Group chats in bitlbee using gtalk account

1. First of all you need to generate a uuid. There are atleast two ways to generate a uuid:

• Using 'uuidgen' (or 'dbus-uuidgen' or something similar). This program is available in 'e2fsprogs' package in all major linux/unix/BSD distributions.

• Online UUID/GUID Generator.

2. Now that you have generated a UUID, you need to tell bitlbee to add a chatroom for you. The syntax is:

chat add <account-id> <room> [<channel>]

<account-id> is the numeric ID listed by 'account list' command to bitlbee control channel. <room> is the chatroom which has the format: private-chat-{uuid}@groupchat.google.com (Replace the uuid by the uuid that you generated). [<channel>] is the name of channel used to identify the chatroom inside bitlbee. This should be unique for every new chatroom being created.

Here's a sample command to add a chat room:

chat add 1 private-chat-d0f2a60e-6200-4f2c-9fb6-0bc4793cb793@groupchat.google.com gtalk

3. You can now use 'chat list' to see a list of all the chatrooms known by BitlBee.

4. Now, to join the chatroom, type this in bitlbee control channel:

/join &gtalk

5. To invite other users to this chatroom, give them the uuid that you generated and tell them to repeat step 2 and 4 in this article.

That's it! Happy group chatting