Aaaahhh… I fixed the Pidgin problem with Unknow protocol just 5 minutes after the previous post was made. I’m going to write how I found out the problem and how it has been fixed. If you’re interested, keep reading.
In the previous post, I mentioned that I would removed the Pidgin package completely including its configuration file (# apt-get –purge remove pidgin.) I did and followed by re-installation of Pidgin, unfortunately, it didn’t fix anything.
Then I checked the About dialog (Help -> About), and I noticed the libpurple 2.5.4 under Pidgin 2.5.6. This must be the source of the problem! But I remember libpurple has been upgraded to 2.5.6 and it said so in Aptitude. So what could be possibly wrong?
A while back, I have installed Pidgin from source code, however I was quite sure that it has been properly removed — I went into the Pidgin source and execute # make uninstall.Well, according to this Bug #385639, libpurple is still present in /usr/local/
<br /> kenno@san7:/usr/local/lib<br /> $ ls<br /> finch libpurple.so.0 pkgconfig site_ruby<br /> gnt libpurple.so.0.5.4 purple-2 xemacs<br /> libpurple-client.so.0 perl python2.4<br /> libpurple-client.so.0.5.4 pidgin python2.5<br /> kenno@san7:/usr/local/lib<br />
So, I need to remove these unwated libraries manually:
<br /> kenno@san7:/usr/local/lib<br /> $ sudo rm libpurple*<br />
Now, let’s run Pidgin again…and… that’s it. The problem has been fixed!
For the record, I have upgraded Pidgin to 2.5.8 (unstable package at the time of this post is written) and everything works as expected. Now, I’m back to a happy Pidgin user.