Anyway, lets bump into how to fix log4j to send error logs by email to my “maintainer” email address by a SMTPS (SMTP SSL) server. In this example I’ll show you how to configure it using the log4j.properties file.

My instructions are based on http://www.playframework.org/code with a few adjustments to get the correct version of log4j.

First of all, we’ll check out the latest version of Play! framework by using git:

git clone git://github.com/playframework/play.git

or git clone git://github.com/playframework/play.git –depth 10     (as the project’s history is pretty big >115MB at least)

Iv’e checked out my Play!’s installation over at /opt/play .

Delete log4j-1.2.15.jar from /opt/play/framework/lib/

Download log4j 1.2.16 or newer from http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/download.html

This is required since log4j version 1.2.16 supports setting SMTPTransport to SMTPS by using a properties file/config file. Earlier versions requires some nasty extending of the SMTPAppender class and do stuff you shouldn’t be required to do! Finally this is fixed in 1.2.16

Place log4j-1.2.16.jar into /opt/play/framework/lib/

cd /opt/play/framework

ant

Now it will build Play! Framework while using the latest log4j library.

For projects already setup, make sure you do:

play dependencies

(if your using play maven module, you’ll also make sure you reimport the libs defined in your pom.xml by:)

( play mvn:re )

That should have updated all your project dependencies. The only last important part is to configure up log4j to send email. I’ve used Google SMTPS server as an example here:
You place the log4j.properties file in $PlayApp/conf/

log4j.rootLogger=INFO, Console, gmail

log4j.logger.play=INFO
log4j.logger.org.quartz=WARN
log4j.logger.org.hibernate=WARN
log4j.logger.DataNucleus=WARN
log4j.logger.org.apache.commons.httpclient=ERROR
log4j.logger.net.sf.oval.internal=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.springframework=WARN

# Console
log4j.appender.Console=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.Console.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.Console.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ABSOLUTE} %-5p ~ %m%n

log4j.appender.gmail=org.apache.log4j.net.SMTPAppender
log4j.appender.gmail.SMTPProtocol=smtps
log4j.appender.gmail.SMTPHost=smtp.gmail.com
log4j.appender.gmail.SMTPPort=465
log4j.appender.gmail.SMTPUsername=your@gmail.com
log4j.appender.gmail.SMTPPassword=XXX
log4j.appender.gmail.From=your@gmail.com
log4j.appender.gmail.To=whatever@example.com
log4j.appender.gmail.Subject=Application Error – ${application.path}
log4j.appender.gmail.BufferSize=1
log4j.appender.gmail.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.gmail.layout.ConversionPattern=%m
log4j.appender.gmail.threshold=ERROR

# Rolling files
# log4j.appender.Rolling=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
# log4j.appender.Rolling.File=${application.path}/logs/application.log
# log4j.appender.Rolling.MaxFileSize=1MB
# log4j.appender.Rolling.MaxBackupIndex=100
# log4j.appender.Rolling.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
# log4j.appender.Rolling.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{DATE} %-5p ~ %m%n

 

Thats it! Hopefully it shouldn’t be required to get the right log4j library yourself in the future, I’ll submit a ticket to the developers at Play! to ask them to bump to the latest version of log4j, so people don’t need to do this hassle

Sad thought is what I’m thinking, public transportation data should be open to the public – it’s for AtB’s own benefit that the data should be open and easy accessible  for nerdy geeks to create cool applications. “Somehow” we managed to get access, 14 days later we released our API and 3 applications. Go try our webapplication at http://busbuddy.norrs.no , or my BusBuddy Android application over at https://market.android.com/details?id=no.norrs.busbuddy or Magnus’s Busstider application for iOS (read Apple iPhone etc) you’ll see good applications made in rather a short time, and as cheap as 1 dollar. And there is even more application alternatives on it’s way from other hobby developers! We’ve spent like approx 1 week hacking together these applications and API, plus another week for internal testing. 14 days you had to wait before our release and access to an easy accessible API. I’d have to say splendid, most people already who have tested our applications – praises and loves it! The people already know the data might not be stable or reliable since it’s under developement at AtB.

Why AtB are afraid of releasing their data/services before it is “stable” is unknown for me, since they seem to be already using this data in their SMS service which has been active for quite some while, and the data so far looks pretty decent and amazing in my opinion.

