Safe operating system guide: error setting up jabber

Hi.

Working my way through the safer operating system guide, stuck at 2 points in the guide, i’ll create a seperate thread for the other issue.

The issue im having is when i attempt to create and account using pidgin internet messager.

Im following the guide to the letter, but when i get to step 10, and attempt to add the account to the server, i don’t get a security certificate warning as displayed in the guide, but it skips this and asks me to enter the username and password i just entered.

When i do this, the chat window displays that myusername@jabber.calyxinstitute.disabled, with 2 options available, modify account or re-enable.

If i try again the loop continues. I’ve checked, double checked and triple checked the guide and what im inputting and all is exactly as the guide instructs.

I tried quitting and trying again, and when im asked to enter my password and username, i get a ‘registration failed’ not acceptable pop up

Any pointers please?

Update:

ran the following command:

sudo apt-get purge pidgin
then
sudo apt-get install pidgin

tried again and voila!, setup successfull.

Probably shouldn’t be bothered since i’ve done what t, but im interested as to why this may have happened?

Hi phantastic4012

As I mentioned in your other post, the “Safe Operating System Guide” is not part of the Whonix documentation. The Whonix team puts a lot of work into maintaining the documentation to ensure it is up to date with the lastest anonymity/security best practices. Also included in the docs is advice on what software you should and should not use including this excerpt taken from the wiki Chat .

Pidgin supports most protocols. However do not use it. It has a very bad security track record with many remotely exploitable bugs - a result of being written in C and containing many legacy protocols. There is no reason to use it when Tor Messenger is now available.

Doesn’t the guy who wrote that guide comment in Whonix forums occasionally?

A lot of it seems a very simple overview for Whonix, although bits and pieces could be cherry-picked and slipped into the Whonix wiki e.g. using a password manager and so on.

I wonder whether he’d be interested in that, or whether we could get permission to holus bolus rip off his stuff (including pics) where useful, with attribution as appropriate.

Hi torjunkie

I hope I didn’t make it seem as though Safe Operating Guide didn’t have anything of value. I should have clarified that I just don’t know if it does. When in doubt, default to Whonix wiki.

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I apologised in other thread, my apologies again.

I stupidly assumed because it was in the guide it was all relevant.

Really sorry again.

:frowning:

it’s released entirely in the public domain, @torjunkie. if you want to rip pieces of it for any wiki purposes, please feel free. attribution not even required.

as for pidgin still being used in it, tor messenger still has a bug that results in a crash if one tries to click on any of the “file,” “tool” or “help” menus that happens regularly for me in whonix. read it’s a kde issue. haven’t found a persistent fix.

a newer version is currently in the works. so, tor messenger will be visited again. would love to dump pidgin.

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