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Jan '06
Using Google Talk with kopete
by Frank Spychalski filed under articles, Computer
66 Comments »


If you find this useful, you might like my other articles, too.

Google has extensive information how to use Google Talk but no info for kopete users like me. This is a step by step description, how to configure kopete.

First, you might need to install an additional package called tca-tls or similar, if it’s not already present. It seems every distribution has a slightly different name for the same thingy:

package name
Debian qca-tls
Fedora Core 4 qca-tls
Gentoo app-crypt/qca-tls
Mandriva libqca1-tls
SUSE qca
Ubuntu qca-tls

When you have installed this package, the most difficult part is probably over, the actual setup is pretty simple:

  1. Settings->Configure
  2. New
  3. Next
  4. Select Jabber
  5. On the first tab enter your account information 
    Basic Setup
     Jabber Id: [[email protected]]
 [ ] Remeber Password whatever you prefer
     Password: [xxxx]
  6. On the second tab enter 
    Connection
 [x] Use protocol encryption (SSL)
 [x] Allow plain-text password authentication
 [x] Override default server information
     Server: [talk.google.com]         Port: [5223]

enjoy …

Related Posts:

[tags]GoogleTalk, gtalk, kopete[/tags]


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66 Responses to “Using Google Talk with kopete”

  1. 1

    Tanks for the tips !
    Neto Cury (January 24th, 2006 at 10:15)
  2. 2

    Yep, this info ROCKS! Thanks for taking the time to put it up.

    -Nick
    Nick H. (February 3rd, 2006 at 23:20)
  3. 3

    Amazing instructions… Just what I needed to get it working.

    Thank,s
    G (March 18th, 2006 at 05:46)
  4. 4

    Thanks a bunch for the info. It has been on my todo list for the last few months.
    Sean B (June 28th, 2006 at 22:56)
  5. 5

    yup! once again, big thanks!
    nathan (October 11th, 2006 at 21:54)
  6. 6

    mahalo :-) i’m wondering if this means that the authentication info is actually sent clear text…on their site, google says that never happens, so I’m not sure what happens.
    Eric (December 1st, 2006 at 04:43)
  7. 7

    Hi Eric, you have to enable “Use protocol encryption (SSL)”, otherwise it won’t work (just checked it). Therefore no authentication information is send unencrypted, even if you wanted to.
    Frank Spychalski (December 1st, 2006 at 08:41)
  8. 8

    Congratulations and thanks, this info is quite clear and to-the-point, I’d seen another blogs where the info is loose. However you post it as “do this, do that, done…” and I think it’s quite great.

    Regards,
    Vicente Raúl Plata Fonseca [XnT] (January 5th, 2007 at 17:47)
  9. 9

    According to http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Google+Talk+support it would be change server from “talk.google.com” to “gmail.com” if you got the following error:
    The certificate of server gmail.com could not be validated for account @gmail.com: The Certificate Authority is invalid.

    I’ve had this message and changed server, but it isn’t work =(
    Yuriy V. (January 12th, 2007 at 04:49)
  10. 10

    Yuriy, I tested setting up an account 2 minutes ago. For me it worked exactly as I described it, using kopete 0.12.3.

    I think the wiki page refers to a problem with voice chat, but I’m not sure.
    Frank Spychalski (January 12th, 2007 at 08:52)
  11. 11

    I had the same problem as Yuriy. Simply use the server talk.google.com and when you get the error message click on continue. That did the job for me.
    Michael (January 20th, 2007 at 21:40)
  12. 12

    Sounds reasonable. When I tested the setup for Yuriy I removed my account and added it again so kopete probably remembered me clicking continue before…
    Frank Spychalski (January 20th, 2007 at 22:00)
  13. 13

    Thank you very much from Italy for your instructions!
    AndreaDFC (February 17th, 2007 at 02:12)
  14. 14

    In response to the person who was saying you need to change the server “talk.google.com” to “gmail.com”, I have tried it with it set on gmail.com for the longest time and could never get it to work, and when I changed it to talk.google.com it finally connected. Kudos to Eric. Thank you from Canada.
    Matt (March 19th, 2007 at 00:21)
  15. 15

    Hi, thanks for the tips.

    I have finished setting up an account but it doesn’t work for me :( I get a connection error saying:
    “There was a connection error: Operation is not supported.”

    I have the necessary package (qca-tls) installed on my computer.

    Any ideas?

