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Maniphest T1090

telegram-desktop - 2.6.1 being deprecated, and no longer allows a user to setup his account - consider backport
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Description

TL:DR; Can we backport version telegram-desktop 3.1.1+ds-1~bpo11+1 from bullseye backports to PureOS byzantium?

The reason for this is:

We had reports from users that telegram-desktop 2.6.1 version currently in Byzantium now shows a warning that the application is old and will soon be unsupported every time you open the application.

Besides this warning the application no longer lets users setup their accounts. More details about this problem is debated in this Debian mailinglist thread:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2021/12/msg00140.html

But basically:

"Telegram recently updated their API introducing backward incompatible changes. Because of that a
version of the package currently in bullseye ceases to work."

There is also a bug report in Debian.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1001016

The telegram-desktop 3.1.1+ds-1~bpo11+1 version from debian bullseye-backports; does not have this issue, and from a test I was able to manually install it in PureOS and it worked out of the box with no dependency issues:

https://packages.debian.org/bullseye-backports/telegram-desktop

This affects both laptop/desktop users and Librem 5 users.

Event Timeline

jeremiah.foster triaged this task as Normal priority.Dec 16 2021, 10:36
jeremiah.foster updated the task description. (Show Details)
jeremiah.foster added a project: Restricted Project.
jeremiah.foster updated the task description. (Show Details)
patata added a subscriber: patata.EditedDec 17 2021, 06:54

I have updated 6/12 and again 17/12,
i now have 2.6.1+ds-1+deb11u1 and i cannot even log in.

joao.azevedo added a comment.Dec 17 2021, 07:30

i now have 2.6.1+ds-1+deb11u1 and i cannot even log in.

@patata that version is still affected by this issue. If you want a temporary workaround until this is solved, then you can install version telegram-desktop 3.1.1+ds-1~bpo11+1 from: bullseye-backports.

You can install it by running these commands:

wget ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/t/telegram-desktop/telegram-desktop_3.1.1+ds-1~bpo11+1_amd64.deb

Then;

sudo apt install ./telegram-desktop_3.1.1+ds-1~bpo11+1_amd64.deb

patata added a comment.Dec 17 2021, 11:05

thanks, this is working for now!

jeremiah.foster added subscribers: joao.fonseca, jeremiah.foster.EditedDec 20 2021, 13:47

From what I can see the instructions for telegram-desktop 3.1.1+ds-1~bpo11+1 are the same as for other versions. That is to say, the build instructions appear to require you have API credentials;

## Obtaining your API credentials

To build your version of Telegram Desktop you're required to provide your own **api_id** and **api_hash** for the Telegram API access.

How to obtain your **api_id** and **api_hash** is described here: [https://core.telegram.org/api/obtaining_api_id](https://core.telegram.org/api/obtaining_api_id)

If you're building the application not for deployment, but only for test purposes you can use TEST ONLY credentials, which are very limited by the Telegram API server:

**api_id**: 17349
**api_hash**: 344583e45741c457fe1862106095a5eb

Your users will start getting internal server errors on login if you deploy an app using those **api_id** and **api_hash**.

@joao.fonseca How did you work around this requirement? Did you use the "test" API creds?

joao.azevedo added a comment.Dec 20 2021, 14:19

@jeremiah.foster you pinged the wrong João ;)

I simply downloaded and installed the version from bullseye-backports, the *.deb package. I did not rebuild the package from source.

jeremiah.foster added a comment.Dec 21 2021, 10:26

@joao.azevedo Sorry for the spurious ping. :-)

So I'll try to build this and upload but there is a requirement that you have this api id and hash. And I'm not sure how this is managed in Debian, I'll have to figure that out.