Problem with gaim and Kopete
 

Hello everyone,
I have recently installed Mandrake 10.1 linux (found on some old CDs). I wanted to test how messenger works and first i started Kopete and tried to connect on my account using MSN messenger protocol. I failed, and then, I tried gaim, but I received same error message "Unable to connect to server". Since Internet works fine (web browser) I'm not sure what's wrong. If there any way or web page where I can test my connection regarding messengers?
This computer goes to Internet through LAN, so maybe this is issue for administrator but not sure.
Is there any way I can test?
Thank you very much

If you want to monitor the packets you're sending to try and figure out why you can't connect, I suggest Wireshark (also called Ethereal on Windows). With that, you would want to look for UDP packets. With Wireshark, you can also examine each packet (destination and the data within), so when you see a UDP packet, you can check and see if it's from Kopete or Gaim.

Secondly, check the firewall settings. I remember back when I was using Mandrake 10.1, I had to practically kill the firewall if I wanted to do anything vaguely recreational on the 'net.

Back to the Wireshark bit. Although I don't condone it, I still find it hilarious: One of my friends is taking a networking course at one of the bigger colleges in my city, and he would sit in his lectures and workshops with Wireshark running, and collecting packets (having multiple watches open on IPs). At the end of the day, he would come home and filter through all of the collected packets for UDP-MSN ones. He would easily get 150 username and password combinations a day. :D

For Gaim (now called Pidgin) to work with msn you need to have these development packages installed libnss-dev & libnspr-dev. You can add them from the cd using the package manager. It would be easier to help if you detailed the exact error message(s) you got from Kopete.

Thanks for the replies.
I'm getting error message for Kopete: "Unable to connect to host login.passport"
As you see nothing much. Account and password are OK, I have tested it on windows machine...

Maybe because 10.1 is rather old I'm experiencing problems...
There is also one possibility.
I have ubuntu CD 6.06, and I can found newer version of gaim, but it's a .deb package. Is there any way I can convert deb to rpm on my mandrake machine and then to install it?
I went on http://www.mandrivauser.de and it asks me to chose arhitecture? If I have AMD Duron 750 MHz, what architecture would that be?
What does it mean i586 package?
Thanks

Yes choose i586. But you would be better off using Pidgin. It's done by the same folk who did Gaim, due to some legal wranglings they had to change the name.