Gaim, Instant messaging on the 6000 Options

[zipmaster]

ok I've installed all the packages that are on there .4 feed and it loads fine but there are no icons or anything. I also tried the libpng fix they have on the site.

[soundwave106]

OK, I think I know what's going on. I tried running GAIM from the su user and got the same error.

Firstly, GAIM was never meant to be set up to be run under the su account. So don't do that. (At least I get the same QT/Embedded data directory error, whatever that means. ).

When you run it under the standard Zaurus account, do you get a bunch of messages stationg that it cannot open /home/zaurus/.gaim type stuff? Like: "accounts: Error reading accounts: Failed to open file '/home/zaurus/.gaim/accounts.xml': Permission denied"? With my relatively standard GAIM install, I do not get the QT/Embedded data directory, but got this instead.

The problem in this case is that, for some reason (it seems this way on my box!), the standard GAIM installation set the owner of /home/zaurus/.gaim/ as root. This was where all of the settings were installed. Bad idea, as the zaurus account couldn't write or read anything in this directory under the standard permissions. People got around this by running GAIM as "root" via the Qtopia GUI (which seems a little different than the su account, I don't know why). And it worked. However, it means you can't run GAIM under the terminal this way.

To diagnose:

1) Type the following command in:

ls -la /home/zaurus

(UNIX 101: ls = list a directory. -l option = verbose listing, show file size, owner, permissions, etc. -a option = show "hidden" files, which on UNIX is all files beginning with a .)

One of the entries *SHOULD* look like this:

drwx------ 3 zaurus qpe 0 Jan 3 11:51 .gaim

This is the .gaim directory where all settings are stored.

The owner of this directory should be zaurus. GAIM, however, will not run under the "standard" account when the directory looks like this:

drwx------ 3 root qpe 0 Jan 3 11:51 .gaim

(The column that changed is the owner of the file. That column on the left shows you permissions and says that only an owner can *R*ead, *W*rite, and e*X*ecute a file in this directory.)

To fix this, do the following:

1) su to log in as root
2) Type the following command in:

chown -R zaurus /home/zaurus/.gaim

[You can get an explanation of chown by typing in chown -? in the command prompt. Net summary, I'm changing the ownership of everything in the /home/zaurus/.gaim directory (recursively) to the zaurus user.]

3) Log out of root, you should be back in the zaurus account.
4) Try running gaim under the zaurus account.

Now it should at least come up without bombing out!

If it doesn't run, you may have missed something else in the installation, or have the wrong library (I remember that GAIM was one of the finickiest installs for my SL-6000L.). Report back what you find.

I hope this helps a bit.