Gaim SSL (and other distro specific tips)
Compiled by Stu Tomlinson <stu@nosnilmot.com> with much help from #gaim
Read the ChanServ notice? Read the Topic? Read the FAQ?
Still having problems getting SSL to work with Gaim?
read on, maybe you're in luck. but probably not.
Upgrade pango: http://www.usr-local-bin.org/misc.php
Gaim rpm: http://www.usr-local-bin.org/gaim.php
Use the gaim provided packages : http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=235
NOTE: If you're using a Mozilla builds from here :
http://people.ecsc.co.uk/~matt/downloads/rpms/mozilla/1.4/RPMS/
Then you WILL need to add /usr/lib/mozilla-1.4 to /etc/ld.so.conf & run ldconfig as
root. Replace 1.4 with whichever version you have installed.
There's a 3rd party RPM (built from the same .spec file as the ones on sf.net)
for Red Hat Linux 7.3 here : http://www.uidzero.co.uk/rpms/rh73/
<semi-related note on this 3rd party rpm>
That RPM is built against gtk 2.0 as comes with Red Hat Linux 7.3, and buddy
list sorting is not possible with gtk 2.0. If you have Ximian Desktop
installed, then you have gtk 2.2 and should rebuild the .src.rpm (rpmbuild -bb
gaim-0.73-1rh73.src.rpm) to get buddy list sorting working.
Just compile from source (straight ./configure will work if you have all the
required dependencies and their associated -devel packages installed), Red Hat
Linux 7.3 does actually have all the necessary stuff.
If you want spell checking to work, install gtkspell & gtkspell-devel from
http://dag.wieers.com/apt/redhat/7.3/en/i386/RPMS.dag/
and compile from source (just installing this and using the RPM above will NOT
There's a 3rd party RPM (built from the same .spec file as the ones on sf.net)
for Fedora Core 1 here : http://www.uidzero.co.uk/rpms/fc1/
Use the gaim provided packages : http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=235
NOTE: Mandrake 9.2 includes tcl 8.4 which is known to cause problems with
gaim. tcl plugins will NOT work, but this isn't normally a problem.
There's a 3rd party RPM (built from the same .spec file as the ones on sf.net)
for Mandrake 9.2 here : http://gaim.jesuschrist.be/ (thanks to Alver on #gaim)
Or you can compile from source:
As always, make sure you have mozilla-nss, mozilla-nss-devel, mozilla-nspr and
mozilla-nspr-devel installed (and perl-devel if you want perl support):
urpmi libnspr4 libnss3 libnss3-devel libnspr4-devel perl-devel
One user reported problems with permissions in the includes:
<icicled> i found that if i changed the permissions of the private directory in
/usr/include/mozilla-1.4/nspr it will compile perfectly
<faceprint> wow, that's sucky
<faceprint> you should definitely go scream bloody murder at mandrake
<icicled> not sure why they would have the private directory only readable by
<faceprint> that sounds like a serious bug in the mandrake package
chmod 755 /usr/include/mozilla-1.4/nspr/private
chmod 644 /usr/include/mozilla-1.4/nspr/private/*
Use the gaim provided packages : http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=235
Some have reported success with gnutls from unstable, and compiling gaim from
<ntm> i changed the apt sources to include unstable releases
<ntm> apt-get install libgnutls7
<ntm> apt-get install libgnutls7-dev
Use the gaim provided packages : http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=235
Or if there aren't any, see below on compiling from source
Use the gaim source, with mozilla-1.4 installed (if you have another version
of mozilla, try replacing 1.4 with your version number):
./configure --with-nss-includes=/usr/include/mozilla-1.4/nss \
--with-nspr-includes=/usr/include/mozilla-1.4/nspr \
--with-nss-libs=/usr/lib/mozilla-1.4 \
--with-nspr-libs=/usr/lib/mozilla-1.4
As far as I can tell (the includes are almost certainly correct, the libs
Information on setting up gnutls can be found at:
http://alphamonkey.org/view.php?type=notes&id=309
I strongly recommend you use pre-packaged binaries where possible, however if you MUST
use source, these tips might help you. GnuTLS is the (developers) preferred
option, but I've witnessed more success with Mozilla NSS & NSPR
mozilla nss & nspr can be found here:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/security/nss-3.1.1-with-nspr-4.1-dbm.tar.gz
--with-{nss,nspr}-includes should point to the directory with the .h files in (eg. nspr.h)
--with-{nss,nspr}-libs should point to the directory with the .so files in (eg. libnss3.so)
If you can't add to /etc/ld.so.conf (or your (*nix) OS doesn't have one) set
the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable instead, either before running gaim or
(for bourne shell & bash) on the gaim command line, eg.
csh: set LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/mozilla-1.4
sh/bash: LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/mozilla-1.4 ; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
or sh/bash: run gaim with this command:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/mozilla-1.4 gaim
Thanks to sofar on #gaim for this:
Here's a list in the proper order which you need to install/compile, the
versions and links I give compile normally on a reasonably clean system.
libgpg-error (needed by libgcrypt):
ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/alpha/libgpg-error/libgpg-error-0.5.tar.gz
libgcrypt (needed by gnutls):
ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/alpha/libgcrypt/libgcrypt-1.1.43.tar.gz
libtasn1 (needed by gnutls):
ftp://ftp.gnutls.org/pub/gnutls/libtasn1/libtasn1-0.2.6.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnutls.org/pub/gnutls/gnutls-0.9.91.tar.gz
libopenck is a PITA, don't use it, gnutls will break. Also version 0.9.92 of
gnutls doesn't compile because the maintainer forgot to add 1 file needed. 0.9.91
You shouldn't need to pass any --with-xxx-libs/include to gaim since everything is
by default put in the normal include/lib dirs on my system. If you put any of the libs in
obscure places you are daft, just don't do that ;^).
<synic> ok, gnutls 0.8.10 officially works on FreeBSD
<synic> and 0.8.6 doesn't :)
(note: this is quite untested, feedback welcome)
If you don't have root access on the system you're trying to install gaim
on, you need to configure gaim to install under your home directory.
./configure --prefix=/home/username
If there are additional dependancies required that are not installed on
the system, you'll need to install those in a similar manner and pass the
correct locations to gaim's ./configure.
./configure --prefix=/home/username \
--with-nss-includes=/home/username/usr/include/mozilla-1.4/nss \
--with-nspr-includes=/home/username/usr/include/mozilla-1.4/nspr \
--with-nss-libs=/home/username/usr/lib/mozilla-1.4 \
--with-nspr-libs=/home/username/usr/lib/mozilla-1.4
