[Wocky] Adium 1.2.6 connection problem

[Ken Raeburn]

On Jul 7, 2008, at 09:35, Patrick McNeal wrote:
> On Jul 3, 2008, at 6:01 PM, Robert Basch wrote:
>
>> Adium 1.2.6 (released earlier this week) apparently introduced
>> a bug encountered by people here, which causes an occasional
>> disconnect/reconnect cycle with the jabber server.  The bug is:
>>
>>    http://trac.adiumx.com/ticket/10324
>>
>> It is fixed in 1.2.7b1; I have been running this for a couple
>> hours so far without problem.
>>
>> So you may want to skip 1.2.6; if you have already updated to
>> it, you may want to download and install 1.2.7b1:
>>
>>    http://adiumx.cachefly.net/Adium_1.2.7b1.dmg
>
> FWIW - Adium X 1.2.7 is out.

It's looking like there may be similar problems in 1.2.7 and 1.3b7.

Actually, there are two problems:

Adium 1.2.6 and some others had some kind of memory management bug and  
would send a version string (in response to a contact's jabber  
client's request for info) that consisted of random bytes, sometimes  
including control characters which are invalid in the protocol.  Some  
servers would reject this and the client would be kicked offline, only  
to try connecting again, get queried by buddies' clients for client  
version info again, etc.  I think this is fixed in the latest  
versions.  However, as near as I can tell, the MIT server isn't  
validating the XML syntax; at least, I've been seeing control  
characters coming through in version strings from other clients.

There's also a bug in some versions of the XML parser code, where if a  
control character is received, it goes into an error state and doesn't  
recover.  So if someone else's client sends control characters (like  
Wilson's was this weekend when I was trying to go online with 1.3b7),  
your client goes offline and tries reconnecting (and then requests  
info on your contacts again, starting the cycle over and over).   
That's supposedly being addressed, but it looks to me like the current  
versions are still buggy.

Since it's dependent on random(?) strings sent by Adium clients run by  
your contacts when they're online, it's likely to appear as an  
intermittent problem where sometimes you stay online, and sometimes  
you keep going online and offline quite quickly, much to the annoyance  
of all of your contacts whose buddy list displays keep updating.

If you don't need the latest ICQ fixes, digging up version 1.2.5 might  
be preferable, if you can find it...

Ken