Getting debugging info out of BitlBee

Be careful when posting debug logs. The output might have private info like your IM passwords or contact email addresses.

If you're sharing info on something like pastebin, make sure you strip out private info first.

First of all, ignore the debug setting. It's useless. It should probably be removed.

XMPP/Jabber debugging

This one's easy, and works even if you're on a public server.

Before connecting, you can enable xmlconsole to get raw XMPP traffic in a PM window from the _xmlconsole contact:

account jabber set xmlconsole true

This will show the whole login sequence. The packet that sends the password is censored with stars.

Or, if already connected, you can add and remove the _xmlconsole contact like this:

add jabber _xmlconsole
remove _xmlconsole

Also, it will let you send raw XML to the server yourself. But be careful, if you send something invalid the server on the other end will probably disconnect you!

Other debugging

To get debug output, you have to launch BitlBee by hand instead of from the init script, with the BITLBEE_DEBUG=1 environment variable set. Also, you should pass some flags so it won't daemonise (and close stdout, stderr, etc.).

In short, something like this:

BITLBEE_DEBUG=1 /usr/sbin/bitlbee -nD

This may not be very useful, as not all protocols use this method of debugging. Good luck!

Again, be careful when sharing this output on the bug tracker/pastebin/etc as it may contain your password.