Setting up a Facebook account in BitlBee

Facebook's offering a XMPP server for some time already, which means you can use their chat using any XMPP/Jabber client, including BitlBee.

To be able to use it, you do need to have a Facebook username.

   1 23:44:32 <wilmer> account add jabber `yourusername`@chat.facebook.com ''yourpassword''
   2 23:44:32 <root> Account successfully added
   3 23:44:42 <wilmer> account set facebook/nick_source full_name
   4 23:44:42 <root> nick_source = `full_name'
   5 23:44:43 <wilmer> account on
   6 23:44:44 <root> jabber(wvdgaast@chat.facebook.com) - Logging in: Connecting
   7 23:44:44 <root> jabber(wvdgaast@chat.facebook.com) - Logging in: Connected to server, logging in
   8 23:44:45 <root> jabber(wvdgaast@chat.facebook.com) - Logging in: Authentication finished
   9 23:44:45 <root> jabber(wvdgaast@chat.facebook.com) - Logging in: Server changed session resource string to `BitlBee_5d9293ae_4870E52387B28'
  10 23:44:46 <root> jabber(wvdgaast@chat.facebook.com) - Logging in: Authenticated, requesting buddy list
  11 23:44:47 <root> jabber(wvdgaast@chat.facebook.com) - Logging in: Logged in

If you're getting authentication failures, try logging out and back into the Facebook website.

Numeric usernames

All contacts have numeric handles, which makes for very ugly usernames by default, since nicknames are generated from the IM handle. By setting the nick_source account setting to full_name, like this:

account set X/nick_source full_name

(Replacing X with the number of your facebook account), bitlbee the nicknames will be generated based on the full names. Enter:

help set nick_source

For more detailed information on what this setting does and what its parameters are.

Note: The nick_source setting was added in BitlBee 1.2.5.

Alternatively, there exists scripts that automatically renames numeric handles for some IRC clients.

Irssi

Irssi users can use this script to rename the contacts. Note that this script can translate some non-ASCII characters to something more IRC-friendly, whereas the BitlBee setting will just strip everything non-ASCII.

Weechat

Weechat users can use the facebook-rename script to automatically rename any user who joins with a numerical name. A couple of things to note:

• Your bitlbee server handle must be named 'bitlbee', or you'll have to change the "bitlbeeServer" parameter value on the top of the script to your handle name.
• Numeric usernames used to start with 'u', but now start with '-' (a minus character). This has not been fixed in the script, so you have to change this line (line 31 in my version):

  if channel == bitlbeeChannel and nick == username and nick[0] == 'u' and server == facebookhostname:

to:

  if channel == bitlbeeChannel and nick == username and nick[0] == '-' and server == facebookhostname:

(Simply changing 'u' to '-'.)

This script, like the BitlBee setting, will simply strip everything non-ASCII.

I get nothing after "Logging in: Authenticated, requesting buddy list"

This is a problem with Facebook, not with BitlBee. It's especially likely that you get this error on public servers. The problem's caused by security measures on Facebook's side. They keep track of the IP addresses from where you've used their website in the past, and often restrict access to your account via their XMPP server to just those IP addresses. If you get this error, you can try to log into Facebook (via an SSH tunnel, for example) from the IP address that also hosts the BitlBee instance.

But if you use a public BitlBee server, unfortunately there's not much you can do. BitlBee can't offer any help with this since that could be seen as a violation of their terms of service. Fortunately not all accounts are affected by this, several people have reported that they can log into Facebook XMPP from wherever they want. Possibly accounts get unlocked once they're used from many places already.