mac-to-pc chats

[Kevin Justie]

Adding Pidgin to the PC client's firewall helped -- part way.  It turns out, though, that it only enabled initial chats to be received from Macs running iChat, meaning OS X 10.7 or earlier.  Macs on 10.8 (Mountain Lion), in which iChat is now Messages (which is more than just the same app with a new name) initial messages are still not received *unless* there has been a previous conversation between the PC and that Mac within the current Pidgin session.  Once there's been such a conversation, even if the conversation window is closed, future conversations *can* be initiated by the Mac.  But if Pidgin is closed and then reopened (the app, not the windows), the Mac can again not initiate a conversation.

Suggestions?

kevin



On Jun 14, 2013, at 4:58 PM, Daniel Atallah <datallah at pidgin.im> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 5:31 PM, Kevin Justie <kjustie at webrary.org> wrote:
>> 
>> On an all-Mac, iChat-using network, I've now added a PC with Pidgin.
>> Chatting between Mac and PC works perfectly -- as long as the PC initiates
>> the chat.  If I try to initiate the chat from a Mac -- meaning the PC does
>> not already have a chat conversation window open for the Mac -- the chat
>> sent by the Mac never appears on the PC and on the Mac I get "The instant
>> messaging connection failed."  Yet I can immediately chat from PC to Mac,
>> and that works, and then I can chat back from Mac to PC.
>> 
>> Something I've missed in setup or configuration that's preventing initial
>> chats from showing up on the PC?
> 
> 
> It's hard to say without more information, but it's quite likely that
> a firewall on the Windows machine is blocking the incoming connection
> necessary to initiate the conversation.
> 
> This is an incoming TCP connection, by default on port 5298, but you
> can override the port in the Advanced settings of your Bonjour account
> in Pidgin (note that if you change the port, some clients will be
> unable to connect, so it's best to leave it as 5298).
> 
> You'll want to make sure that your firewall isn't blocking that port,
> and that the remote machines can connect to your machine on that port.
> 
> If you still have issues, you'll need to get a Debug Log (Help->Debug Window).
> 
> -D
> 
> -D