Skype 2.2 on openSUSE 11.4, mic and video not working.

English Network/Internet
#1

I have a fresh install of openSUSE 11.4 with KDE. This includes ALSA and Pulseaudio.

I have a mic and speakers and a webcam. As far as I can see microphone and sound reproduction work, the webcam also works:

  • I can arecord and aplay
  • KMix works
  • amixer and alsamixer work (I am using microphone boost)
  • test sounds play
  • the webcam works in “Personal Settings (Configure Desktop)”: Hardware > Multimedia > Phonon (test camera)
  • Pidgin and Empathy work with sound and video.
    (had to set this: gconftool-2 --set --type=string /system/gstreamer/0.10/default/audiosrc pulsesrc,
    without this setting it was set to alsasrc by default and Pidgin and Empathy didn’t work).

I installed Skype 2.2 (also tried 2.1) and tested the video camera in Skype. Result: doesn’t work.
I made a test call: I hear the voice of the lady answering the call, but my own voice is not recorded.
In Skype everything is set to use Pulseaudio.

I am at a total loss to understand what is going wrong here. Why does Skype not work, when everything else does??

I made this observation:
When an application records something, a “Capture stream” shows up in the KMix “Capture Streams” tab. For example, when I use arecord, “ALSA capture” shows up, while I record. When I make a call on Empathy, a capture stream shows up in the said tab.

When I make a Skype call, NO capture stream shows up, so obviously Skype is not capturing anything.

Help!!!

P.S.: I read this file thread:
Skype alternative
but since some of my friends are on Skype, it would be nice to use it.

#2

I forgot to mention:
I additionally installed pavucontrol.
If I use pavucontrol, then arecord and also the Skype-record show up in the Recording tab.
Confusing!

#3

On 08/28/2011 11:46 AM, jorgk3 wrote:
>
> Confusing!

did you use the hints here http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Skype
(i used that how-to and my Skype “just worked”)

–
DD Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobile” of operating systems!

#4

Yes, I read SDB:Skype - openSUSE

It states (quote): Skype 2.2 beta and openSUSE 11.4, there is no problems with PulseAudio.

Well, in my case there is a problem. The page doesn’t go much into troubleshooting.

The puzzling thing is that mic, sound and camera do work, just not in Skype.

#5

On 08/29/2011 12:36 AM, jorgk3 wrote:
>
> Yes, I read ‘SDB:Skype - openSUSE’ (http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Skype)

i now see that i was not clear enough…i was not asking if you had used
the troubleshooting info in that page, but rather i intended to ask:

did you follow the installation instructions on that page? carefully?

i ask that only because many (most?) who exactly follow those
“Preparation” and “Installing Skype” instructions find that their Skype
“just works”…and, since i can’t see in your initial posting that you
followed those instructions i wouldn’t want to start trying to ‘fix’
your problem…

of course, some folks who follow those instructions do have problems
with web cams, sound boards and Skype/sound setup options…but, there
is no sense in looking at those until we know Skype is correctly installed…

btw, i just noticed you are new to the openSUSE forum, so -=welcome=-
new poster…please tell us if you are also new to Linux, or . . .??
(such information is sometimes helpful in knowing how detailed to craft
the answers/advice/help/questions)…

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobile” of operating systems!

#6

Which “installation instructions” are you referring to? These?

===
Installing skype
Go to Download the latest version of Skype for Linux and download the openSUSE RPM from the openSUSE 11+ section.
If everything goes well, your web browser will start YaST to install this package.
When your web browser does not say that it can be opened with YaST (or with another package manager you are using as default), download the file and then open the file in your file browser by double clicking on it. YaST will be started to install this package.

Yes, I downloaded it and installed almost by itself. So yes, I carefully followed the instructions :wink:

I’m new to Linux, but I’ve been using various types of Unix since 1987. And yes, I do have rebuilt kernels, but that’s long long ago.

Can you offer me some real help? I mean, from my post you do see that I am aware of most of the stuff in the audio/video arena (arecord, aplay, alsamixer, the various, phonon, KMixer, pavucontrol).

