Recently I have been experiencing a strange problem with Pidgin.
When I try to connect to Facebook (I use purple-facebook) I get the error message: Unknown HTTP error
This happens on Devuan Chimaera, Debian Testing, and I even tried a live Fedora 35 iso.
I also tried different facebook accounts with the same result.
However, this doesn’t happen 100% of the time, and occasionally it connects just fine.
I have been using the same setup for a long time, and never had any problem.
The system is up to date, and I use the latest purple-facebook library.
If I use a browser, I can access my facebook account without any problem and haven’t noticed any trouble with other connections.
This github issue suggests that it could be related to IPv6 but that’s just a guess. Where do you get this Unknown HTTP error, is it from the debug console? Is there anything else related to this error showing on the debug console?
(11:12:37) util: Writing file /home/mac/.purple/prefs.xml
(11:12:50) http: Timeout reached for request 0x5603f3eb4a60
(11:12:50) http: Request 0x5603f3eb4a60 performed without success.
(11:12:50) connection: Connection error on 0x5603f3eb14c0 (reason: 0 description: Unknown HTTP error)
(11:12:50) account: Disconnecting account myfbaccount@mail.com (0x5603f3369690)
(11:12:50) connection: Disconnecting connection 0x5603f3eb14c0
(11:12:50) connection: Destroying connection 0x5603f3eb14c0
(11:12:54) prefs: /pidgin/debug/width changed, scheduling save.
(11:12:54) prefs: /pidgin/debug/height changed, scheduling save.
(11:12:55) util: Writing file accounts.xml to directory /home/mac/.purple
(11:12:55) util: Writing file /home/mac/.purple/accounts.xml
(11:12:59) util: Writing file prefs.xml to directory /home/mac/.purple
(11:12:59) util: Writing file /home/mac/.purple/prefs.xml
(11:13:01) autorecon: do_signon called
(11:13:01) autorecon: calling purple_account_connect
(11:13:01) account: Connecting to account myfbaccount@mail.com.
(11:13:01) connection: Connecting. gc = 0x5603f3e9dd80
(11:13:01) http: Performing new request 0x5603f3f19810 to graph.facebook.com.
(11:13:01) autorecon: done calling purple_account_connect
(11:13:01) dnsquery: Performing DNS lookup for graph.facebook.com
(11:13:01) dns: Wait for DNS child 4350 failed: No child processes
(11:13:01) dns: Created new DNS child 4369, there are now 1 children.
(11:13:01) dns: Successfully sent DNS request to child 4369
(11:13:01) dns: Got response for 'graph.facebook.com'
(11:13:01) dnsquery: IP resolved for graph.facebook.com
(11:13:01) proxy: Attempting connection to 2a03:2880:f00d:110:face:b00c:0:2
(11:13:01) proxy: Connecting to graph.facebook.com:443 with no proxy
(11:13:01) proxy: Connection in progress
(11:13:32) http: Timeout reached for request 0x5603f3f19810
(11:13:32) http: Request 0x5603f3f19810 performed without success.
(11:13:32) connection: Connection error on 0x5603f3e9dd80 (reason: 0 description: Unknown HTTP error)
(11:13:32) account: Disconnecting account myfbaccount@mail.com (0x5603f3369690)
(11:13:32) connection: Disconnecting connection 0x5603f3e9dd80
(11:13:32) connection: Destroying connection 0x5603f3e9dd80
(11:13:37) util: Writing file accounts.xml to directory /home/mac/.purple
(11:13:37) util: Writing file /home/mac/.purple/accounts.xml
(11:13:54) autorecon: do_signon called
(11:13:54) autorecon: calling purple_account_connect
(11:13:54) account: Connecting to account myfbaccount@mail.com.
(11:13:54) connection: Connecting. gc = 0x5603f3f13200
(11:13:54) http: Performing new request 0x5603f354a240 to graph.facebook.com.
(11:13:54) autorecon: done calling purple_account_connect
(11:13:54) dnsquery: Performing DNS lookup for graph.facebook.com
(11:13:54) dns: Wait for DNS child 4369 failed: No child processes
(11:13:54) dns: Created new DNS child 4395, there are now 1 children.
(11:13:54) dns: Successfully sent DNS request to child 4395
(11:13:59) dns: Got response for 'graph.facebook.com'
(11:13:59) dnsquery: IP resolved for graph.facebook.com
(11:13:59) proxy: Attempting connection to 2a03:2880:f00d:110:face:b00c:0:2
(11:13:59) proxy: Connecting to graph.facebook.com:443 with no proxy
(11:13:59) proxy: Connection in progress
The weird thing is that it happens with different distros which use different versions of pidgin.
I used the latest version of purple-facebook, which doesn’t seem to have been updated in 3 years anyway.
Does anything else work for you on ipv6? I had a silly issue not so long ago unrelated to facebook, where my router’s ipv6 dhcp lease expired on the ISP side but the router thought it was good. This caused all ipv6 traffic to time out for my entire network. I ended up rebooting my router to keep it simple but then everything started working again.