There’s some loop holes in their “public” (read hidden and protected against anonymous access) data, for example all the exported data has Italian identifiers in their SOAP-encapsulated JSON. Their data also has rather an weird format for an external API in my opinion, but I guess shouldn’t judge em too hard since we don’t know all the inner workings of their systems. This might also be one of the reasons why it isn’t public yet? Still it took us only a nerdy night of debugging to hack together some sample code to extract data from their SOAP service..

Other glitches you’ll notice when using the API is fetching departures for a bus stop right before midnight, as it probably gives you no departures in return until it turns after midnight… as you clearly see – they still have things to fix which we cannot solve on our end.

You might also be interested in that their actually working on providing the community a WWW-service, but it seems rather unpolished and “far from done” if I may say so. I’ll be looking forward for their final product and what they come up with when it its done. Anyhow, I’ll at least say we beat em fairly well with the release of our applications and the usability we provide. Clean and simple if I may say so

Let’s just praise that AtB won’t be knocking on our doors, deciding to kill our service for you users. Stats on http://api.busbuddy.norrs.no/api/stats tells us you already appreciate our applications.

And keep in mind, the data is open and freely open for everyone. If you want to dig in, just email me for an api key request at busbuddy ‘at’ norrs.no. FYI, the api key is only used for tracking a requests counter for each api key. In the next release of our API we will be adding support for UUID which the applications can generate with an UUID.generator and send along. This way we’ll be able to track how many users each application have, and of course you’ll stay anonymous as there is no IP recording in the log towards api keys or the future feature of UUID.

Example on our data:

* Bus stops .. (we’re still mining data, such as their abbreviations name and bus stop maintainer. Also the locationId plays a special part of their data.)

{"busStops":[
{"busStopId":100034,
"name":"Hangran",
"nameWithAbbreviations":null,
"busStopMaintainer":null,
"locationId":"16010732",
"longitude":10.074741,
"latitude":63.38196},
{"busStopId":100078,
"name":"Klefstadbekken",
"nameWithAbbreviations":null,
"busStopMaintainer":null,
"locationId":"16011728",
"longitude":10.155953,
"latitude":63.43434},
{"busStopId":100162,
"name":"Flatjord",
"nameWithAbbreviations":null,
"busStopMaintainer":null,
"locationId":"16010765",
"longitude":10.509505,
"latitude":63.34741}]}

* Departures for a bus stop. Use registeredDepartureTime for real time data, or scheduled departure time for no real time data. The tricky part is to not use the datestamp (only timestamp!) from schedule departure time when isRealtimeData is false. The datestamp we represents when the data got inserted to AtB’s system… we guess.. (ignore the blunty error of using “isGoinTowardsCentrum” which will be updated in the next version of the API to be “isGoingTowardsCity” )

{"isGoingTowardsCentrum":false,
"departures":[
{"line":"36",
"destination":"Stokkhaugen",
"registeredDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T05:38:00.000",
"scheduledDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T05:38:00.000",
"isRealtimeData":false},
{"line":"7",
"destination":"Reppe",
"registeredDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T05:38:00.000",
"scheduledDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T05:38:00.000",
"isRealtimeData":false},
{"line":"11",
"destination":"Brandhaugen",
"registeredDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T05:58:00.000",
"scheduledDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T05:58:00.000",
"isRealtimeData":false},
{"line":"36",
"destination":"Stokkhaugen",
"registeredDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T06:03:00.000",
"scheduledDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T06:03:00.000",
"isRealtimeData":false},
{"line":"20",
"destination":"Valentinlyst",
"registeredDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T06:08:00.000",
"scheduledDepartureTime":"2011-05-18T06:08:00.000",
"isRealtimeData":false}]}

That’s how you wanted the data in the first place isn’t it?

The data mining about bus stops isn’t complete, and we still got some job left to do. We couldn’t extract the whole bus stop lists from their web service call as the longitude and latitude coordinates was way off, at least we didn’t make any sense out of it, so we’ve been mining bus stops by storings important values from every “departures” call that is done on our API, since AtB original API delivers some “bloated” data towards the query of fetching departures. Another funny thing is all their bus stops is saved/exported in their abbreviation of the street name. As of writing this post, we basically saved all those names in the “name” attribute for busstop and we manually fixed em. We’ve also added code for the next departures requests our  API does to fill out the missing fields such as bus stop maintainer, and the abbreviated name once again in it’s correct place. (why we didn’t do this in the first place is rather stupid, but I guess we were tired minds .. hehe).