#7

On 08/29/2011 09:16 AM, jorgk3 wrote:
>
> Which “installation instructions” are you referring to? These?
>
> ===
> Installing skype
> Go to ‘Download the latest version of Skype for Linux’
> (http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/choose/) and download the
> openSUSE RPM from the openSUSE 11+ section.
> If everything goes well, your web browser will start YaST to install
> this package.
> When your web browser does not say that it can be opened with YaST (or
> with another package manager you are using as default), download the
> file and then open the file in your file browser by double clicking on
> it. YaST will be started to install this package.
> ===

no, i am referring to those steps i specifically mentioned
(“Preparation”) because i thought maybe in your eagerness you may have
overlooked them…and, if you did there is no sense in trying to fix a
broken install by fiddling with arecord, aplay, alsamixer, the various,
phonon, KMixer, pavucontrol…no matter if you have 24 years of
experience or 240!

BEGIN QUOTE----------------------------

For 32-bit installation of openSUSE
You will need at least these packages before installing skype.


su -c 'zypper install libqt4 libqt4-x11 libqt4-dbus-1 libsigc++2 libpng12-0'

For 64-bit installation of openSUSE 11.4
You will need the corresponding *-32bit RPM packages, since skype is
only offered in 32-bit.


su -c 'zypper install libasound2-32bit xorg-x11-libXv-32bit
xorg-x11-libs-32bit libqt4-x11-32bit libpng12-0-32bit'

For 64-bit installation of openSUSE 11.3 and 11.2
You will need the corresponding *-32bit RPM packages, since skype is
only offered in 32-bit.


su -c 'zypper install libpng12-0-32bit libqt4-32bit libqt4-dbus-1-32bit
libqt4-x11-32bit libsigc++2-32bit xorg-x11-libXv-32bit libpulse0-32bit'

For 64-bit openSUSE-11.2
Package libqt4-x11-32bit is not available on the 11.2 installation
media; you will have to add the “openSuSE-11.2-Standard” repository:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/11.2/standard using
the YaST repository manager. Subsequently, starting YaST software
management and searching for “qt4-x11” will list the needed package
(libqt4-x11-32bit); select, install and continue as described below.

----------------------------END QUOTE

so tell me, have i offered you some REAL help yet?

and, since now see your long experience and gracious attitude, i’ll end
my attempts to help you with, bye. (someone else might be much more help
to you, i give up)

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobile” of operating systems!

#8

Hello. I appreciate your attempt to help me. Since you are Danish, I didn’t think, I could offend you all that quickly. You know that your German friends to your south are at times quite blunt.

Since you are asking about the REAL help. You are quite right, in my eagerness, I did overlook the preparation instructions. However, I would have thought that in a fresh install those common libraries should be present.

Anyway, I did what it said and here is the result (for a 32 bit installation):


su -c 'zypper install libqt4 libqt4-x11 libqt4-dbus-1 libsigc++2 libpng12-0'
Password: 
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
'libqt4-x11' is already installed.
No update candidate for 'libqt4-x11-4.7.3-208.1.i586'. The highest available version is already installed.
'libqt4' is already installed.
No update candidate for 'libqt4-4.7.3-208.1.i586'. The highest available version is already installed.
'libqt4-dbus-1' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
'libqt4' providing 'libqt4-dbus-1' is already installed.
'libpng12-0' is already installed.
No update candidate for 'libpng12-0-1.2.46-7.3.1.i586'. The highest available version is already installed.
'libsigc++2' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
'libsigc-2_0-0' providing 'libsigc++2' is already installed.
Resolving package dependencies...

Nothing to do.

So without wanting to offend again, no, so far it’s not been of help, despite your best intentions. Sorry.

