Could not connect to Jabber: An unexpected SSL error occurred. [-9843]

A post in the Mac OS X Server:Collaboration Services forum mentions having this issue, and he was able to solve it by deleting a self-signed cert from the X509Anchors keychain; however, in my case there is no self-signed cert in the X509Anchors file to delete.

On my wife's iBook G3 running 10.4.7, iChat gives the -9843 SSL error when trying to connect to a jabber server that I control.

The same jabber account works fine in a "clean" user account on the same system, so it's not a system keychain problem or a jabber server problem. There must be something in her user account that is hosing iChat's jabber connection.

I have tried deleting all the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat* files, and any other iChat-related files I could find in her entire user directory. No joy.

Any ideas? What other files does iChat use, specifically for jabber security information?

15" PowerBook G4/1GHz/1GB/100GB/SD, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Jul 1, 2006 7:56 PM

17 replies

JLG89 Author

Level 1

138 points

Jul 16, 2006 3:30 PM in response to Ralph-Johns-UK

Ralph,

It's not the "two heads" approach that bothers me; it's the fact that you're obviously not thinking about my posts. For example, I say that the firewall is not enabled, and then you suggest that the problem might be a firewall misconfiguration. I say that the same jabber account works properly under a different login on the same machine, and you suggest a network/router issue. I say that I've deleted all the preference files, and you suggest deleting the preference files.

These, and many other examples from this thread, make it obvious to me that you are not paying attention to my posts and giving critical thought to what I've said; instead, you are simply running through a cookie-cutter list of "try this" suggestions, regardless of what's already been covered in the thread.

I can get cookie-cutter advice from the knowledge base. When I come to the discussion forums, I have a problem that requires critical thought and/or technical insight beyond the typical troubleshooting steps. When I post information about the problem, I expect it to be read, understood, and considered--not ignored for the sake of a quick cookie-cutter suggestion. Of course, there's nothing wrong with cookie-cutter suggestions per se, UNLESS they have already been tried and documented in the thread, as was the case here time and again!

In the future, if you're going to ask, "Hey, have you tried this...," my advice (take it or leave it) would be to first re-read the previous posts in the thread and make darn sure that "this" hasn't already been tried. Otherwise you're just wasting time, both yours and the original poster's.

Jul 16, 2006 3:59 PM in response to JLG89

Ummm.

First post.

The same jabber account works fine in a "clean" user account on the same system, so it's not a system keychain problem or a jabber server problem. There must be something in her user account that is hosing iChat's jabber connection.

Last post

To (finally) answer my own question:

Even if you delete all iChat-related keys in your login keychain, it is possible for some jabber-related information to remain--possibly through corrupted keychain data; I'm not sure. Deleting the user's keychain file, logging out and back in, and re-entering passwords etc. seems to have fixed the odd jabber/SSL problem.

Again, just deleting the keys from within the keychain (using Keychain Access) won't do the trick; you have to move the entire keychain file from ~/Library/Keychains to the desktop (or elsewhere), logout/login to create a new keychain, and go to town. If the old keychain contains desperately-needed keys, export them first using Keychain Access, then import them into the new keychain once it's in place.

Rechecking works by your own admission.

11:59 PM Sunday; July 16, 2006

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Could not connect to Jabber: An unexpected SSL error occurred. [-9843]