After my release of BusBuddy API, I finally got the code pieced together and finally released as an early beta. I’ve decided to take 6NOK (ca 1 USD) for my application, due to the effort I’ve put into making the API and this application. My users are able to use Get Satisfaction ( http://getsatisfaction.com/norrs ) for questions/share an idea/report a problem or simple give me some praise for the application I’ve made. This will hopefully keep me on the toes to make an application my users want and keep the API under maintenance for everyone else. I’ve also have a Ads-version scheduled to be released in the nearest future for those who are not willing to pay those lousy 6 norwegian bucks for the poor student I’am. *hint hint*

I have some other features that will arrive soon(tm):

* Oracle support (Use natural language for asking about bus schedules)
* Your favorite bus stops (also with support of naming/put a nickname on em) (favorites tab?)
* Reverse map look up by street name
* Reverse look up by bus stop name
* Long press support on both real time tab, map tab for special context menu’s. (automagically generate an oracle phrase? etc)
* More settings for adjusting more details in my application (start up tab, local cache refresh (default is 20 seconds))
* Research for support on Oslo? Other cities? (I’ve gotto dig into more yummy data)

You got any other ideas? Share em with me on GetSatisfaction!

I found a good post on the ngtforum.net by the user Dyneslott which tells you which commands you have to enter at the SpeedTouch’s console to setup a bridge between your router and SpeedTouch modem.

Connect your computer to the SpeedTouch’s LAN switch. I recommend reseting your device before you start, as this resets any weird settings you might have enabled on the device and reverts its settings back to either ISP’s or SpeedTouch default settings for the modem. You do this with pushing and holding down the reset button while you power-on the device and wait until the device enters “kernel mode”. (indicated with normally 1 green and 1 red light (blinking if I remember correctly) after approximate 10-15 seconds after you powered on the device).

Do a simple

route (linux)
ipconfig /all (windows)

Fetch your device’s IP address by looking at the default gateway. (this should be your device as long as you are directly connected to your device. If you go thru another switch or something, make sure you don’t have any other DHCP servers running from other routers which might give you other networking details and points you to another device instead )

In my situation with Nextgentel, the default IP address is 10.0.0.1 for my SpeedTouch modem. SpeedTouch’s default IP address is normally 192.168.1.1.

Telnet into your SpeedTouch:

telnet 10.0.0.1

Username: Administrator
Password: <blank> (nothing)

After we’re in, we want to run these commands:

ppp relay flush
eth flush
atm flush
ppp flush
atm phonebook flush
saveall

• Flushes/Removes any configuration about any PPP interface (used to “dial up” to your provider)
• Flushes/Removes any ethernet (LAN-switch), atm (DSL/WAN), PPP (“dial up” configurations) on your device.
• Saves the state to the config, so it survives a reboot of the modem.

atm phonebook add name=BrPPPoE_ph addr=1.33

In Norway, the default VPI/VCI is normally 1.33 etc. Nextgentel table is:

• VPI=0, VCI=100, PPPoA VC MUX
• VPI=1, VCI=32, PPPoA VC MUX
• VPI=8, VCI=35, PPPoA VC MUX
• VPI=1, VCI=33, PPPoE VC MUX
• VPI=8, VCI=35, PPPoE VC MUX

In short VPI/VCI simply is routing information for your ISP on how to forward packages between their ATM switches. Read more about VPI/VCI on Wikipedia. If you don’t know your VPI/VCI settings, you could find this either by contacting your ISP,  maybe find it in this list or by setting up your router according to your ISP’s instructions and then fetch the details from the modem. (protip: atm phonebook list in SpeedTouch’s console).