#9

On 08/29/2011 01:16 PM, jorgk3 wrote:

> Hello. I appreciate your attempt to help me. Since you are Danish, I
> didn’t think, I could offend you all that quickly. You know that your
> German friends to your south are at times quite blunt.

and i can also, at times, be “quite blunt”…like:

i’m not Danish…
i doubt you are my friend…
i have many Danish friends who say they have no German friends…

other than that: i’m sorry i have been unhelpful and you are blunt.

but in parting, now that we have now finally discovered your Skype is
installed correctly i will hope for you that someone else can help you
trouble shoot the remaining problems…and i’ll give you four more things:

-make sure you have the update repo enabled and refreshed…

-Skype 2.2 works great for thousands of openSUSE users, so don’t give up…

-if “oldcpu” decides to try to help you with the sound problem, listen
to him as he is probably the best there is on sound, anywhere…and, try
not to be “blunt” with him, for he will back away quicker than i do.

-and, if you look on this page http://forums.opensuse.org/ you will find
that we have a couple of “Deutsch (German)” forums where you might be
more comfortable among blunt friends who will assume both Skype and your
system are correctly installed and set up…

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobile” of operating systems!

#10

Hmmm … not confusing if you are using both at the same time. Are you running arecord and Skype at the same time ??? Pulse audio does provide that capability to record from one mic to 2 different applications (if and only if you know what you are doing), or even to record from two different mics to two different applications (again if and only if you know what you are doing). Now I am new to pulse audio (as with KDE it comes only in openSUSE-11.4 and newer by default) and I am still on openSUSE-11.3, but I did manage to learn that tidbit in the brief tests I have done on an openSUSE-11.4 KDE4 test partition.

Logically, if the mic works outside of Skype, but not with Skype, the problem can be in one of three areas:

(a) your Skype install is bad, or
(b) your Skype configuration is bad for the mic, or
(c) your PC audio/hardware/configuration is not compatible with Skype.

I personally seriously doubt that the problem is " (c) " and hence I think you need to focus your efforts on investigating BOTH (a) and (b).

To check your Skype installation, please, what is the output of the command:


rpm -qa '*kype*'

Post here the output.

Can you also tell us a bit more about your PC hardware/software audio configuration? Please with PC connected to the Internet run the diagnostic script:


/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

and select the SHARE/UPLOAD option and then when it is complete it will give you a website-address/url where it has uploaded your hardware/software audio configuration. Please copy that URL and post it here. Do NOT,… I repeat, do NOT post the content of that script here. Only post the website-address/url it gives you that has your PC audio/hardware configuration. I know what I just typed will be intuitively obvious when you run the script, and I apologize for that, but you would be amazed at the number of users who struggle there in providing the proper script URL.

With the information that we have asked for, we may be able to provide some specific guidance.

#11

Does video work in Skype ? If it does not work, then what webcam driver are you using? In any case if your webcam video does not work Skype, can you (with your webcam plugged in) provide the output of running the command:


lsusb
#12

In ADDITION TO what I requested above, I have some more information request (in order to progress quicker on this - I leave the continent soon on vacation and it would be nice to solve this before I disappear) …

I note this quote:

So then since you also noted you are using pavucontrol, it would be most helpful if you provided a screen print of your applicable pavucontrol settings so we can see what have have selected and what you have NOT selected.

Please, with Skype running the test record, provide a screen print of the ‘recording tab’ being certain to have SHOW ‘all streams’ selected in pavucontrol’s recording tab. Also provide a screen print of the INPUT DEVICES tab being certain to have SHOW ‘all input devices’ selected, and please also provide a screen print of the CONFIGURATION tab being certain to have the USB mic (or other sound device mic selection) drop down available selections showing (so that we can see what you chose). You ‘may’ need to set the KDE screen print to a few second delay to capture the drop down menu selection.

Please post the screen prints on an appropriate image paste site. Fast, Free Image Hosting - ImageBam is one such site. Then post the URL where the screen prints are located here, giving a description here of any salient points.

and please be CLEAR as to what mic you are trying to use (internal ? external ? usb ? ) . That is incredibly important, else we could be barking up the wrong tree in our advice.

#13

Hello Oldcpu,

first your question.

I wasn’t running Skype and arecord at the same time. What I tried to say is this:
KMixer and pavucontrol both show recording streams.
So I do this: Start pavucontrol and KMixer at the same time. Go to the respective tabs. Then:
arecord -f cd test.wav
A recording stream shows up in both.
Using Skype making a test call, this recording stream only shows in pavucontrol, but not KMixer.
However, I just discovered that arecord without further arguments also only shows in pavucontrol but not KMixer.
So clearly not all recording streams show up in KMixer. But be that as it may.

