Install Bitlbee on OSX 10.3

Downloaded BitlBee 0.99 from source and ran `./configure`. It told me that it was missing a crypto library such as GNU TLS. This is the part that made me realize at the time that my fink setup was broken and motivated me to move to DarwinPorts.

fink

DarwinPorts

So I ran `sudo port install bitlbee`. It started working and doing stuff... Until it ended with the compilation of bitlbee: `Cannot find glib development libraries, aborting. (Install libglib-dev?)`. What?

Went to the 0.93 source directory I had and did a configure again. Same message! `port search glib` lists several alternatives. I decided to go with the latest. `sudo port install glib2` takes some time.

Resumed with `sudo port install bitlbee` in the 0.99 source tree.

Created the following `/etc/inetd.d/bitlbee` as root with the following content:

service bitlbee
{
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcp
        wait            = no
        user            = nobody
        server          = /opt/local/sbin/bitlbee
        port            = 6667
}

Added the following line to `/etc/services`:

bitlbee         6667/tcp

Changed the owner of the directory bitlbee uses and remove useless file (don’t do this if you already registered a nick!):

sudo chown nobody:nobody /opt/local/var/lib/bitlbee
sudo rm /opt/local/var/lib/bitlbee/*

Started xinetd as root: `sudo xinetd`. You should see a message on `/var/log/system.log`:

Nov  2 17:17:40 localhost xinetd[1425]: xinetd Version 2.3.11 started with libwrap options compiled in.
Nov  2 17:17:40 localhost xinetd[1425]: Started working: 1 available service
Nov  2 17:17:52 localhost xinetd[1425]: START: bitlbee pid=1429 from=127.0.0.1
Nov  2 17:19:56 localhost xinetd[1425]: START: bitlbee pid=1441 from=127.0.0.1

I had totally forgotten all my accounts and passwords. Luckily, I could just copy the two `kensanata.*` files from my other machine’s `/var/lib/bitlbee` to this machine’s `/opt/local/var/lib/bitlbee`.

After copying, I just did a `kill-all bitlbee` to kill my existing connection, reconnected to localhost port 6667, and it worked!

Yay! ICQ number 98129982, AIM nick kensanata, Jabber id kensanata@amessage.ch.

All I needed to do now, was this: Autostart xinetd on OSX 10.3.

Autostart xinetd on OSX 10.3

*Update**: Eventually I found that in order to get Google Talk working using Bitlbee, I had to upgrade to the latest version. In order to do that, I did a `port del bitlbee`, moved `/opt/local/var/lib` to `/var` (new location of the files), and changed `/opt/local/sbin/bitlbee` to `/usr/local/sbin/bitlbee` in `/etc/inetd.d/bitlbee`. Downloaded the source, ran `./configure` and `make` and `sudo make install`, etc.

Google Talk

source

(I’m skipping the part about stopping and restarting xinetd...)

*Update**: A mail by Wilmer made me realize that Bitlbee 0.99 does not require version two of glib; both one and two will work.