empathy (AOL IM protocol) does not handle messages to the logged in user from the same user (from another host) correctly

Binary package hint: empathy

Okay, bear with me, this one is complicated ;-)

Let your username be 'fubar' and let your two computers be called 'host1' and 'host2'.

Login to AOL IM as fubar on host1. Add fubar to your buddy list. Notice that you can open a chat window to fubar and type in messages, which once sent, show up in both the sending and receiving portions of the chat window (because, of course, you are sending a message to yourself).

Now also login to AIM as fubar on host2. This perfectly allowable, and the AOL IM protocol says that, if a user is logged in more than once, then messages sent to that user are sent to every non-away client, or to all clients, if all are away.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

Log in to fubar on both host1 and host2. Make sure that both hosts are not away and will not go auto-away.

On host1, make sure that there are no chat windows open for fubar.

On host2, send a message to fubar.

WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN:

On host1, a message should appear to fubar from fubar. (Note: this works correctly, if a chat window for fubar was already open on host1 when the message came in. For this bug to be triggered, host1 cannot have a chat window open for fubar.)

On host2, the message should appear in both the send and receive portions of the chat window.

Everything else on host1 and host2 should work normally.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS:

1. On host1, nothing visible happens. There is no indication of any kind that a message has been received; no chat window pops up, and the indicator and notification area icons do nothing. However, if you check the chat transcript for fubar, you will see that the message has been silently received.

2. Also on host1, from the moment the message was silently received, until you either logout and log back in, or until you restart empathy, you will not be able to summon a chat window for fubar. Looking in the empathy debug messages, it seems that empathy never gets a reply from telepathy-haze when it tries to open a chat window channel.

(Nothing bad happens on host2.)

CURRENT STATUS:

Right now, I am trying to collect minimal empathy and telepathy-haze logs that show the series of events involved in receiving messages, receiving messages that are also from the logged-in user, and opening chat windows before and after triggering this bug. I suspect that the actual problem is in telepathy-haze, but until I know more, I am filing this under empathy, as that is the more user-visible project.

(Speculation: Now that I am thinking about it, I wonder if telepathy-haze assumes that a message from the logged-in user must correspond to an existing window channel, and gets into a funky state if this is not the case.)

JUSTIFICATION FOR SETUP:

Some people may wonder why I would add myself to my own buddy list. The answer is that I log in to the same account from work, home, and abroad, so that I don't bother my friends with multiple accounts at which to contact me. I also send messages to myself from one location, so I know that I will see them on my desktop when I get to the other location. I have used this as a quick and easy way to leave myself to-dos for many years now. Also, it's a quick way of checking whether your connection is hung, because sending a message from yourself to yourself on the same client still has to pass through the AOL servers, and will not do so, if your connection is hung.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: empathy 2.32.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.35-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Oct 24 23:03:38 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy