Same problem reported in BZ#492014 for Fedora, also happens in RHEL 5.3. Will get a stack trace soon.
I found out this is related to memory leak when trying to display users with unicode characters in their display names on MSN. If I remove such users, pidgin never crashes again. If I run pidgin from inside Valdring, I get _tons_ of memory leak warnings, it runs very slow, but does not crash. (08:05:03) msn: S: SB 001: JOI gilvanfalcaojr Gilvan%20Falcão 2788999228 (08:05:03) msn: Processing queue (08:05:03) msn: Sending message (08:05:03) msn: C: SB 001: MSG 3 D 828 (08:05:03) msn: switchboard send msg.. (08:05:03) msn: C: SB 001: MSG 4 U 98 (08:05:03) msn: S: SB 001: ACK 3 (08:05:03) msn: S: SB 001: MSG gilvanfalcaojr Gilvan%20Falcão 145 (08:05:04) msn: S: SB 001: MSG gilvanfalcaojr Gilvan%20Falcão 532 (08:05:04) GLib: gmem.c:136: failed to allocate 2264989697 bytes warning: the debug information found in "/usr/lib/debug//lib/libglib-2.0.so.0.1800.4.debug" does not match "/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0" (CRC mismatch). warning: the debug information found in "/usr/lib/debug/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0.1800.4.debug" does not match "/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0" (CRC mismatch). dns[10793]: nobody needs me... =(
This bug/component is not included in scope for RHEL-5.11.0 which is the last RHEL5 minor release. This Bugzilla will soon be CLOSED as WONTFIX (at the end of RHEL5.11 development phase (Apr 22, 2014)). Please contact your account manager or support representative in case you need to escalate this bug.
Thank you for submitting this request for inclusion in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. We've carefully evaluated the request, but are unable to include it in RHEL5 stream. If the issue is critical for your business, please provide additional business justification through the appropriate support channels (https://access.redhat.com/site/support).
Bug is closed, removing NEEDINFO flag.