• Setting up a WAN/ATM’s configuration towards your DSLAM with the name “BrPPPoE_ph”.
• You might be required to setup the ATM  configuration with more details, like which protocol encapsulation it  should use on the ATM interface etc. See  “help ifconfig” for all the  properties.

atm ifadd intf=BrPPPoE_atm

• Adding an ATM interface with the name “BrPPPoE_atm”.

atm ifconfig intf=BrPPPoE_atm dest=BrPPPoE_ph ulp=mac

• Configuring up the ATM interface to use the configuration you just setup under “BrPPPoE_ph” (atm phonebook configuration, contains the configuration for your VPI/VCI, etc)

atm ifattach intf=BrPPPoE_atm

• Attaching/Enabling the interface “BrPPPoE_atm”

eth bridge ifadd intf=BrPPPoE_br

• Adding an ETH(ernet) interface under the name “BrPPPoE_br”

eth bridge ifconfig intf=BrPPPoE_br dest=BrPPPoE_atm

• Configuring Ethernet interface “BrPPPoE_br” to forward packages between itself and BrPPPoE_atm interface.

eth bridge ifattach intf=BrPPPoE_br

• Attaching/Enabling the interface “BrPPPoE_br”  - Bridge should now be enabled.

saveall

• Saves the configuration to the device, so it survives a cold reboot of the modem.

Here’s a quick copy/paste friendly version:

ppp relay flush
eth flush
atm flush
ppp flush
atm phonebook flush

saveall
atm phonebook add name=BrPPPoE_ph addr=1.33
atm ifadd intf=BrPPPoE_atm
atm ifconfig intf=BrPPPoE_atm dest=BrPPPoE_ph ulp=mac
atm ifattach intf=BrPPPoE_atm
eth bridge ifadd intf=BrPPPoE_br
eth bridge ifconfig intf=BrPPPoE_br dest=BrPPPoE_atm
eth bridge ifattach intf=BrPPPoE_br
saveall

SpeedTouch modem should now be up and running in bridge mode, connect your DSL-line into the DSL/WAN-port (red port in the image above in the article) . Connect port 1 on the LAN switch to your router(in my case, Linksys WRT54G)’s WAN port.

My network topology now looks like this (ugly picture, but hey, it hopefully explains how I wired it all together):

Pro tip for Tomato users (Linksys WRT54G) to access your SpeedTouch device in another subnet then your local network:

Administration -> Scripts -> Init:

sleep 10

ip addr add 10.0.0.2/30 dev $(nvram get wan_ifname) brd +

/usr/sbin/iptables -I POSTROUTING -t nat -o $(nvram get wan_ifname) -d 10.0.0.0/30 -j MASQUERADE

I’m now able to reach my modem which is set in bridge thru my WRTG54G router. In other words, I can now ping from 192.168.X.0/24 towards 10.0.01

Rockj's Emerald Minimalistic theme

A proper browser is indeed needed, so lets go fetch Chrome (Chromium):

Add the chromium daily ppa repository (more detailed info at: “how do I use software from a PPA“):

# sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily/ppa

Install Chromium:

# sudo apt-get install chromium-browser chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-nonfree chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra chromium-browser-inspector

Installing my SSL root certificate, gEEkRevolution Root Certificate Authority:

# sudo apt-get install libnss3–tools

# certutil -d sql:~/.pki/nssdb -A -t TC -n “gEEkRevolution CA” -i Downloads/geekrevolution-cacert.pem

I would also suggest you to try out Opera.

Then we would like to fetch emerald, which makes us able to decorate/theme compiz-fusion. In the same go we would like to fetch a compiz-config manager and some extra plugins which you might like.

# sudo apt-get install emerald compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-extra

And here’s my following important settings I find helpful:

3x3 Workspace

No raise on click or auto-raise. I'd rather hold down ALT to raise the window. Mouse focus ftw.

Sticky (show item on all workspaces) and Always on top key bindings, important! (NB: I really use Super<r> for always on top, too lazy to make a new screenshot)

Look over rest of the settings available in CompizConfig, you might want to configure up more settings like spawning a terminal with <Super>t. The default Super<w> is also handy for getting a quick overview over all your windows you have open at your current workspace, just like you can do in OS X. Try it!

