How to Block AIM’s Annoying ‘AOL System Msg’ in Pidgin
Fri, May 1, 2009
The following plugin for Pidgin will block the incredibly annoying and useless notifications from AOLSystemMsg on AIM.
“AOL System Msg: Your screen name (mrEman) is now signed into AOL(R) Instant Messenger (TM) in 2 locations. Click here for more information.”
To use, paste code in file, save file as blockaolsystemmsg.pl in ~/.purple/plugins/ and then open (or re-open) Pidgin and go to Tools -> Plugins (or press CTRL+U), and enable “Block AOLSystemMsg.” That should be it!
If you’re having any trouble, try going to Help -> Debug to open up Pidgin’s debug console.
#!/usr/bin/perl
# BlockAOLSystemMsg plugin tested on Pidgin 2.5.5. Put in ~/.purple/plugins/ and enable
use Purple;
our $target = 'AOL System Msg'; # case-insensitive
our $plugin_name = 'Block AOLSystemMsg';
%PLUGIN_INFO = (
perl_api_version => 2,
name => $plugin_name,
version => "0.1",
summary => "Blocks the screen name 'AOL System Msg'",
description => "Ignore annoying 'your SN has signed on at 2 locations' AIM message",
author => "Isam ",
url => "http://biodegradablegeek.com",
load => "plugin_load",
unload => "plugin_unload"
);
sub loginfo { Purple::Debug::info($plugin_name, " @_\n"); }
sub minimize {
my $r = lc($_[0]);
$r =~ s/ //g;
return $r;
}
sub plugin_init { return %PLUGIN_INFO; }
sub plugin_load {
my $plugin = shift;
$target = minimize($target);
loginfo("Sight set on '$target'");
Purple::Signal::connect(Purple::Conversations::get_handle(),
'receiving-im-msg', $plugin, \&callback, '');
}
sub plugin_unload {
my $plugin = shift;
loginfo('Block AOLSystemMsg Unloaded.');
}
sub callback {
my ($acc, $sender, $msg, $flags) = @_;
if (minimize($sender) eq $target) {
loginfo("(BLOCKED) <$sender> $msg");
return 1
};
}
update: Fixed the botched code. Thanks.
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Tags: annoying, chat, Linux, pidgin, Workarounds
June 14th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Does this work in Windows as well? I checked, and inside program files\pidgin\plugins they’re all .dll files instead of .pl, so I suspect not. Is there a way to make it work, if so, or do you not know?
Thanks
.-= Dunvi´s last blog ..*flailflailflail* =-.
June 15th, 2009 at 1:14 am
The .dll plugins are written in C but Pidgin also supports plugins written in perl (.pl). You will need to install perl on Windows and to make sure your Pidgin installation supports loading perl plugins.
See http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Scripting%20and%20Plugins for more info.
I completely forgot about AOLSystemMsg until seeing this comment ;)
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:06 am
can somebody compile this as a dll some how thanks
July 10th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
The code is screwed up as posted. If you want this to work on your system (windows or linux), then you need to search and replace on:
> with >
< with <
& with &
After doing that in WordPad and saving as a Text Document to c:\program files\pidgin\plugins\blockaolsystemmsg.pl, I was able to get the plugin working on Pidgin 2.5.5 on Windows Vista.
Good luck.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
… the blog even screwed up my post! You need to search and replace the following, removing the spaces I have intentionally inserted:
& g t ; with >
& l t ; with <
& a m p ; with &
July 20th, 2009 at 8:58 am
No, you can’t compile a perl script to a DLL. You just need to install perl (the interpreter) in order to allow Python to run the script.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
the above commenters are correct that the perl code has been altered by HTML encoding
i wrote a C plugin to do this
code is here: http://www.pidgin.im/nopaste/104
December 17th, 2009 at 8:01 am
This works! Thanks so much, that msg was driving me nuts.
March 10th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
This is such a huge frustration among people using anything but a desktop with a stable landline internet connection- why isn’t an already compiled file readily available?
I’m not a programmer but I might be able to figure out how to make a dll file in a couple of days during spring break when my assignment load temporarily lightens up. I’m cruising along at a really high stress level though so having to close the system message a few more times might end with my throwing a fit.
I would greatly appreciate it if someone that actually knows their way around this stuff could help me avoid that by a wider margin.
August 18th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Thank you! This was exactly what I was looking for and it worked perfectly.