Pidgin with Lync Server

Pidgin allows to connect to Microsoft Lync Server via the SIPE-Plugin. This needs some special configurations.

Installation

Pidgin and the Pidgin SIPE Plugin must be installed onto the system.

Pidgin and the SIPE Plugin is in the Ubuntu repository. The following commands will install Pidgin and the SIPE Plugin on the Ubuntu Distribution:

# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get install pidgin pidgin-sipe

This has been tested on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Pidgin must be started before any configuration can be made.

Create a new Account. 1a.If there are no accounts, Pidgin will start the Account Setup Wizard automatically. 1b.Otherwise the Buddy List is shown with the menu "Accounts".
Choose the protocol Office Communicator
Enter into the Username field your Microsoft Exchange E-Mail address: user@company.com
Enter into the Login field your Microsoft Active Directory Username with the DOMAIN: DOMAIN\aduser
Enter into the Password field your Active Directory password: password
Enter into the Local alias field your Display Name: My Name
Try to connect

This will probably fail, depending on the used Pidgin, SIPE Plugin and Microsoft Lync Server version. If it fails, try to use the shell script below.

If Pidgin fails with the error SSL Read Error try to use the shell script below.

Copy the following code into a text file called pidgin.sh:

#!/bin/bash

#Start program with &
NSS_SSL_CBC_RANDOM_IV=0 pidgin > /dev/null 2>&1 &

exit 0

Afterwards make it executable and start pidgin via the script:

# chmod a+x pidgin.sh
# ./pidgin.sh

published on 10 May 2012

written by Martin Hauser