Rockj's Emerald Minimalistic theme

Emerald theme: Fetch my minimalistic theme here . (Some quick modifications from this original theme available here). Since I select active window with my mouse without “clicking”, a red border around the window indicates the active focused window. Also note I’ve removed those annoying and no-needed window-borders.. I just love how easily you move windows in X with simply holding down ALT and drag your window

Make sure to add emerald to start up at boot time under System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications. Add name: emerald and command: emerald –replace

As a programmer, I suggest you getting a good programming font, which I also enable in my terminal: Inconsolata. If you don’t like the font, try one of the other from a top 10 list by Hivelogic (Dan Benjamin)

Google Picasa is my preferred software for managing my photos, due to easily being able to sync my pictures into the “cloud” and to “any” operating system (read windows, linux and os x).

Install instructions for Google Picasa over at here: http://picasa.google.com/linux/download.html#picasa30 (and pick the correct .deb for your architecture, or go safe with i386)

Gnome-Do, Gnome’s version of OS X’s quick launcher AlfredApp

# sudo apt-get install gnome-do

# sudo apt-get install gnome-do-plugins

Of course get your favorite editor <insert vim or emacs whatever here>.

This is at least a good start in my opinion, of course you install all the other application you need on the go (ettercap,wireshark , skype , mumble, spotify…) .

Background note:

I would also suggest you to set a blackish background instead of the splashy ”red” background which is the new Ubuntu 10.10 background-theme. I’ll see if I have time and go over the gconf’s to set the default background color and fix those defaults and make it available as a gtk/gnome? theme. This will have to do for now, and you have to do those background changes yourself.. ;-p

Stuck in POST, memory not found

After I got myself a HTC Hero for Christmas, I’ve noticed (the few times) when I’m rebooting my computer it often won’t go past POST. I thought this could be related to my computer’s PSU which got fried some months ago due to a power failure and thought it might have damaged my motherboard or any other  components in my computer.

I’ve tried various things as reset CMOS, letting computer cool off etc (with random results), until I one day just unplugged the USB cable to my HTC Hero as I had to take a call, and tried rebooting it right after I unplugged my phone – to my surprise – it worked. I finally got past POST and BIOS booted up successfully and found both my CPU and my memory. I have no clue why HTC Hero affects my current hardware, so I find it worth to create a tiny blog post about it, if anyone else have experienced the same weird stalling at POST, due to not  finding the processor or memory which might be your HTC Hero’s fault.

My current hardware is a Q6600 processor from Intel on a Gigabyte motherboard model P35C-DS3R and memory from Kingston.

I knew that USB pen drives can cause some motherboards to not get past the POST, but I’ve never had this issue as my USB pen drive is always plugged in.  To my surprise, it seems like HTC Hero actually affects my motherboard somehow.

Definitive learned something new today..

EDIT: This problem is now solved!

After analyzing the DHCP Offer packet, I notice it hands out a “Classless Static Route (Microsoft)” (249) which is not defined in the bootp dhcp parameters[1], could this be the cause?

CSR 249

I quickly fired up telnet and reconfigured my DHCP pool and flushed all leases on my SpeedTouch 516[2] series modem/router.
Ready for a new Wireshark capture:

CSR 121

Finally it seems to send the correct DHCP parameters [1], with “Classless Static Route” (121)  so my dhclient picks up the standard gateway. I tested renewing my lease a few times together with flushing the dhcp pool table, and it was working like a charm!

Why would my SpeedTouch modem/router give out some kind of Microsoft propiertary[3] routing configuration, and how did  this happen in the first time? Anyway, I did a quick reboot to Windows 7 to make sure it was still working just fine there, and back to Ubuntu. Guess what? I’m back to the non-working dhclient not picking up the gateway information for my network. Wireshark tells me that it started serving out CSR (249) again.

Conclution:

SpeedTouch 516 modem/router seems to have some annoying feature of figuring out which hosts are running Microsoft’s operating system (assuming Vista and 7, since this never was a problem in XP), and then suddenly switches on how it gives out the “Classless Static Route” information. Now why would the router change on using CSR 121 and CSR 249 is out of my league, wireshark shows the same data is sent anyway so I don’t really get why it switches to a proprietary CSR before it requires some functionality from it. Wouldn’t it be better that the client requested it in the DHCP Discover/Request?

Questions, What to do?:

Complain to ISP and be allowed to firmware upgrade my modem/router and hope it works?

