Skype HOWTO

From openSUSE

Whatever your thoughts are about open standards and open source (Skype is not open source software), there is no denial that Skype has managed to create a cross-platform program with superb sound quality and firewall traversal capabilities. It is also very easy to install in SUSE, thanks to Skype providing a RPM installation file for SUSE 10 and newer.

How to install:

You will need at least these packages before installing Skype.

zypper install libqt4 libqt4-x11 libqt4-dbus-1 libsigc++2

If you are running on a 64-bit platform, you will also need the *-32bit RPM packages, since Skype is a 32-bit application.

zypper install  libqt4-32bit libqt4-dbus-1-32bit libqt4-x11-32bit libsigc++2-32bit

Go to http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/choose/ and download the SUSE RPM from the OpenSUSE 10+ 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.

Alternatively, you can install the skype package by command line with the following prompt under root: rpm -Uvh ./skype-<version>.rpm

To make all the changes in your window manager menus available, you will have to log out and back in. However, you can type "skype" at the command prompt to get started with it right away.

In Gnome it will appear under Internet->More Applications in the menu. In KDE, Skype (installed from rpm for SuSE 9.0 and higher) appears under Internet -> More Programs.

Sign-in (or sign-up) and then make a test call to "echo123". Follow the instructions and it will record your voice and then play it back. Chances are that you will have to configure the microphone volume level. You do this through the Volume Control, available in Gnome at Multimedia->Volume Control->Volume Control.

If you are having problems with the sound device in skype after making some calls, you may want to try skype_dsp_hijacker+soundfix which has resolved the problem for some users with recent versions of skype and the sound device not being closed properly after completing a call.

Privacy / Security

A lot of people don't want to run Skype because it tries to collect data from your system which it shouldn't do. It tries to read your Mozilla profile for whatever reason.

To avoid such things you can use AppArmor to protect your system.

Copy this apparmor profile to your /etc/apparmor.d/ directory to jail skype.

Skype has to be installed as RPM to make this work.

Using high resolution with your web cam

By default, skype only supports video with resolutions up to 320x240. If you have a good web cam (e.g. from Logitech, e.g. UVC_Webcams) which can do much more for you, here's how to configure skype to make use of it.

After you configured your web camera for use with skype, open ~/.Skype/SKYPENAME/config.xml with a text editor. (Replace SKYPENAME with you skype login name, ~ is short for your home directory.)

Search for the <Video> section. It probably only contains <AutoSend>1</AutoSend>.

Add three lines, so your <Video> section looks as follows:

<Video>
 <AutoSend>1</AutoSend>
 <CaptureHeight>480</CaptureHeight>
 <CaptureWidth>640</CaptureWidth>
 <Fps>15</Fps>
</Video>

You can also set higher resolutions (800x600 or even 960x720) or higher frame rates if your camera supports that (and you have enough light to avoid getting completely noisy video). Note that the data rate and the CPU load increase and skype may scale back the resultion again.

Note for skype on Windows users: You need to edit the registry to achieve higher resolutions than the standard 320x240 with skype 3.x.

Troubleshooting

If you are behind a proxy

If you use Skype and are behind a proxy server or firewall, you may have problems connecting to the Skype network. Skype may not even start and will hang immediately.

Skype apparently reads the proxy settings from the Opera or Firefox configuration and reads the environment variables http_proxy and https_proxy.

These environment variables have the format:

http_proxy=myproxyname:myproxyport
https_proxy=myproxyname:myproxyport
http_user=myname
http_passwd=mypwd

export http_proxy https_proxy http_user http_passwd

Often myproxyport is 8080.

However, setting these does not always allow Skype to connect correctly. (At least it didn't work for me). Skype seems to hand on the first login, and does not allow you to go any further.

If this happens for you as well, you may need to set a default gateway for your system:

# route add default gw proxy.ip.address

Note that proxy.ip.address need not be an actual network gateway; Skype just needs this setting.

Windows Workaround

There is another workaround that can be done:

1) Log into Skype on a windows machine, using your Skype name and password, and setting the proxy options. You can also do this with WINE and the windows version of Skype if you are lucky enough not to have a Windows machine available

2) Copy the file "shared.xml" from the Windows machine or from WINE to the Linux Skype version, using a command something like:

cp ".wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/UserName/Application Data/Skype/shared.xml" ./.Skype/shared.xml

(you will have to check the path, especially the "UserName")

3) Start up Skype, and hopefully it will start

Opensuse 10.2: ALSA Microphone problem with some sound chips

Use commandline tools (as root) not gui tools to reset configuration and capure the microphone

alsaconfig

alsamixer

On some platforms (Dell D610 for example) you will also need to enable "capture" in kmix

i.e.

for completeness the other kmix settings are -

thanks to deltatux for this tip.

No microphone input to Skype

When you have checked that the sound system is working, both microphone and speakers and Skype, using the test call, does not play back your microphone input you should change the Sound In from Default device to another setting. This may solve this problem.

Skype conflicts with pulseaudio?

This article claims you need to disable pulseaudio to make sound capture (microphone) work with skype on openSUSE 11.1. I have not validated this.

COMMENT: Troubleshooting Skype Capture -- Success!

Skype capture failed on my Tecra A9 laptop running open SuSE 11.1. After countless hours attempting to debug the problem, I discovered the link below to Intel HDA. I then discovered that the device configuration file at "/etc/modprobe.d/sound" contained:

  alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
  alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

After adding the options line below, I restarted alsaaudio (rcalsasound restart). That did the trick!

  options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=0
  alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
  alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

--Mudrucker 05:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

After upgrading to openSuse 11.1, the key for me to getting Skype to work with PulseAudio was adding my user to the audio and various pulse* groups via Security and Users/User and Group Management in Yast.

Don't forget to log out and back in, so the group changes take effect.

--Sswaney 01:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm running 11.1 x64 and these didn't solve my problem. I did add myself to the pulse groups since even PulseAudio's site recommends that, but I did not remove pulseaudio or mess with alsaaudio settings. I installed alsa-plugins-pulse-32bit since Skype is 32-bit and running it from the terminal indicated it couldn't find a file libasound_module_pcm_pulse.so and now setting the "Sound Out" and "Ringing" to 'pulse' and the "Sound In" to my hw input solved my issues.

You will see errors static "E: shm.c: Invalid shared memory segment size" which is because of the 32-bit vs. 64-bit handling. Don't panic.

--Eazely 8 June 2009

See also

• SDB:Intel-HDA sound problems

External links

• How to install Skype VoIP client in openSUSE
• All help options on Skype web page
• Skype discussion forums for online help and more.
• Skype Sound and Audio Set-Up