    Thank you.
    miku (March 29th, 2007 at 18:33)
  16. 16

    @miku: sorry, no idea. Have you tried connecting with another client to confirm that it’s kopetes fault?
    Frank Spychalski (March 31st, 2007 at 11:53)
  17. 17

    Hi Frank! Thanks for trying to help.

    Yes, I did try connecting with gaim and could connect perfectly.
    miku (April 4th, 2007 at 13:33)
  18. 18

    Same problem here. The weird thing is that it connects, but disconnects and gives me this error after 5 minutes or so.

    There was a connection error: Operation is not supported

    Using Kubuntu with Kopete v0.12.4. qca-tls is installed on my computer. Pidgin conneced fine for me.
    Cyrus Jones (May 31st, 2007 at 21:35)
  19. 19

    Correction: it never connects (always connecting). However, I get the error and disconnect when I sign into Gmail (with Gmail Chat) or about every 5 minutes if I am signed in on Gmail Chat.
    Cyrus Jones (May 31st, 2007 at 21:45)
  20. 20

    Got it solved using following settings:

    Jabber ID: Gmail email address
    Use protocol encryption (SSL): checked
    Allow plain-text password authentication: checked
    Override default server information: checked
    Server: talk.google.com
    Port: 443
    Cyrus Jones (May 31st, 2007 at 22:06)
  21. 21

    Sorry for the long delay until I confirmed your comments: I was on vacation in Sweden far away from any internet connection.
    Frank Spychalski (June 10th, 2007 at 11:47)
  22. 22

    qca-tls works on ubuntu 7.04 Thank you
    Jim (June 19th, 2007 at 02:11)
  23. 23

    thanks. was wondering why kopete wasn’t working.

    for debian/ubuntu newbies:

    sudo apt-get install qca-tls

    then configure as above. works with feisty fawn, as mentioned.
    adm (July 15th, 2007 at 17:16)
  24. 24

    After mocking around for a while with some IMs, I found Kopete quite good, but I have still the problem, that gtalk cannot be connected ’cause of an ‘error authenticating with the server: Login failed with unknown reason’.
    qca-tls is new
    used both port 5223 and 443
    gmail.com and talk.google,com
    removing and adding some times the jabber-gtalk

    using ubuntu-gnome , could this be the problem… Kopete is written for KDE isnt it?

    For all ideas I would be more than happy. Cheers
    l0c4lh0st (July 21st, 2007 at 07:44)
  25. 25

    I just tried kopete with gnome with Debian Etch and it worked without a problem. But I have all the kde-libs installed. You are right, kopete is originally written for kde, but it should work with Gnome, too.

    Have you tried using another IM to verify, that it is kopetes fault?

    Or try starting it from a shell, perhaps you will get a useful error message…
    Frank Spychalski (July 21st, 2007 at 10:47)
  26. 26

    Sure, I tried successfully gaim (beta), but by using otr it freezed. Trying afterwards Pidgit, a successful installation failed. So tried Psi (just jabber), Sim-IM (unusable) until finding Kopete as a solution. All is fine, but using kdewallet the outcome of the shell is not informative I guess:

    ~$ kopete
    X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 167
    Major opcode: 144
    Minor opcode: 3
    Resource id: 0×0
    Failed to open device
    X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 167
    Major opcode: 144
    Minor opcode: 3
    Resource id: 0×0
    Failed to open device
    ~$ kopete: Creating OtrlChatInterface

    I didnt find out ’til now how to disable kdewallet. Sry.

    My other jabber (in addition to gtalk) account is working fine.. so I do not see that this is a problem of kopete. Reinstalling kopete would be the last option… I thought about this as well. But I have the feeling that this will not change something (why should?). THanks for further help.
    l0c4lh0st (July 21st, 2007 at 15:52)
  27. 27

    ‘But I have all the kde-libs installed.’

    Can you please tell me the kde-libs I need? Then I will install them using ‘apt-get install’. Synaptic wasnt helpful.
    l0c4lh0st (July 21st, 2007 at 16:10)
  28. 28

    Sorry, no idea about your errormessage. I’ve seen similar messages a couple of times but I didn’t experience any crashes (yet?).