If Microsoft proprietary CSR (249) [3] is used, as far as I understand it shouldn’t serve CSR 121 information if it is duplicated information, so should dhclient add support for reading “normal” CSR (249)’s from Microsoft? If not, more and more Linux users will fall in the same pitfall that I am now…

Configure a low lease time, which will generate a lot of broadcast packages on my network for a dirty solution?

I can’t be the only one which is having this problem, since most Norwegian ISP’s hands out these types of modem/routers.

Any input anyone?!

Update – 11 November 2009 – I got it working!

After some more digging, I figured out that editing dhclient.conf in /etc/dhcp3 (Ubuntu 9.10) and removing “rfc3442-classless-static-routes” from the request line, it works as it should and the router uses the default route option in the protocol (option 3). So my request line is now:

request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers,
 domain-name, domain-name-servers, domain-search, host-name,
 netbios-name-servers, netbios-scope, interface-mtu,
 ntp-servers;

If you still have any issues, don’t hesitate with leaving a comment!

[1] http://www.iana.org/assignments/bootp-dhcp-parameters/
[2] SpeedTouch 516, Flash image : 5.3.1.5.0, Build name  : ZZTVAU5.315
[3] http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itprovistanetworking/thread/bfe43ccb-ec6e-4540-ab17-f76b20b715b8/

NB: If you have issues streaming the talks in Ubuntu (linux), make sure you use Firefox 3.5, and disable the Windows Media Player addon in Firefox (even thought you might not be able to stream all the talks, you will be able to stream the talks which supports Adobe Flash). At least here at my computer,  totem-plugin-view really wouldn’t play along and was fighting..

If you encounter this:

W: There is no public key available for the following key IDs:
4D270D06F42584E6
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

You can safly ignore it and continune doing a dist-upgrade. This warning should go away after the upgrade, since the following key ID is Lenny’s stable public key which is not yet in use. As for now the etch key is still valid and release is signed with both Etch and Lenny keys and the package debian-archive-keyring is yet to be updated in the etch tree as far as I understand it, so that’s probably why we get the warning. This has todo with this post on the mailing list:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2009/01/msg00008.html

We could import the Lenny key  even if Debian is not officially using it before Etch’s key has expired or Debian Lenny R1 is released. This is atleast how you fetch the fingerprint of the key ID:

gpg –keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net –fingerprint 4D270D06F42584E6
pub   1024D/F42584E6 2008-04-06 [expires: 2012-05-15]
Key fingerprint = 7F5A 4445 4C72 4A65 CBCD  4FB1 4D27 0D06 F425 84E6
uid                  Lenny Stable Release Key <debian-release@lists.debian.org>

Verify the fingerprint towards this page: http://ftp-master.debian.org/keys.html

If they match, go on and import it:

gpg –keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net –recv-keys 4D270D06F42584E6

gpg –keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net –recv-keys 4D270D06F42584E6
gpg: directory `/root/.gnupg’ created
gpg: can’t open `/gnupg/options.skel’: No such file or directory
gpg: keyring `/root/.gnupg/secring.gpg’ created
gpg: keyring `/root/.gnupg/pubring.gpg’ created
gpg: requesting key F42584E6 from hkp server wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net
gpg: /root/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key F42584E6: public key “Lenny Stable Release Key <debian-release@lists.debian.org>” imported
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1

gpg –armor –export 4D270D06F42584E6 | apt-key add -

Have a nice sunday upgrading!

You probably receive the error message “Unable to retrieve MSN Address Book” in Pidgin.

The solution for Ubuntu 8.10 people is to:

apt-get install msn-pecan

Restart pidgin, create a new account and in the drop down list of protocols, choose “wlm” for Windows Live Messanger, and plugin in your default/normal MSN account info.

This should put you online again..

Sighs, why doesn’t we all migrate to open standards and use XMPP?

EDIT: This fix seems to work for most of us, but sadly not everyone. (after what I have observed from comments online at IRC and so on..). It’s at least worth a try!

Adium/Mac users: Try visit http://adiumx.com/blog/2009/01/msn-rejecting-adium-132-connections/ for updated information. Solution for now is either to use Microsoft’s Official Messanger Client for Mac, or to use Adium 1.31. Anyway, make sure you visit adium’s own blog to keep updated on the issue!