ICQ Contact appears offline but isn't

[Jelmer Vernooij]

Bug report received by email:

The problem is that I know at least one UIN that is seen by bitlbee permanently as offline, even though other clients (I have verified using SIM, centericq) show this UIN as online.

I am able to communicate with this contact, but never see him online.

[wilmer]

Quite often this problem can be fixed by removing and then re-adding the person to your contact list.

If this does the trick, maybe we can remove/change the milestone for this bug.

[Jelmer Vernooij]

This bug can apparently be worked around by removing and readding the account in question, so I wouldn't consider this a blocker for 1.0. I'm postponing a fix for this until 1.1.

[anonymous]

I've had this problem, and removing and re-adding the person does not solve the problem. I can still communicate with them but don't see them as online. I had it with another person, and re-adding them did work, but that was six months ago with a different iteration of bitlbee.

[bitlbee@…]

I'm also getting this bug, with MSN..

occasionally my contacts aren't added to the bitlbee channel when they are in fact online.

It's not always the same contact either - someone who didn't appear when online once has appeared since. Could it be a problem with contact list size/IRC channel user limit?

[anonymous]

I have this problem, remove/re-adding solve the problem.
But when I logout of bitlbee and start another OSCAR client like SIM, the next time I login bitlbee the contacts are gone offline, again.

[wilmer]

Hmm, that sounds like useful reproduction information. It only happens with some specific buddies, I guess?

[anonymous]

That's right, always the same buddies !

Some more tests I made...
The offline buddies also use the same clients like the other buddies I see online. The offline and the online buddies used v8 and v9 clients mixed and always the same buddies were offline.
So I also exclude a problem some clients can make.

[anonymous]

It looks like gaim has the same problem like bitlbee, that's because bitlbee ist based upon gaim of course.
But gaim gave me the information that these clients aren't authorized and that's not true of course. The original ICQ-Client shows them online and authorized. So perhaps there's a bug in the query.

[anonymous]

I guess that has something to do with synchronizing your contact list with ICQ server side list. Try to add those offline users with ICQ2GO (​http://www.icq.com/icq2go/) and see if that helps.

[vvitkov@…]

I am having the same problem here.

The solution with remove/add does not work the situ is as follows: i have oscar contacts which require autorisation. Some of them have authorised me some not but both are seen as offline. The clients used on the other side are: Gaim, SIM0.9.3, CenterICQ. On my side bitlbee0.92 (debian) + xchat, no rpoxy no nothing.

[anonymous]

I had a similar problem in the past and it turned out to be some "visibility/invisibility" feature of the original ICQ client. As soon as the person in question turned off invisibility, it worked fine.

[dx]

No reports of anything like this in a few years, considering it fixed.