After updating Maemo (on a week-old N810), I no longer see the online status of my contacts. Not in Speed Contacts applets and not in Contacts, either.

My contacts still see MY online status on the N810 just fine—and we can chat as before. However, I no longer see the green (online), red (offline), or white question mark-on-blue (not authorized) balls next to the names of my contacts. I though that perhaps the software update (OS and many of the apps pre-installed) compromised the icons used to show online status, but the list at "Contacts" -> "Online" remains empty, even when some of my contacts definitely are online.

Ideas?

Thanks,
Thorsten (Linux expert, N810 newbie)

P.S. The problem occurs both with GTalk and (non-Google) Jabber accounts.

EDIT: A few screenshots to illustrate:
The online status does NOT show up in either the Speed Contacts applet or the Contacts list:




Nothing is shown under "Contacts -> Online", even for contacts verifiably online:


However, a contact's correct online status is shown in the individual chat window:

Did you back up and restore "Settings" but not "Contacts"? The Chat app only seems to download your contacts on initial account creation, so if you restore the configuration for an existing account it won't redownload the contacts.

I didn't back up or restore anything; I updated the system with "apt-get dist-upgrade". My contacts never went away, it's just that there online statuses are no longer displayed. I even added another chat account to tablet's chat app (a long-existing Gmail acount) and there, too, I could immediately see all my contacts (the same ones I have on the Google Mail website), but I didn't see any online status information. Again, there was nothing displayed where the green or red balls used to be. As with the Jabber account that was on the tablet all along, my Gmail contacts still correctly see MY online status on the tablet, and they can chat with me just fine.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again,
Thorsten (Linux expert, N810 newbie)

For illustration, see screenshots in first message.

Again, I'd appreciate any input.

Thorsten (Linux expert, N810 newbie)

apt-get dist-upgrade is not a supported upgrade procedure on OS2008 (based on maemo 4.x); it's very possible - depending on the repositories you have enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list* - that SDK packages have ended up installed on your device and incompatibilities have arisen as a result.

Simplest method? Back everything up and re-flash the latest OS from http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/

HTH,

Andrew

Thanks, but that's a little like recommending to a PC user to "just re-install Windows" at the first sign of computer trouble. ;-)

I am well aware of the possibility of re-flashing the tablet. For now, I would like to confirm and hopefully resolve the bug at hand. BTW, I did have a reason for upgrading with apt-get.

Thorsten (Linux expert, N810 newbie)

Yeah, but as I said, dist-upgrade has caused all manner of weird problems in the past. If you want to resolve it without a reflash, you'll have to review all the package versions on your device, compared with the base versions. Work out what's different and what may have broken something with a post-inst script.

Diablo brings in SSU (Seamless Software Update) which should make all this pain a distant memory.