I have multiple skype accounts with each a skype in numbers and a voicemail. I would like to service them all at the same time. That is I would like to open a skype session/instance for each account. I have seen posts where users used the command-line to initiate several skype sessions. The suggestion was to just use (... ./skype & ) Though this is not working for me. The error message says that already one instance is running ("You have already another copy of Skype running." and on the command-line I get: "2006-05-08 11:08:20.836 Skype[17231] CFLog (99): CFMessagePortCreateLocal(): failed to name Mach port (com.skype.skype.ServiceProvider)"). I use Mac OS X 10.4.6. I assume one would need additionally to add some king of port match.

Has anyone any experience here?

I run Skype in the background with different users. You can hear the users coming through, strangely. I have the background accounts forward to the foreground account. It works.

What I've done to run multiple copies of Skype (Mac) on the same computer is to do this:

1. Create another user on the mac.
2. Load up Terminal
3. Type 'su - USERNAME' (where USERNAME is the shortname of the new user)
4. Type ./Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype
5. Voila!

Keep in mind, all settings for that instance are store in the other username's folder/home directory and it will not be able to send files from your home directory.

Hope this helps?

Ryan.

[quote=ryanhunt]1. Create another user on the mac.
2. Load up Terminal
3. Type 'su - USERNAME' (where USERNAME is the shortname of the new user)[/quote]

That's great! Thanks for that tip. Handy for "fast user" type switching within the same user session

Gotta love the power of unix underneath os x.

Ug. I have Skype running in two users, but I have no clue what using the Unix terminal and typing 'su' etc. does. How is that different than just running Skype on two users at the same time?

[quote=relentlesscactus]Ug. I have Skype running in two users, but I have no clue what using the Unix terminal and typing 'su' etc. does. How is that different than just running Skype on two users at the same time?[/quote]

The difference is that you can run the two versions without having to use 'Fast User Switching'.

The UNIX is the 'heart' of Mac OS X, so Terminal lets you control it at this low level. If you don't know what it all does, nevermind - if you simply run the commands as I've suggested it'll allow you to run two (or more) Skype's at once.

ryanhunt--

You have no idea what great news this is for me. This would save me a great deal of trouble.

However, I would be very appreciative if you could answer a few questions for me. I am very leery of running something at the Unix level when I am only mildly familiar with it.

1) Let's say I don't like it. What do I put into Terminal to eliminate just one of the Skype's.

2) How does this "play" in real terms? If you are running "Two Skypes", what does this look like? Are there two Skype icons in the dock?

3) Does Skype keep the two straight? In other words, does it keep the contacts, preferences, etc. clearly separate and not cross over?

I don't want to jump off the diving board until I can clearly see there' water in the pool.

Thanks,

--Alan C. Miller, Davis, CA, USA

Really, I'd appreciate some more information on this. Can you answer my questions in the previous post?

Well, I've got no answers for you, because I haven't tried it. I can make guesses, and I'll most likely be correct, but why not go ahead and play with it and see what it does? At the worst, you'll simply have to reboot and delete a user to get rid of the changes you made. And, you probably won't even have to reboot. Just close out the Terminal Window. Don't be afraid of the command line, there's nothing dangerous in the commands that ryanhunt gave.

su means to Switch User. This does not do it for your entire session, just for the particular Terminal window that you're inside of. The "-" is something a little tricky that I won't bore you with, but in this case, it's important. Then the next line (which for the record is incorrect, there is no "." at the front, it should start with /Applications) is actually what is run when you run Skype from the dock.

If you do try it, I'd love for you to post the answers to your questions here. Shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to test out.

[quote=relentlesscactus]Really, I'd appreciate some more information on this. Can you answer my questions in the previous post?[/quote]

Me too!

OK, I tried it as best I knew how. The good news is my computer didn't crash, and neither did Skype. The bad news is it didn't work. I didn't know when and whether to press return, and certain steps were obviously left out of the instructions. When I was done, a window came up and said, "You have another copy of Skype running." Obviously, I did something wrong, as having another copy running was the whole idea. Here's a copy of my Terminal text. Perhaps someone who knows Unix can see what step I did wrong. I no nothing about this, so I'm typing blind. The short username I created was 'commonarea'.

