.html
    - http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/8853

I should have some of that already, I hope. This patch and those links should probably help in fixing this all up.

[wilmer]

That'll probably be a good excuse to release 1.2.4..

[anonymous]

This is a duplicate of bug #503

[wilmer]

I closed that one since I already fixed the tags on this one.

[anonymous]

(I'm the original poster of this bug)

wilmer: nice to see people still maintaining this project. Thanks for fixing tags, wasn't sure what to put for some of them!

[anonymous]

Hi Wilmer,

I found some more information here about the new yahoo protocol that might be helpful:

 http://www.carbonize.co.uk/ymsg16.html

Thanks for all the hard work!

[won_fang@…]

It is now past August 15, and that message has changed to -

You are using an older version of Yahoo! Messenger that is no longer supported. Please upgrade by downloading the newest version by going to:  http://messenger.yahoo.com/download.php

Can we have a release soon with that bug fix, before yahoo cuts us off completely?

[wilmer]

I didn't have time for this myself and I have 0 buddies on the Yahoo! network, so little (pretty much no) incentive to fix this myself, other than the fact that I'm the author of BitlBee. Nobody who cares about Yahoo! Messenger enough stepped up to submit a fix here.

I'll hopefully have time to fix this some day soon, but can't guarantee anything.

[won_fang@…]

After reading up on this, my conclusion is that it's still connecting and working, just complaining that it's not supported. Of the half dozen buddies I have on yahoo, all are just backup for when some other communication method does not work, and email still works for that anyway in a pinch. If it actually stops working first I'll try to convince them to move to google talk, or some other jabber system, and only if enough are left I might be encouraged to submit a patch myself.

Yep, I also don't care enough to fix it. Yet. lol

[kolya@…]

Last night I got the nagging message won_fang mentioned and today I logged into Yahoo without any message or problem. So yeah, it still seems to be working, though Yahoo could break it any time, I guess.

[wilmer]

Yep, that sums up the situation pretty well. :-/

I took a quick look at libyahoo2: It's not fixed at all from what I can see, the only thing they have is a patch on the mailing list. It adds the proper auth and bumps up the protocol version number, which is just enough to make the complaints go away. It does still have issues with setting away states AFAIK, which is currently the only thing really broken in BitlBee as well.

IOW there's no useful fix yet, not a strong need to get one.

[bleader@…]

I had the same message until today, now I'm getting:

<@root> yahoo - Error: Connection closed by server

[anonymous]

With this line added to /etc/hosts for me it's working again:

202.43.216.31 scs.msg.yahoo.com

(the yahoo server from china still accepts the old protocol...)

[won_fang@…]

I'm getting the connection closed error mentioned by bleader now as well. The addition to the hosts file at least stops that error, but still getting the "no longer supported" message.

I'm sending gmail invites to my remaining yahoo buddies. lol

[lou@…]

Hi Wilmer,

any ETA on fixing this bug?

Thanks for your help!

[anonymous]

Forcing your connection to go through some unknown machine "in China" that was provided by an anonymous source sounds as dumb as sending your banking info to a fast talking penpal in Nigeria.

Someone needs to delete all of those comments and consider banning the IP that's making them.

[anonymous]

@anonymous

If you check the whois info for 202.43.216.31 you'll see that it is owned by Yahoo and is in China, and a quick host lookup and check of the reverse shows it as cs3.msg.cnb.yahoo.com.

[anonymous]

I took the patches by Siddhesh Poyarekar on the libyahoo2-users list and applied them to bitlbee-1.2

After some juggling I got the patch to compile, but it does not work.

The issue (I think) is that we don't have any SSL support in bitlbee (unlike Ayttm which has the option of interfacing to the existing SSL library that it already uses for its MSN protocol). So ext_yahoo_read() and ext_yahoo_write() in yahoo.c need to be rewritten to support using SSL in addition to plain TCP, and ext_yahoo_connect_async() needs to be modified to be able to handle the case when use_ssl is true.

The patch for bitlbee-1.2 is available here:

 http://malcom.unkmar.com/yahoo_v16.diff

[wilmer]

BitlBee has plenty of SSL stuff available, already used by both Jabber and MSN. In the case of MSN it's actually used for HTTPS. Isn't the SSLified part of Yahoo! also just HTTPS-based authentication?

[wilmer]

I've spent a bit of time messing with your patch and have it in a somewhat working state now, using lib/http_client instead of libyahoo's stuff. It can log in now, but it's still very messy.

[wilmer]

changeset:devel,468 changeset:devel,469

I think this is now fixed. I'll upload it to testing.bitlbee.org and see how it goes.

For people who just read this bug for the first time: testing.bitlbee.org from ~now has working Yahoo! support again. If this works well for a few days I'll try to get this released or something like that. If you run your own BitlBee, grab the code and recompile. Feedback is welcome.

[lou@…]

Hi Wilmer,

thanks for the testing version. I got it up and running. Hopefully you'll be able to release 1.2.4 soon.

I am getting a ocassional random disconnects from time to time with the testing version.

Cheers!

[chris.brinker@…]

I also got it up and running, after initially establishing a connection, my contacts slowly claim to "has quit" every minute or so. An "account off/on" shows that they did not actually quit, so something odd is happening.

Thanks, Chris

[wilmer]

Is this about the fix or the China workaround?

[lou@…]

The fix.

Cheers

[wilmer]

Can you try the new code? I fixed a few more things, not sure if they solve your problem but the changes do touch some presence-related code, etc.

I'm getting closer to closing this bug. The new code is running on testing, if it runs reliably for a day or so I'll roll out a new release.

[anonymous]

A new release will be a most welcome relief. Thanks, wilmer.

[lou@…]

Running bzr 475 now. Will keep you informed, how it performs.

Thanks!

[anonymous]

I tried to log in and am now getting: yahoo(<user>) - Couldn't log in: Error 1 (Unknown error)

as of Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:20:26 GMT

[Wilmer van der Gaast <wilmer@…>]

It would be helpful to add where this happened..

[anonymous]

Replying to Wilmer van der Gaast <wilmer@…>:

It would be helpful to add where this happened..

Sorry. I assume you mean geographically. I am located in Wisconsin, USA

[Wilmer van der Gaast <wilmer@…>]

No, I generally have little information about what you're doing. Is this on a public server? Which version of BitlBee? With all the fixes? The China workaround?

[lou@…]

Replying to lou@…:

Running bzr 475 now. Will keep you informed, how it performs. Thanks!

Wilmer,

just wanted to let you know that version BZR 475 runs stable without crashes for 3 days now.

Given that this tool will not be used in productive environment, I'd say its ready to get released as final.

Thanks for your effort!

Cheers

[siddhesh.poyarekar@…]

I have a modded version of libyahoo2 in ayttm, which you could take a look at:

 http://ayttm.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=ayttm/ayttm;a=summary

This has a number of changes including some more fixes and features on top of the patch I had submitted on the libyahoo2 SF site. I'll be pushing these changes into libyahoo2 in a few days time -- still not done modifying the sample client.

Siddhesh

[siddhesh.poyarekar@…]

Oops, the git url should have read as:

 http://ayttm.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=ayttm/ayttm;a=tree;f=modules/yahoo2/libyahoo2;h=0d8ca4ac2c6c64ce743165b1f8ef7152591b019f;hb=HEAD

Siddhesh

[wilmer]

Oh, oops. 1.2.4 was released long ago, indeed with this fix.

Siddesh, thanks a lot for your work on fixing libyahoo2 for this. I hardly use Yahoo! myself so it's hard for me to discover all the changes.