Skype stopped working

firozehh · June 13, 2008, 5:13am

Skype stopped working. If I try to launch from start menu nothing happens. I tried from terminal and got the message

“Segmentation fault”.

I have also tried as su and the message is:

“No protocol specified”.

I haven’t changed or install anything new except security updates. Uninstall and then install with no success. Any idea what could be the problem?

My system is: HP Pavilion DV 2500t with nVidia GeForce 8400M GS
OS: openSUSE 10.3(x86_64)

Chrysantine · June 13, 2008, 12:01pm

Could you tell us what Skype version it is, what package you installed it from (the name of the file) and the output of:

rpm -qa --last |head -n 10

This lists the last 10 updates (packages) you’ve installed on your system.

firozehh · June 13, 2008, 8:34pm

Thanks Chrysantine. I have downloaded this package form skype website:

skype-2.0.0.68-suse.i586.rpm

I have installed all required 32-bit packages as mentioned in ‘skype HOWTO’.

Here are the list last 10 updates:

skype-2.0.0.68-suse                           Wed 11 Jun 2008 09:50:33 PM EDT
gstreamer010-plugins-good-0.10.6-50.2         Wed 11 Jun 2008 01:24:30 PM EDT
yast2-sound-2.15.11-18                        Tue 10 Jun 2008 02:41:04 AM EDT
alsa-1.0.14-31.2                              Tue 10 Jun 2008 02:41:01 AM EDT
libvisual-plugins-0.4.0-112                   Tue 10 Jun 2008 02:40:52 AM EDT
libvisual-0.4.0-85                            Tue 10 Jun 2008 02:40:47 AM EDT
esound-0.2.38-17                              Tue 10 Jun 2008 02:40:44 AM EDT
alsa-utils-1.0.14-27                          Tue 10 Jun 2008 02:40:40 AM EDT
alsa-plugins-1.0.14-41                        Tue 10 Jun 2008 02:40:36 AM EDT
alsa-oss-32bit-1.0.14-23                      Tue 10 Jun 2008 02:40:33 AM EDT

user · June 14, 2008, 9:26am

Chrysantine wrote:
> Could you tell us what Skype version it is, what package you installed
> it from (the name of the file) and the output of:
>
> RPM -QA --LAST |HEAD -N 10
> This lists the last 10 updates (packages) you’ve installed on your
> system.
>
>

thanks for the magic (at the command line) incantation–i’ve saved it
for later, but your’s doesn’t work…

this one will:

rpm -qa --last | head -n 10

DenverD

Chrysantine · June 14, 2008, 9:52am

I think the NNTP gateway is acting up again - my original post has the command in lower case capital but it seems because I made the text bold it turned all the letters upcase for all NNTP clients.

It still shows them properly in lower case here on the web side.

user · June 14, 2008, 10:20am

Chrysantine wrote:
> I think the NNTP gateway is acting up again - my original post has the
> command in lower case capital but it seems because I made the text bold
> it turned all the letters upcase for all NNTP clients.
>
> It still shows them properly in lower case here on the web side.

ah…i hadn’t thought about that…

perhaps someone could tweak the forum website’s coding for those of us
using nntp…or maybe not use bold to highlight command line input…

DenverD

Chrysantine · June 14, 2008, 10:50am

It’s a bad habit from me - I tend to highlight commands as to seperate them the rest of the post so it’s easier for the reason to distinguish which part of the line is a command (Especially when dealing with new folks).

As a test : this is bolded lowercase text

–

As a reply to the original poster I cannot replicate this issue on 11 yet - perhaps it’s a problem with the ALSA patch that was released. Do you have any concurrent applications such as an MP3 player (Amarok / Banshee etc.) running while you’re trying to start Skype?

G0NZ0 · June 14, 2008, 2:31pm

Going back to the original problem (Skype): in case you do not want to mess up with the other recently installed RPMs (which i’m sure you do not want, also because they were security updates) i would try the following:

Unistall and install an EARLIER version of skype, which you can find here
https://developer.skype.com/Download/OldVersionsCopy
This is the exact version I personally have installed on all my computers and is working fine:
https://developer.skype.com/Download/OldVersionsCopy?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=skype-1.4.0.118-suse.i586.rpm
In case you dont wanna have a version slightly older, then i would try unistalling and compiling from source the current version, as opposed to using RPMs

**PS: **I tried updating one of my computer with the new version and its running fine. So here the problem must be in some screwed dependency, i think however that recompiling from source might give some clues in the error messages upon compilation

firozehh · June 15, 2008, 10:10am

Thanks a lot Chrysantine and G0NZ0. To answer Chrysantine’s question, no I was not playing any MP3 player. I have only Amarok installed by default.

I have installed older version of skype and it seems to be working fine. Though, I haven’t made any call yet. But I am sure it will work. I am not sure why skype-2.0 stopped working, may be because of the updates? Guess I need compile from source to find out!

G0NZ0 · June 15, 2008, 3:35pm

You can make free trial calls. Anyway i’m pretty sure it will work as the problem was the seg fault at the startup.
Quite weird indeed that the new version stopped working.
In case you decide to compile let us know the result, that’s an interesting issue and a good chance to learn!

firozehh · July 4, 2008, 5:04am

Finally found the cause of the problem. When I installed skype, according to ‘Skype HOWTO’ I copied the apparmor profile also. And that was the cause of all problems. For some reason skype doesn’t like it and stop working. Once I removed the apparmor profile its working fine.

Anyone has any idea how to keep skype running without removing the profile? Let us know. I read about apparmor issue in a thread ‘skype and apparmor’. Thanks guys for bring it up.