    My kde-lib? Let’s see “dpkg -l | grep kde” returns this list of packages:

    kde-i18n-de kdeartwork kdeartwork-emoticons kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-style kdeartwork-theme-icon kdeartwork-theme-window kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-data kdebase-kio-plugins kdegames kdegames-card-data kdelibs-data kdelibs4c2a kdepasswd kdeprint kdesktop kdewallpapers libkdegames1 libkdepim1a

    hope this helps…
    Frank Spychalski (July 23rd, 2007 at 09:56)
  29. 29

    Percise instruction, but I needed to enter “[email protected]” as the ID.

    cheers.
    [email protected] (July 27th, 2007 at 09:37)
  30. 30

    @sopdu: that’s strange. I use [email protected] I just send an email to [email protected] and the second adress worked, too. But I could not connect using …@googlemail.com in kopete.
    Frank Spychalski (July 27th, 2007 at 20:30)
  31. 31

    Just came in to say thanks :)

    Is it possible to transfer files through gmail through kopete? :(

    Sudhang Shankar (August 12th, 2007 at 09:58)
  32. 32

    I tried to configure my kopete with the foolowing:
    Use protocol encryption: checked
    Allow plain-text password authentication: checked
    Override default server information
    Server talk.google.com

    But still whne i connect i get the following error:

    There was a connection error: Host not found.

    Please od give me a solution. I’m using RHEL 4. Also i’m not able to connect to yahoo nor MSN. I feel they might have blocked the proxy. Please give me a solution.

    Thanks in advance,
    Vijay
    vijay (August 14th, 2007 at 13:13)
  33. 33

    @Sudhang: yes, it’s possible and very easy: right click on the contact and select “Other Actions” -> “Send File” or right click on the bulb and select “Send File”.

    @vijay: try to lookup and ping talk.google.com. The results should look like the one below. If not, you probably have a network problem.

    $ host talk.google.com
    talk.google.com CNAME talk.l.google.com
    talk.l.google.com A 209.85.163.125

    $ ping talk.google.com
    PING talk.l.google.com (209.85.163.125) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from el-in-f125.google.com (209.85.163.125): icmp_seq=1 ttl=241 time=125 ms
    64 bytes from el-in-f125.google.com (209.85.163.125): icmp_seq=2 ttl=241 time=125 ms

    — talk.l.google.com ping statistics —
    2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1004ms
    rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 125.478/125.538/125.598/0.060 ms
    Frank Spychalski (August 16th, 2007 at 09:04)
  34. 34

    hi,
    i am using RHEL ES i installed QCA TLS package named QCA-TLS-1.0.tar.bz2 successfully but after doing all the steps mentioned above when tried to connect it showed could connect to host, help me on this. reason may be my admin could have blocked, porblem is similar to vijay’s………..thanks in advance
    vasanth (August 22nd, 2007 at 09:56)
  35. 35

    Hi vasanth,

    did you read my response to vijay? did you try what I suggested?
    Frank Spychalski (August 22nd, 2007 at 13:39)
  36. 36

    Apparently, you get into problems with the domain name in some countries, e.g. Germany and the UK. For legal reasons, google can’t use the gmail name there, so in order to get into your account from these countries, you have to use ‘googlemail.com’ or ‘googlemail.co.uk’ as the domain name instead of ‘gmail.com’.
    Arnd Bergmann (August 25th, 2007 at 15:02)
  37. 37

    Hi Arnd,

    I don’t understand your statement. What problem are you refering to? Google cannot use gmail.de because it belongs to someone else, but they can still use gmail.com in Germany…
    Frank Spychalski (August 25th, 2007 at 17:36)
  38. 38

    thanks for that! so helpful!!! I could have never done that by myself!
    rach (August 28th, 2007 at 22:35)
  39. 39

    You can find some info about many IM clients’ support for Google Talk at google.com here:
    http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html

    And clicking on “Kopete” for information leads you to the necessary information to connect to google’s network:
    http://www.google.com/support/talk/bin/answer.py?answer=57557

    Hope you can add this information to your HowTo!
    Good job!
    Joe (September 22nd, 2007 at 22:08)
  40. 40

    Good to know that Google finally added kopete to their list of clients… thanks!
    Frank Spychalski (September 24th, 2007 at 08:49)
  41. 41

    nice
    John Malkovitch (October 18th, 2007 at 18:03)
  42. 42

    Awesome! Thanks for the tip!
    Anonymous (January 5th, 2008 at 23:07)
  43. 43

    Thanks a lot!

