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LJ Talk Problem Solved [Aug. 16th, 2011|11:41 pm]
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I like LJ Talk. It's an instant messaging service which uses Jabber, an open protocol also known as XMPP, meaning you're not locked in to particular software like you are with MSN. Yes, I know that a lot of software has reverse-engineered the MSN, ICQ etc. protocols, but they still break when the owners change the rules. I use bitlbee to talk to people on LJ Talk; others use Pidgin, Kopete, Psi and lots of other software.

It's also tied in to your LiveJournal - your LJ friends are automatically added to your IM list. However, as an example of this lovely open protocol, LJ Talk isn't all that great. It doesn't integrate into the LJ website like Facebook Chat does (though the inability to turn FB chat off irritates the crap out of me), it's not well publicised like Google Talk is, and it seems to have gone back to being a walled garden where you can't add non-LiveJournal contacts. If you want a Jabber account to play with, I suggest jabber.org.

Recently [info]greyeyedeve has been having real trouble with LJ Talk. It seems that the encryption certificate used for LJ Talk has the wrong hostname (www.livejournal.com rather than livejournal.com) and hence some IM clients such as Kopete will refuse to connect. Most Jabber clients will let you specify a server, and connecting to www.livejournal.com (though keeping the Jabber ID as username@livejournal.com) will fix the problem.
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Comments:
[User Picture]From: [info]matgb
2011-08-17 02:29 am (UTC)

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FWIW, I have managed to turn Faebook chat off, again, completely, it's gone from the site when I browse around. This is because I loath all internet chat things with a fiery passion that is almost certainly unjustified.

However, I don't recall how I did it, but I'm pretty sure I followed a how-to.
[User Picture]From: [info]tobestool
2011-08-17 09:03 am (UTC)

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Ah thank you. You prompted me to give Psi another poke and it appears to now be connecting once more :)
[User Picture]From: [info]soph
2011-09-22 10:25 am (UTC)

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Thank you! I've been having problems for ages and Googled for recent blog posts on LJ Talk to see if anyone else knew of the problem. It doesn't help that bitlbee *really* isn't helpful about the error it gives:

13:24:40 <@root> jabber(soph@livejournal.com) - Logging in: Connecting
13:26:40 <@root> jabber(soph@livejournal.com) - Login error: Connection timeout
13:26:40 <@root> jabber(soph@livejournal.com) - Logging in: Signing off..
13:26:40 <@root> jabber(soph@livejournal.com) - Login error: Short write() to server

But after making the change described (with "account <x> set server www.livejournal.com"), everything went just fine once again. :D

Thanks again for this post. :)

Edited at 2011-09-22 10:28 am (UTC)
[User Picture]From: [info]tinyrevolution
2011-12-19 12:23 am (UTC)

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I have been seeing this exact same error every 15 minutes for the past two weeks - changing the server var did not work for me, though. I honestly thought it was related to the DDoS, or that they'd just given up on their jabber server entirely, but now idk what to do or think!
[User Picture]From: [info]tinyrevolution
2011-12-23 08:50 pm (UTC)

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To follow up, it actually looks like this setting will not solve the problem - in fact, it inhibits bitlbee from doing an SRV lookup to find the proper server name, which is xmpp.services.livejournal.com - after doing some experimenting and research it seems like the way to fix this is either explicitly enter account <x> set server xmpp.services.livejournal.com or make it blank (account <x> set server '').

Edited at 2011-12-23 08:51 pm (UTC)