I remember a previous version used to crash Pidgin on startup, does Pidgin have some
sort of safe mode?

Not that I know of. However, it's working now that I'm not logged into Facebook. If
there's any debugging info you need, let me know.

vahag1991, can you get a gdb backtrace and the output of the debug logs.  Follow the 
instructions at http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/GetABacktrace

Here are the logs you requested. I hope they're helpful.

debug-pidgin.txt 30.7 KB   Download

gdb-pidgin.txt 10.9 KB   Download

Actually, here's a backtrace with the libjson debug headers. I figured that would be
kind of important to find the root of this problem.

gdb-pidgin-with-json.txt 13.1 KB   Download

Hrm, looks like a potential problem with json glib.

Even more ironic is that the debug log cuts off one statement too early !#@%*!%(*!.

vahag1991, are you familiar with getting Firebug traces in Firefox?

No, I'm not. What does it entail?

Don't worry about the Firebug thing.  We'll stick to Pidgin debugging.

(Firebug lets you track webpage interactions, such as when you're using the Facebook 
site.  It's complicated though).

Ok, I'm having this same exact issue. What I've found to reproduce it was very simple
and, if it were common, would have been experienced many times before me. I'm a
programmer (PHP web developer), so Firebug is right up my alley, as well as detailed
reports, if you need me to do anything at all to clarify my issue.

I've had this happen on BOTH computers today that I've installed both a clean install
of Pidgin and the Facebook chat plugin. Version of Pidgin is 2.5.8 and Facebook chat
plugin is version 1.54 (latest as of this writing). One odd thing I'd like to note
(but doesn't bother me) is that I don't see the Facebook plugin in the list of plugins.

Here's what I did:   I signed onto my girlfriends Facebook account in Pidgin and then
logged into my own account on the same computer on the Facebook site. I send myself a
message and Pidgin displays a conversation dialog JUST before crashing. I launched
Pidgin to save debug output using the instructions from above and I've attached the
output of the entire debug file.

Please let me know if you need to know anything else -- it's really bugging me
because I love Facebook and I'd really make a lot of use out of this plugin. Thanks!

debug.log 40.6 KB   Download

After analyzing some of the log, I noticed an AJAX post back to Facebook, so I logged
into her account on Facebook and requested that URL directly and here's the output I
got (since I think you wouldn't be able to get the same EXACT response). This is
clearly just a history of the conversation -- just a bunch of test messages...


for
(;;);{"error":0,"errorSummary":"","errorDescription":"","errorIsWarning":false,"payload":{"history":[{"msg":{"text":"test"},"from":642422872,"to":18001451,"time":1247714090290,"type":"msg"},{"msg":{"text":"test"},"from":18001451,"to":642422872,"time":1247714190918,"type":"msg"},{"msg":{"text":"test"},"from":642422872,"to":18001451,"time":1247714205104,"type":"msg"},{"msg":{"text":"?"},"from":642422872,"to":18001451,"time":1247714309877,"type":"msg"},{"msg":{"text":"?"},"from":642422872,"to":18001451,"time":1247714643114,"type":"msg"},{"msg":{"text":"test"},"from":642422872,"to":18001451,"time":1247715196467,"type":"msg"},{"msg":{"text":"test"},"from":642422872,"to":18001451,"time":1247715272802,"type":"msg"}],"userInfo":{"name":"Patrick
Nelson","firstName":"Patrick","thumbSrc":"http:\/\/profile.ak.fbcdn.net\/v223\/1857\/37\/q642422872_7809.jpg","status":"","statusTime":0,"statusTimeRel":"","enableVC":false},"overlay":{"642422872":{"ol":1}}},"bootload":[{"name":"css\/djx9vg1axjww8ows.pkg.css","type":"css","src":"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/rsrc.php\/zF0ED\/lpkg\/cjz6x8ii\/en_US\/141\/173590\/css\/djx9vg1axjww8ows.pkg.css","permanent":false,"sticky":false},{"name":"js\/7gls8flbujcwsgkk.pkg.js","type":"js","src":"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/rsrc.php\/zB5O4\/lpkg\/5ns3pxbg\/en_US\/141\/174911\/js\/7gls8flbujcwsgkk.pkg.js","permanent":false,"sticky":false},{"name":"css\/2enn1bkvh9usgw0g.pkg.css","type":"css","src":"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/rsrc.php\/z32TE\/lpkg\/5zl9jo9y\/en_US\/141\/173725\/css\/2enn1bkvh9usgw0g.pkg.css","permanent":true,"sticky":false},{"name":"js\/6t99vbwpdu8s80oo.pkg.js","type":"js","src":"http:\/\/b.static.ak.fbcdn.net\/rsrc.php\/z5I8B\/lpkg\/bo5t8qsd\/en_US\/141\/173603\/js\/6t99vbwpdu8s80oo.pkg.js","permanent":false,"sticky":false}],"onload":["if
(window.Env) {Env[\"nctrlid\"]=\"553406d99277116b9c921fb8c6cca393\";
Env[\"nctrlnid\"]=\"\";}"]}

Interesting:

I was having the same problem with Pidgin crashing with the FB plugin. So in order to
provide a debug report I have installed the debug version.

Now the whole thing seems to be stable again. So there's no report to send.

andrewjkm@gmail.com

I just tried that, installing the debug version of Pidgin and even reinstalling the
Facebook plug-in and still, no success. I did notice something slightly different.
The new chat window that was formed included the person's name this time (when
sending FROM the website TO the client) instead of just their number. That's the only
difference.

patricknelson and andrewjkm, your crashes are a different problem.

vahag1991, can you upgrade to 1.6 and see if the crash continues to occur?  a debug log 
with that version should help.

(No comment was entered for this change.)

I upgraded to the 1.60 and attached the output of pidgin -d below. However, I still
get the error: 

Json:ERROR:json-scanner.c:894:json_scanner_get_unichar: assertion failed:
(g_unichar_validate (uchar))
Aborted

However, I think there's definitely a connection between my browser session of
Facebook timing out and pidgin crashing. When I don't log onto facebook, then pidgin
doesn't encounter any problems and I can keep chatting. However, if I idle with
facebook open and my session times out, then pidgin crashes. I have to wait a while
until I can use pidgin-facebook again, even if I log back in on the site. So I guess
the temporary workaround is to not idle on Facebook.

pidgin-debug.txt 23.4 KB   Download

Hmm... interesting. So apparently this bug does not affect Finch. Finch connects to
Facebook just fine.

Actually, I spoke too soon. Apparently finch suffers from it as well.