Upgrading from GAIM

[Mark Doliner]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Mike Webb<weeble7591 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:59:17 -0700
>> From: Mark Doliner <mark at kingant.net>
>> Subject: Re: Upgrading from GAIM
>>
>> Pidgin attempts to migrate all your settings from Gaim.  So you
>> shouldn't need to do anything special--your settings and accounts
>> should all be imported automatically.
>
> Thanks for your quick responses. Since the settings and all were not
> imported from GAIM when I started (all I get on Pidgin startup is a
> prompt to set up accounts), I presume that the .pet file (Puppy Linux'
> distribution file) simply dumped the program files into the
> appropriate places and did not run an install routine. So I'm back to
> where I started. The program is in place, but no data has been
> copied/converted/moved/whatever from GAIM.
>
> In a regular Pidgin install routine, would the files simply be copied
> from .gaim to .pidgin?

I think it's a bit more complicated than that, but I don't remember
the specifics.

> I note that there is presently a /root/.gaim
> directory but not a /root/.pidgin directory.

The new directory is ./root/purple  Also, it's generally suggested
that you use root only when needed, and to log in as a normal user the
rest of the time.  Using root makes it more likely that an accidental
or malicious command could break something on your system.

> I'm presuming that I will
> need to move the data over manually, but don't know if importing is a
> simple drag-and-drop or if there is a file format conversion involved.
> Where do I go from here? If someone's able and willing to walk me thru
> the process off-list, I'd appreciate it. I have AIM, Y!M and MSN
> accounts so we could talk thru any of them. Thanks again!

If you haven't configured anything in Pidgin yet, you can try exiting,
deleting your current /root/.pidgin directory, then starting Pidgin
again and letting it import from the now existent /root/.gaim

-Mark