Walking in Light With Christ - hip0's personal blog on System Administration, Free Software, Computer Security and Religion

Arrghh. After I've upgraded a couple of packages on my Debian unstable I've came across the
same old problem. Skype's sound input, output and ringing refused to work again.
It took me like 4 hours to resolve the problem!!!!! ARGHHHH.
It's the right time to say that skype is a complete diarrhia m*ther fucking bullshit!
I've tried evething. Like experimting with volume settings in:

1. /usr/bin/gnome-volume-control.gstreamer
2. /usr/bin/gnome-volume-control
3. /usr/bin/gnome-alsamixer
4. /usr/bin/aumix

the list goes on !! You name it. And everytime it was nothing. I've realised some of the updates mangled my /etc/pulse/daemon.conf.
Thus I had to add again default-fragments = 8 default-fragment-size-msec = 5 into it.
I've tried everything my ~/.asoundrc pcm.pulse { type pulse } ctl.pulse { type pulse } pcm.!default { type pulse } ctl.!default { type pulse } pcm.card0 { type hw card 0 } ctl.card0 { type hw card 0 } pcm.dsp0 { type plug slave.pcm "hw:0,0" }
Well that's not all the latest update of the lib32asound2-plugins Debian package is missing the pulseaudio required libraries
. Huh ?!
Anyways let's get back to business.
To make skype work I had to create the following script:

#!/bin/sh
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulse;
/usr/bin/linux32 /opt/Skype/skype_static-2.0.0.72/skype

in /usr/local/bin/skype
Next I had to execute:
amixer set 'Input Source' 'Internal Mic' and echo "amixer set 'Input Source' 'Internal Mic'" >> /etc/rc.local
And yes you need to have downloaded static version of skype 2.0.0.72 and put it in /opt/Skype/ directory.
Well if you're lucky. Hooray Skype might work again ? If God fix it for you

Yesterday I've tried plugin which provides widgetop to your Linux desktop through plugin
for Screenelts for which I've said a couple of words in one of my previous posts.
It's pretty straight forward to install.

1. Download the Dashboard plugin
2. Start screenlets
3. Choose Install and then select the previously downloaded archive file
4. Go to Screenlets Manager and activate the new plugin

Be prepared that on Debian the Dashboard would seem like it's not gonna work, a warning will pop-up alarming about a problem with Firefox. Well seems the plugin
dislikes iceweasel which basicly is the same thing in Debian.
However there is a button in which you force the plugin to work with icedove you can click.
That would force it to run with Iceweasel as far as I have seen it works with IceWeasel just as good as in plain Firefox.