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Programster
Asked: 2013-10-18 02:45:17 +0800 CST

Setting PIdgin up for Lync2013

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I having difficulty setting up pidgin to work with my company's microsoft 365's communicator lync 2013 (not 2010) account.

I either receive a message stating authentication failed, or Incompatible authentication scheme chosen: NTLM depending upon the user agent values used from this wiki

It appears that both the user agent values that start with UCCAPI provide authentication failed error, which I'm guessing is "closer" to the solution.

I have triple checked that the password is correct.

Below are some images of my settings (I have changed the company name to "company" for annonymity.

enter image description here enter image description here

I am running pidgin with a script in order to fix a write error issue:

export NSS_SSL_CBC_RANDOM_IV=0
pidgin -d

I am also using the latest version of SIPE (1.10.1) by using this ppa: https://launchpad.net/~aavelar/+archive/ppa

What settings do I need to change/add to get it to work?

pidgin

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I was able to get this working on ubuntu 13.04 (question asked on ubuntu 12.04). Here are a few pointers:

    Use the full user agent string as @mason81 pointed out: 

    UCCAPI/15.0.4420.1017 OC/15.0.4420.1017 (Microsoft Lync)

    I did not need to use a startup script to solve any write errors. e.g.

    export NSS_SSL_CBC_RANDOM_IV=0
pidgin -d

    That linked repo was pointless on this distro, don't use it. It appears that on Ubuntu 13.04 you will install pidgin-sipe 1.13.3-1 by default which is an even more up-to-date version.

    It appears that the pidgin/sipe setup I have installed here has a third authentication type for TLS as seen in this picture which is what I needed. enter image description here

    For reference, here are my connection settings that are working: enter image description here enter image description here

    The other tabs are the defaults

    Update

    To get this working in ubuntu 14.04, do exactly the same, but untick the single sign on!

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  2. I manged to get this working on Ubuntu 12.04 with the pidgin (2.10.3) and pidgin-sipe (1.11.2-1ubuntu1) installed from the default precise/universe repo. We are using Lync2013 also.

    I did use an environment variable to run pidgin. Without this pidgin would fail every time with a 'Read failed'. This was configured in /home/myuser/.profile by appending:

    export NSS_SSL_CBC_RANDOM_IV=0

    Check here for more information about why this variable is needed for sipe.

    The sipe settings were as follows

    'Basic' tab:

    • Username: my email as used within the company (e.g [email protected])
    • Login: company logon domain\username (e.g COMPANY\john.smith)

    Advanced tab:

    • Connections type: Auto
    • User Agent: UCCAPI/15.0.4420.1017 OC/15.0.4420.1017 (Microsoft Lync)
    • Use Single Sign-on: [ticked]

    All other fields in Advanced were blank. I had no proxy configured.

    • 5

  3. This is what is currently working for me. I have an Office365 account.

    BASIC TAB

    Username: [email protected]

    Login: [email protected]

    Password: *****

    [CHECK]Remember password

    Local alias: My Name

    ADVANCED TAB

    Server[:Port]: BLANK

    Connection type: SSL/TLS

    User Agent: UCCAPI/15.0.4481.1000 OC/15.0.4481.1000 (Microsoft Lync)

    Authentication scheme: TLS-DSK

    [UNCHECK]Use Single Sign-On

    The rest is blank

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  4. Took a while to sort out, but this article did help quite a bit. Things to know:

    1. User agent is different depending on version of Lync your company has running and it's patch level. I found my agent by finding someone on MS Lync (not linux) and looking in a uccapilog file (it's under the Lync\Tracing directory) searching for UCCAPI.
    2. I at least had to find the server, and had to use the direct IP instead of DNS, found that info in the same file as above.
    3. The authentication scheme is dependent on your company's choices when they setup Lync, mine was NTLM.
    4. I did not use Single-Sign-on as my workstation login is not my domain login.
    • 2

  5. If you have you got MultiFactorAuthentication enabled you will need to give "app password" in the basic tab and email login and email password in the advanced tab.

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  6. For reference: I first got Pidgin/SIPE working on Ubuntu following Programster's instructions. I then tried on Windows and it failed with an error message 

    Web ticket request to https://webpoolams0e08.infra.lync.com:443/CertProv/CertProvisioningService.svc failed

    Unticking SSO, again according to Programster's, instructions solved that. Only problem now is that no names are visible for my Lync contacts. If I mouse over they a "tool tip" with the name appear but the name remain invisible when the mouse is not there.

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