Last update: Mar 17, 2015
I have a UN*X system that conforms to the POSIX standard. Why can't I get gtmess to run properly?
Gtmess was developed mainly for Linux. It might run on other POSIX systems too, but I have not tested it much. I recommend that you find a Linux platform and compile gtmess on it.
I have successfully compiled gtmess on the following systems:
Where are those nice colors I see in the screenshot? I tried with -Ocolors=1 and got nothing!
Well, it seems that your terminal is not recognized as a color one by the curses library. Try setting the environment variable TERM to different values like xterm, or xtermc, or xterm-color. In fact, you should find a proper value from the terminfo database, which is usually found in /usr/share/terminfo/.
I run gtmess through ssh. The function keys do not work except F10. What's wrong?
The functions keys don't seem to work very well through ssh clients. Try the equivalent form of ESC-n for Fn. For example, if you want to press F3, just press ESC followed by a `3'. If you are using putty which is a very popular ssh client, then you might have to play a little with the keyboard options it offers. You might also have a corrupted terminal definition (terminfo) that the curses library is using. Try importing a partially working definition with `infocmp', modify it (especially the key sequences) and then compile it again with `tic' in your ~/.terminfo/ directory. For example, I had to do this under Snow Leopard for the Terminal.app in order to work correctly with function keys and colors. In particular, I took F1-F4 definitions from `xterm' and replaced those in `xterm-color'. (This might be due to a conflict because I also have MacPorts' ncurses installed.)
./configure complains that it cannot find the XXX library but I have XXX installed. What's wrong?
Perhaps ./configure does not look at the correct place for the library. For instance, if you have installed XXX into /usr/local/, then your includes go into /usr/local/include/ and libs go into /usr/local/lib/. You should invoke the configure script as follows:
./configure CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/ LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib/
I run gtmess and nothing happens when I try to connect. Not a single packet is transferred through my network interface. What's wrong? My internet is OK, I can surf the web without problems!
Perhaps you are behind a firewall that prevents access to ports other than 80. You can try using the utility program gtmess-gw. This is included only in version 0.91, because it is no longer working perfectly, and therefore should be considered experimental.
When I try to login I'm (almost) always getting a "socket read error". What's wrong?
This is a bug that affected the 0.96 version on 64-bit systems. It has been fixed in 0.97.
I am getting messages that contact XXX may have removed me from his/her contact list, while I know for sure that they haven't!
Just ignore those messages. They aren't very accurate. Gtmess displays the information sent by the server. The server indicates that the corresponding contact does NOT have you in his/her contact list. Blaim the msn server for this! :)
I never see some (or all) of my contacts online, even if they really are! They also never see me online while I obviously am!
I think this has to do with the different protocol versions used among different (official & third party) clients. This also seems to be related to how old an account is, for example an old hotmail one vs a new gmail one registered with MS Passport. Removing and adding again the contact fixes the problem sometimes (preferably this done from the official client).
I am using MacOS, I have Growl installed, but I'm not getting any notifications!
Make sure you have growlnotify in your path, i.e., in /usr/local/bin. The binary can be found in the .dmg package of Growl (doesn't get installed by default!).