Here the output you requested:
rpm -qa ‘kype’ gives:
skype-2.2.0.25-11.1.i586

Before I had 2.2.0.35 installed and that equally didn’t work. If you wish I will go back to this newer version with which I started.

The ALSA information was uploaded to here:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=a82e0544aedaa8483f18ce4a74c8a196191b891c

#14

Sorry, I overlooked the other posts. Here are more answers:

lsusb:
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 045e:0040 Microsoft Corp. Wheel Mouse Optical
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 046d:0928 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Express
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 04e8:3242 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd ML-1510 Laser Printer
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 04a5:20b0 Acer Peripherals Inc. (now BenQ Corp.) S2W 3300U/4300U

I’d like to mention that mouse, printer and scanner are working fine :wink:

You asked about the hardware: It’s a desktop machine.
Asus P4C800-E motherboard with a 3 GHz P4, 1.5 GB RAM, SATA-disk (four partitions, Windows, Windows, swap, Linux ext4), a RAID array on a Promise TX2300 card (works just fine), and two NVidia video cards.

The mic is an external mic plugged into the (pink) mic connector at the back. I hate to repeat myself. arecord, Pidgin and Empathy do work with sound and video so the mic is working in other applications.

Screen shot is coming in a tick.

#15

Screen shots:
www.jorgk.com/misc/conf.png
www.jorgk.com/misc/input.png
www.jorgk.com/misc/skype.png
www.jorgk.com/misc/skype1.png

#16

oops, you wanted to see the “all streams” option, here it is:
www.jorgk.com/misc/skype-all-streams.png

#17

Lets tackle your webcam in Skype first. I note this from the lsusb:

The vendor-id : device-id that I highlighted is most important. Lets make note of that, and then go to the openSUSE webcam HCL where you will note the more popular webcams use the uvc driver (the best) or the gspca driver (not IMHO as good webcams). If you look here per the HCL guidance you will note that the 046d:0928 is in fact a gspca webcam.

If you then look further down on the openSUSE webcam HCL wiki, you will note that some users have problems with GNU/Linux (and not just openSUSE) with this webcam, and to get it to work they need to preload a library. The command for your 32-bit openSUSE to do that is the following:


LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

and IF your Skype is a good functioning version of Skype, then that should work. Of course that assumes that you have v4l installed. Do you ? What is the output of:


rpm -qa '*v4l*'

and if v4l and v4l2 are not installed, you probably should install them. …

But … the above assumes a good Skype install … see my soon to follow post.

#18

What I find useful here, is not only the Skype version, but also from WHERE did you get the version of Skype from ? Based on the versioning, am I correct that you obtained it from here:


http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Lord_LT/openSUSE_11.4/

If so, then that should be a functioning packaged version. You could try removing your configuration files that are not fixed by such a re-install of skype. Do that when Skype is NOT running, by changing /home/your-user-name/.Skype to /home/your-user-name/.Skype-old and try launching Skype again. That will recreate same directory, hopefully with a better configuration.

You will need to go and reset up your configuration.

#19

Here goes:

rpm -qa ‘v4l’
libv4l1-0-0.6.4-9.1.i586
libv4l2-0-0.6.4-9.1.i586
libv4l-0.6.4-9.1.i586
libv4lconvert0-0.6.4-9.1.i586

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
libv4l2: error allocating conversion buffer

But when I test the video, it works!! Great. I assume we ignore the error message?

Do you have a magic fix for the mic as well?

#20

Indeed, I read another one of your posts and got Skype from Index of /repositories/home:/Lord_LT/openSUSE_11.4.

The newer version I downloaded directly from Skype.com.

I removed ~/.Skype and started again. It asked for the username and password again, as was to be expected.

I made the test call, I hear the friendly woman, but she doesn’t hear me, in other words, I don’t hear myself when the recording it played back to me.

Note: arecord/aplay still works. I always check, just paranoid.