Questions about Pidgin

[Mark Doliner]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 4:48 AM, Shane Hultquist <4vidar at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm running the latest client as well as an XMPP server (Openfire).  When I
> delete a user from the XMPP server, the user remains on all the users Pidgin
> buddy lists.  Is there a way to refresh the buddy list periodically?

For XMPP the master copy of each user's roster lives on the server.
Pidgin fetches an updated copy of the roster each time the user signs
in. In addition, if user A and has user B in their roster and you
delete user B, I believe the XMPP server can optionally send an XMPP
message to user A indicating that user B has been removed from the
roster.

So basically it's up to the XMPP server to manage this situation.
Deleting a user from the server may or may not clean up rosters that
contain that user. I'm not sure what happens if user A is on a
different domain than user B. User B's XMPP server would need to tell
user A's XMPP server that user B has been deleted. I don't know
whether there is an XMPP spec that defines how to do this.

> Also, I have users in different groups.  The issue there is that in one
> group they appear online and in another they are offline.  It is the same
> user account though.

That sounds like a bug to me. Not sure if the bug would be in the
server or the client. My inclination would be to blame Pidgin, since I
feel like Openfire tends to be a pretty good server.

> Also, some users, who are logged in, appear as offline
> to some and online to others.  Is this just a bug or a config issue?

Not sure. Adding someone to your roster doesn't necessarily mean
you're able to see that person--they must approve your presence
request. Maybe the person approved one presence request but denied or
ignored another? You could try removing and re-adding the person from
your roster.