    Excellent instructions :)

    Have a great day!
    Sendhil (February 16th, 2008 at 11:31)
  44. 44

    Thx a lot.
    It’s ok for me with Kopete 0.12.7 on Ubuntu 8.04.
    yoya (July 30th, 2008 at 09:34)
  45. 45

    I can’t connect via both 443 and 5223 ports on both gmail.com and talk.google.com.
    I think my firewall is blocking this thing moreover I can’t ping talk.google.com from my computer.
    I am using Gentoo
    Masroor Hussain (November 3rd, 2008 at 20:07)
  46. 46

    @Masroor: yes this sounds like a network problem, sorry can’t help you with that…
    Frank Spychalski (November 4th, 2008 at 09:15)
  47. 47

    i am not being to do it. Install was successful. but the error: ” This user is not reachable at the moment. Please make sure you are connected and using a protocol that supports offline sending, or wait until this user comes online.”
    Sameer (November 5th, 2008 at 17:16)
  48. 48

    Then do what the message suggests – wait for the user to come online :-)

    Frank Spychalski (November 6th, 2008 at 09:57)
  49. 49

    thanks a heap man, i’m using ubuntu 8.10 and pidgin just kept crashing, so i went to kopete but just could not configure this until i found this awesome tutorial

    kudos from australia

    btw folks, if you want to transfer files, set the file-transfer proxy to “proxy.jabber.org” on port 8010
    John Pycroft (December 19th, 2008 at 05:47)
  50. 50

    Thanks a lot for these tips
    I’m using Fedora 10 Cambridge x86_64 bit edition and Kopete 0.60.2
    I was very much disappointed with Kopete due to the problem associated with Google talk
    I was heading back to Pidgin due to this problem
    Now everything is fine and I’m 100 % satisfied

    Hats off to Frank Spychalski
    I wish you all the very best !!!
    Abhi M (January 7th, 2009 at 05:33)
  51. 51

    I love these comments :-) Thanks John and Abhi…
    Frank Spychalski (January 7th, 2009 at 15:14)
  52. 52

    Danke schön!
    Hans (January 16th, 2009 at 12:54)
  53. 53

    Great information, thanks
    Jorge Zapata (February 7th, 2009 at 20:18)
  54. 54

    Seems like google routes to different servers/ports depending on application (gmail->443 / talk->5332) and possibly national ip domain as well…

    I use it with my gmail acc and its work with:
    login: @googlemail.com (@gmail not working)
    server: talk.google.com
    port: 443

    Thanks a lot !
    dab (February 17th, 2009 at 15:02)
  55. 55

    Hi dab, from your IP I assume you are German. In Germany Google is not allowed to use gmail. Just visit gmail.com from a German IP to get:

    We can’t provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we’re called Google Mail here instead.

    If you’re traveling in Germany, you can access your mail at http://mail.google.com.

    Oh, and we’d like to link the URL above, but we’re not allowed to do that either. Bummer.

    For general information about Google, please visit http://www.google.com or http://www.google.de.

    Frank Spychalski (February 17th, 2009 at 15:27)
  56. 56

    thx
    ALAYA (May 15th, 2009 at 10:10)
  57. 57

    Thanks but for me it worked this way:

    am using slax via usb
    with ssl (checked)
    plain text (checked)
    talk.google.com
    443
    priority 3

    got my three google accounts going
    thanks a lot
    Domingo Reyes (July 3rd, 2009 at 01:40)
  58. 58

    Thanks, that was very useful!
    Megha (July 16th, 2009 at 06:30)
  59. 59

    Thank you very much for the help ..
    Surendra M (July 29th, 2009 at 12:02)
  60. 60

    Wow I didn’t know how to make it work because I was using the server gmail.com instead of talk.google.com, thanks alot for the info.
    Daniel (September 29th, 2009 at 19:00)
  61. 61

    w0w thanx…. a lot for the GTalk info.. it works like a charm :D … any can tell me how to get the yahoo settings on Kopete, i m on KDE 3.5
    SSyar (December 1st, 2009 at 08:43)
  62. 62

    Sorry, don’t know anything about yahoo…
    Frank Spychalski (December 1st, 2009 at 16:13)
  63. 63

    Thanks Frank!
    It worked like a charm.
    OS: Debian Lenny

    1 note tho: be sure that you do not do initial log on to google talk with status: invisible
    This will cause the contact list not to be shown.

    /tacster
    Thomas (January 4th, 2010 at 10:38)
  64. 64

    Unfortunately qca-tls pulls in qt3 dependencies that I’m avoiding (irrationally) like the plague!
    molecule-eye (January 12th, 2010 at 23:19)
  65. 65

    Thanks. I really overlooked that protocol. But thanks for having good SEO and showing up on the first page of google.
    Chris Heney (March 8th, 2010 at 16:55)
  66. 66

    thank you very much, I really appreciated!
    with last update in KDE 4.5.1, without the short but very useful article above, I received always a jabber protocol error like “googletalk-call is not possible”.
    gianted (September 9th, 2010 at 20:26)

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