[Bug 666108] [NEW] empathy does not display AOL OSCAR too-frequent-login ban message to users

[Robert Lange]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: empathy

The AOL Instant Messenger protocol bars users from logging in if they
log in and out of their accounts too many times in rapid succession.
When this happens in other clients, such as Adium (for OSX) and Slick
(for Symbian), a message is popped up to the user informing them that
they are barred from logging in, and letting them know not to try again
for 10 minutes, or the length of the ban will be increased.

>From empathy, I logged in and out of my account a bunch of times,
forgetting about this rule.  Eventually, empathy just stopped signing me
in, and only gave a cryptic 'Network error' message.  I kept hitting the
button to try again, without success or further explanation.  Then, I
remembered the too-frequent-logins rule, and I tried signing in from
another client.  I discovered that I had triggered the ban.  Empathy had
provided no information about this ban to me.

UBUNTU RELEASE: 10.10 with latest updates as of 2010-10-24

empathy VERSION: 2.32.0-0ubuntu2
telepathy-haze VERSION: 0.4.0-1

REPRODUCIBLE: Always

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

Sign in and out of an AIM account a bunch of times in rapid succession.

WHAT HAPPENS:

Eventually, empathy stops signing you in, but provides no error message
except 'Network error'.  If you enable EMPATHY_DEBUG and check the
empathy logs, you only see an error message about a network error and
another error message for not being able to get an 'owner' for the
account name.  If you enable HAZE_DEBUG and look in the haze logs, you
see the text of the ban message from AOL's OSCAR servers.

WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN:

Telepathy-haze needs to communicate the relevant reason for the login
failure to Empathy, and Empathy needs to display that to the user.  I am
not sure where the message is getting lost (that is, is telepathy-haze
not sending it properly, or is empathy not displaying it).  This problem
needs to get fixed, otherwise our users may accidentally trigger lengthy
bans by trying to reconnect after the ban message has been sent from
AOL's servers.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: empathy 2.32.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.35-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Oct 24 22:31:23 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy

** Affects: empathy (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug maverick

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empathy does not display AOL OSCAR too-frequent-login ban message to users
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/666108
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