Skype everywhere

 Tech
Feb 012012
 

For years, I’ve been using Jabber for all my IM needs. There is a private jabber server here, it runs several transports, so there was no problem to keep connectivity with people.

… until recent. Looks like now everybody is moving to skype. Quite a few of my contacts no longer use anything else. This is starting to cause problems.

I feel quite discomfortable about moving to proprietary software that is a questionable quality (1) implementation of a secret protocol. But pressure increases: staying away from skype already does cause difficulties.

(1) After recent unclean shutdown of server that hosts desktop sessions for thin clients here, quite a few users have been unable to login to Skype without erasing entire ~/.Skype directory.

And there is no working jabber transport for skype.

Bad.

I’m aware that some multi-protocol IM clients can talk skype via api provided by official skype client. This is better than nothing, but still uncomfortable.

 Posted by nikita at 10:45  14 Responses »  Tagged with: ,

Psi / Psi+: want to avoid auto-online after auto-offline

 Tech
Jan 092011
 

Older versions of Psi jabber client required manual changing status to online to leave auto-offline state. It was very handy for me: I connect to my jabber account from two locations (from home and from office), so after I left one of these locations, auto-offline soon happened, and Psi at that location did not return online until I returned and manually instructed it to re-login.

Unfortunately newer versions of Psi (I guess, starting from commit 4a54500c on git://git.psi-im.org/psi.git, which was between 0.11 and 0.12 releases), and also Psi+, behave differently: if user activity is detected on the desktop, auto-offline state is left, and status becomes online again – similar to leaving auto-away and auto-xa states.

This change is not good for me, at least in two situations:

  • vnc connection to home from office or to office from home – I use this fairy often,
  • occasional use of my home session by my wife for quick web browsing or similar.

In both these situations, Psi client “not at my current location” becomes online, which can cause routing incoming messages to wrong location.

I don’t state that new behaviour is somehow worse than old behaviour. But for my use cases, I want to get old behaviour back.

I’ve done some code reading. I think that point to fix is near the bottom of PsiAccount::secondsIdle() method, where any auto status is disabled if no timeout condition currently exists. This should be changed so that auto-offline state won’t be left if some config key is set.

I will try to implement this change soon (or at least I hope I will try …)

P.S.
To make things even better, a check of some external condition could be performed to decide if client should return online from auto-offline or not. Then fancy things could be set up, e.g. return to online at office only if my mobile phone is currently registered in the office wifi network … not really required but cool.

 Posted by nikita at 01:25  10 Responses »  Tagged with:

Psi+

 Tech
Jan 082011
 

Just discovered Psi+ project.

It is a fork of well-known Psi jabber client, with many improvements and new features.

Among others things, Psi+ implements plugins feature, and comes with several interesting and useful plugins. One of those provides anti-spam protection, and other is designed specifically for ICQ users.

Psi+ is a drop-in replacement for Psi, it uses same per-user configuration. Package is available for Debian Squeze, so if you are already running that version, just run

aptitude install psi-plus psi-plus-plugins

Then restart Psi and enjoy :) .

 Posted by nikita at 21:55  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,

Enabling XMPP communication with google-hosted domains without SRV

 Tech
Jan 052011
 

These days more and more people are using google apps suite. Among other things, this way people get “google talk” (actually jabber) accounts with custom domain part (e.g. JID may be user@googledomain.com).

These custom-domain JIDs work well to chat from within google talk, but when using a custom jabber client connected to a custom jabber server, an issue raises: jabber server needs somehow to locate server to talk to. JID domain part is no longer points to server to connect.

This is actually similar to e-mail. To get SMTP server to connect, special DNS request (type MX) has to be performed. With XMPP servers solution is similar – DNS request of type SRV should be performed.

Problem is that it requires domain-owner-side configuration, such as described here. And domain owner may be unable or unwilling to set this up.

Fortunately, if you run your own jabber server, you may workaround this at your side. Just use DNAT on the host running server. For example, to redirect JIDs for @googledomain.com to google talk servers, try

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp -d googledomain.com --destination-port 5269 \
    -j DNAT --to-destination $(getent hosts xmpp-server.l.google.com | awk '{print($1)}')

This is for case when googledomain.com resolves to particular IP address. In case it resolves to several (which may be the case if entire domain is served by google apps), you will need to add such a rule for each of these addresses.

 Posted by nikita at 11:52  Comments Off  Tagged with: , ,

Yahoo is ICQ #2

 Tech
Sep 292009
 

Unfortunately some of my work colleagues use yahoo messanger for IM needs.

This have been not a big problem for years – I just installed python yahoo transport into our local jabber server, and communication just worked.

…until today. Since today, yahoo transport no longer connects. They want newer protocol.

So basically they behave like ICQ.

Why in the world do people use this shit instead of proper IM tools?..

 Posted by nikita at 08:46  Comments Off  Tagged with: , ,

Stop using ICQ now

 Tech
Jan 212009
 

So we got that once again. Thousands of people got offline, because they do not want to use braindead official ICQ clients, while ICQ does not want to service anything better.

Maybe enough is enough?

There is an internet standard on instant messaging, called jabber.

Most likely, you already have both jabber account and jabber client.

You are unaware that you already have a jabber account? Well, at least you have one if you are registered at either Google Mail or LiveJournal. Yes, both Google Talk and LJTalk are actually implementations of jabber. If you don’t use these services, you may get an account on some jabber server – here is a list. Or you may run your own server.

You are unaware that you already have a jabber client? Well, at least if you are using Miranda, or QIP, or Pidgin, or Kopete – you do. All those do include jabber support. As well as many other instant messaging programs.

Or are you using ICQ because your contacts do? Well… not so long ago I’ve seen a very funny situation. Two technical persons working for different companies had to exchange some technical documents. Both perons have been used to Open Office and preferred to use that excellent package, and it’s standard OpenDocument format. However, both converted the document to Microsoft’s .doc, suffering a lot from formatting breakages, just to make it readable for the other side.

You guess the analogy?

Your contacts still use ICQ (if they really do) for only one reason – because you still use it. Similar to you using ICQ because they do. So just break the chain! For a short period when somebody will talk with you over ICQ, a jabber-to-icq transport will do the job. The above server list mentions some.

You don’t need ICQ. Nobody does. So just stop it. Now. And forever. You will make the world better by that simple step!

 Posted by nikita at 15:51  Comments Off  Tagged with: ,
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