Hello there,

I've just upgraded my Linux Skype version from 1.3.0.53 to 2.0.0.18. Unfortunately, I couldn't even see what my new skype looks like, because it crashes immediately after startup. A blank window shows up for a very short part of a second (there's no content in the window - just an empty frame by the window manager) and closes right after that.

Starting Skype in the console produces the message "Aborted" by the shell, meaning that the skype process is most likely getting a SIGABRT signal (which it doesn't handle correctly).

At first I thought that this is cause by my webcam (which is no good news, since video is the reason I\m upgrading in the first place), so I plugged the webcam out of the PC, and removed (modprobe -r) all kernel modules used by the webcam (the camera-specific module, misc v4l and usb-audio modules, etc). Starting skype again produces the same result.

Then I tried the usual trick - using an empty profile (mv ~/.Skype ~/.Skype.bak). This time it did work - skype started up normally. But I'd actually like to keep my profile with all chat histories, settings, etc, so it would be nice if Skype 2.0 would work with my old profile. Any idea what it doesn't like in the old profile? Could it be the fact that I skipped the 1.4 release, that causes the problem?

However, now sound doesn't work. I have a single onboard sound device and have never experiences problems with it. The previous Skype 1.3 also had (and still has) no problems using the device via ALSA. I tried selecting the device explicitly with the "hw:" and "plughw:" options in Skype - nothing changes. I have no clue as to what the problem is, the only thing it says is "Problems with audio device" in the calling window. No debug messages on the console, nothing in the kernel log.

Here are my technical details:

r035015:~# uname -a
Linux r035015 2.6.22-3-k7 #1 SMP Mon Oct 22 22:51:54 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux
r035015:~# cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.14 (Thu May 31 09:03:25 2007 UTC).
r035015:~# cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [V8237 ]: VIA8237 - VIA 8237
VIA 8237 with AD1888 at 0xe400, irq 19

Any ideas what causes those problems? I can somehow live with starting with a new empty profile, but those sound problems are really a K.O. criterium for Skype 2.0...


Thanks in advance,

Mike

also here it is crashing when using sound and video, and it is going even offline sudden and is disconnecting me from internet, not only with me it is hapen also with some other friends, when in middle of voice and video chatting it crashes on both sides, and also echo test is not working anymore, it makes lots of problems. I have the newest linux skype. Hope you can fix this problems. Cwe cannot use it untill it is fixed cause it makes also problems to the internet connection. with other soft phones is not such a problem.

What distros are you running? Also, do you have any sound daemons running? (ESound, Artsd, PulseAudio)

I'm running Debian lenny (testing). I'm using Xfce myself, but my girlfriend has another X session running on the same PC (on a different tty), and she's running KDE, presumably with Artsd running. However, that has never been a problem before. We both use(d) Skype 1.3 running two instances simultaneously under different user accounts, and neither one had any issues with artsd. They also shouldn't, since Skype 1.3 was configured to use ALSA directly, i.e. it should "go behind" artsd or any other daemons. And ALSA backend is the only "option" in 2.0 anyway, so...


Greets,

Mike