5 replies to this topic

[Nadrek]

Terminology for newbies:
--pidgin is the name of the actual program that runs when you click "Messenger" in Easy mode, which works with MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, MySpace IM, Google Talk, Groupwise, and many other IM protocols.
--encyrption is a way to hide the contents of your conversations from others. If you're on a public Wifi hotspot, for example, then anyone (read: the average 8 year old who feels like snooping) can read everything you send or receive in a normal IM conversation (or your emails, or your web sessions, etc.)
--pidgin-otr is the name of the OTR (Off The Record) encryption module that works with Pidgin, Adium (MacOS), Trillian, Miranda, and other messaging clients to prevent others from reading what you send and receive in IM conversations/sessions where both people use an OTR plugin. It does not protect anything else, of course - you need different things for that.


In order to recompile the latest versions of pidgin and pidgin-otr, I did the following:

Add new repositories and pin them per the wiki
http://wiki.eeeuser....ingxandrosrepos

sudo apt-get install <all the following packages you don't already have>
build-essentials
gcc
make
libgcrypt11-dev (for pidgin-otr)
libgcrypt11-doc
libotr2 (compiled from web site)
pkg-config
libglib2.0-dev
libgtk2.0-dev
libxml-parser-perl
gettext
libxml2-dev
libgnutls-dev
note libgnutls-dev is for SSL, required for MSN (at least)
note the following 4 spell packages are optional
aspell
aspell-en
aspell-doc
libgtkspell-dev
note that doxygen is optional, for documentation
doxygen
note that libgstreamer is optional, for sound
libgstreamer0.10-dev

Download the source from http://www.pidgin.im/download/source/
note - I used 2.3.1, the latest at the time I did this.
bunzip2 <the .bz2 file - hit enter several times if it seems slow>
tar -xvf <the .tar file>
optional: delete the .bz2 and the .tar files now
In Pidgin source code directory (temporary - what tar made)
sudo ./configure
sudo make
note that sudo make will take quite awhile - many minutes, on an eee.
sudo make install
note that the simple mode icon now calls the latest version.
note further that your setup (accounts) are still present.
sudo make clean
note that you can remove the source, but at least you've cleaned up intermediate files.

Download the OTR library and toolkit source from http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/
It's the "Compressed tarball" under the Source code header, about the middle,
in the left hand column, and can be downloaded into /tmp if you want to
use the ramdrive tmp space instead of flash drive space.
gunzip <the .gz file. i.e. libotr-3.1.0.tar.gz - hit enter several times if it seems slow>
tar -xvf <the .tar file, i.e. libotr-3.1.0.tar>
optional: delete the .gz and .tar files now
In libotr source code directory (temporary - what tar made - extrat on /tmp, the ramdisk)
sudo ./configure --with-pic --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man
sudo make
sudo make install
optional: remove everything in these directories

Download the OTR plugin for Pidgin source from http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/
It's the "Compressed tarball" under the Source code header, about the middle,
in the middle column, and can be downloaded into /tmp if you want to
use the ramdrive tmp space instead of flash drive space.
gunzip <the .gz file, i.e. pidgin-otr-3.1.0.tar.gz - hit enter several times if it seems slow>
tar -xvf <the .tar file, i.e. http://www.cypherpun...-otr-3.1.0.tar>
optional: delete the .gz and .tar files now
In pidgin-otr source code directory (temporary - what tar made - extract on /tmp, the ramdisk)
sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo cp /usr/lib/pidgin/*otr* /usr/local/lib/pidgin
note This indicates that at least a major subset of the /usr (not local) heirarchy is from the default install, and not from our own compilation - and can likely be removed to save space. At this point, I'm not that brave, nor do I need the space that badly.
note: Thanks go to the OTR mailing list users Thomas and Ian for assistance on the last cp statement.

Optional cleanup:
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get clean
delete the source code heirarchies and so on (with sudo)
Untested cleanup:
sudo apt-get remove (the compiler, build-essentials, all -dev packages)

Now you should be able to start Pidgin by using the previously existing, and still present Messenger icon in Easy mode - it will start Pidgin 2.3.1 instead of the old 2.0.x that it used to.
Tools->Plugins
Enable (with the checkbox) Off-The-Record Messaging
With Off-The-Record Messaging still highlighted in the Plugins window
click Configure Plugin
click Generate
wait several seconds until the new popup says it's done (the words change),
and dismiss the popup.
In the drop-down above Generate select another account (if you have more than one)
and click Generate, wait until it's done, and dismiss the popup.
Repeat for every account you have
Close the plugins window.

If you want sounds to play, you can try
http://wiki.eeeuser....lesoundinpidgin

Now you are using the latest Pidgin and Pidgin-OTR plugin!

Note: Once you click the OTR button in a conversation/message window (the big button in the lower left that probably says Not Private), everything you send after it says it's trying to start a private conversation is encrypted. I suspect you need to restart the conversation to undo this (so they don't see garbage anymore).

Note: If the button in the lower left really bothers you, all you have to do is uncheck Off-The-Record Messaging in the Tools->Plugins menu. I do encourage you to spread it around, however, expecially for anyone using public Wifi hotspots.

[PyAvatar]

is there webcam support yet?

[SublimePorte]

Pidgin won't be getting webcam support any time in the forseeable future. It won't even get audio support for quite some time the way things are looking.

If you want video support, you're best off investigating other clients.

[minimalist]

Isn't it easier to grab it from http://updates.xepc.org/ using http://wiki.eeeuser....nstallpidgin222 method then installing each component ourselves??? I don't trust myself with the complicated procedure here.. :P

[fiddolbrfrho]

i don't know about this. i tried following your instructions and got stuck here:

Quote

sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man

when i entered that line i got this:

checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... no
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cl... no
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.

i tried 'sudo make' anyway, but got "sudo: make: command not found"

[serein]

Quote

i don't know about this. i tried following your instructions and got stuck here:

Quote

sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man

when i entered that line i got this:

checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... no
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cl... no
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.

i tried 'sudo make' anyway, but got "sudo: make: command not found"

okey, what you missed here is the first two step Nadrek put up:

Quote

Add new repositories and pin them per the wiki
http://wiki.eeeuser....ingxandrosrepos

sudo apt-get install <all the following packages you don't already have>
build-essentials
gcc
make
libgcrypt11-dev (for pidgin-otr)
libgcrypt11-doc
libotr2 (compiled from web site)
pkg-config
libglib2.0-dev
libgtk2.0-dev
libxml-parser-perl
gettext
libxml2-dev
libgnutls-dev
note libgnutls-dev is for SSL, required for MSN (at least)
note the following 4 spell packages are optional
aspell
aspell-en
aspell-doc
libgtkspell-dev
note that doxygen is optional, for documentation
doxygen
note that libgstreamer is optional, for sound
libgstreamer0.10-dev

this is critical. add the repositories and install the needed packages.

i followed through this, and there's been hell trying to get this to work.
i installed the needed packages. i installed the latest release of libgcrypt (1.4.4) (since i couldn't find the one you were referring to), but, even though i've done that, the configure keeps telling me: "libgcrypt 1.2.0 or newer is required."

don't really know where to go from here...