Skype tell me that to deal with the problem (above) signing in, I should DELETE files ~/.Skype/shared.xml AND ~/Skype/skypename/config.xml in the directories. Can anyone tell me how I , a newbie, should go about this please? AS I have not done anything like this before on LINUX 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)... Douglas Nixon

Hi, I don't use any graphical filebrowser so while you can do it with that, I don't know how, but you can otherwise open a terminal, the command to remove a file is rm, so you can type rm ~/.Skype/shared.xml, the 'skypename' part in the filename is a subdirectory with your sign-in skype username, you can type ls ~/.Skype and you'll see the contents of the directory, after that just replace 'skypename' with your actual skype name, and do the same as you did for shared.xml

However, if skype says it can't sign in, the chances are that another skype process is already running; you can type "ps aux" (without the primes) to list all processes running, and check if you see several Skype versions running, only one skype (the first one you started) will actually be logged in. If you run gnome then in the top right corner of the screen there are small icons for certain programs that are running, and if you get the message that you can't sign in, you will most likely see several skype icons, the first will be coloured and the others will be grey (because they can't connect), if you click on those icons you'll "bring up" skype again, right click and select "quit", and you'll shut them down. No need to keep several skype processes running concurrently (:

Hope this helps.

Create a new user restart the system and login again.
If this works, than login again as the origine.
Open a console
cd ./Skype
rm share.xml
logout and try again
maybe you have to remove also files *.lock
Hope this helps
Paul7

Thank you for taking the time to reply to mine. I will try that, Grifter. Best wishes to you & yours


Thank you very much indeed Paul7 for taking the time to reply to my query. I hope to have Skype running soon. Best wishes to you & yours.

These instructions didn't work for me. =(

The answer is:

The simple way: rm -rf ~/.Skype

The way to keep your configuration and chat histories:

1) Make a new user and log in with it to verify that Skype is working, and then log out and quit Skype

2) synchronize the contents of the broken profile overtop of this other profile ('broken' and 'working' will be the usernames of the broken/working profiles).

This command will do:

rsync -av ~/.Skype/old-broken ~/.Skype/new-working

3) Log in with the new-working account and verify that your contact list is there and you have access to your chat histories.

If successful...

3a) sync your new-working overtop of your old-broken

rsync -av ~/.Skype/new-working ~/.Skype/old-broken

3b) delete your temporary user

rm -rf ~/.Skype/new-working

and now you can continue to use your original profile.

I know of no way to delete the user which you created on Skype.

Instead of the complicated solutions to backup directory, you can alternative simply start Skype using a different data directory.

To do this, run:

skype --dbpath=~/.Skype-test

or some other directory name instead of .Skype

Andy.

As it turns out, this is a permissions problem.

If the computer has its power kicked out from under it, Skype will leave some files hanging around. These are the lock files which are confusing it when it starts up.

But it doesn't have permission to remove those lock files.

(as root) I did a simple command, and it fixed this problem.

chown user:group -R ~/.Skype

'user' and 'group' being appropriate for your own situation..