Welcome to Darwin!
[TESTs-Computer:~] acm% su - commonarea
Password:
TESTs-Computer:~ commonarea$ /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype
JAR: Initialize [inSelf, name] : 20060480 Skype
JAR: kAudioHardwarePropertyProcessIsMaster err theSize 0 4
JAR: kAudioHardwarePropertyProcessIsMaster err outData 0 0
cannot connect to jack server
cannot connect to default JACK server
JAR: jack server not running?
JAR: Teardown [inSelf, name] : 20060480 Skype
JAR: Teardown : AudioHardwareStreamsDied
JAR: error code : kAudioHardwareNoError
JAR: Teardown : no connection to HAL
TESTs-Computer:~ commonarea$

OK, I found the cause - I *did* already have Skype open in the other user, the commonarea. Interesting, both are running and appear, and both are in the dock. They are not interfering with each other, and what's interesting is I closed the other user and it still works!

Now the downside: I have to keep the Terminal open, and each time I open the second version I have to type the whole "/Applications . . ." line again. Is there a way to automate this? Also, my primary Skype crashed, as it does all the freakin' time, and when I restarted it, nothing happened, because it saw the secondary Skype already open. So I had to close the seondary version in order to open the primary, then go to terminal and type in the line again to open the secondary. Ug.

Is there a way to automate the opening of the terminal and secondary Skype as you would an application, upon start of the primary user?

--acm

[quote=relentlesscactus]OK, I found the cause - I *did* already have Skype open in the other user, the commonarea. Interesting, both are running and appear, and both are in the dock. They are not interfering with each other, and what's interesting is I closed the other user and it still works!

Now the downside: I have to keep the Terminal open, and each time I open the second version I have to type the whole "/Applications . . ." line again. Is there a way to automate this? Also, my primary Skype crashed, as it does all the freakin' time, and when I restarted it, nothing happened, because it saw the secondary Skype already open. So I had to close the seondary version in order to open the primary, then go to terminal and type in the line again to open the secondary. Ug.

Is there a way to automate the opening of the terminal and secondary Skype as you would an application, upon start of the primary user?

--acm[/quote]

That's great to hear. To be able to keep the second one open after closing the window, you have to change the line where to actually start Skype (after the su command)

Instead, do the following:

nohup /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype &

The word nohup and the & are new. nohup literally mean "no hangup" Basically, when a program normally ends, it send a special signal to the programs running inside of it (in this case Skype inside of Terminal) called the hangup signal. And, normally the programs then stop themselves. nohup is a special little program that "eats" the hangup signal, so Skype never sees it. Since Skype never sees it, it never quits (from the closing of the Terminal.)

The & says to run the program in the backgroud. So, the terminal will come back to the prompt right after starting Skype. Then, you can log out whenever you want. To log out, you can either type in exit, or press Control D. You will have to do this twice, once to exit the su session, and again to exit the Terminal program itself.

I'll write up how to get this going automatically later. I know how it's done from the Terminal window, but I have to figure out how to get it to work from the login. Plus, I've got a date with the wife and have to get ready.

Chances that not having it exit is going to keep you happy for a few days though.

DuckHead--

Thanks. Haven't tried it yet but it sounds promising. Normally, typing this in wouldn't be a problem, but on a Mac, at least my Mac, Skype is by far the most unstable application I have. It crashes if I look at it wrong. So I keep having to restart it. I was hoping I could click on the icon in the dock for the secondary Skype to restart it, but the icon seems to go dead once the program crashes. So a start at login and a way to restart either Skype is appreciated. Would there also be a way to start it from the dock icon, and could one change the icon picture (do I just need to change the icon in the secondary user?--is that what's happening here, it is literally running the 2ndary user version of Skype 'inside' of the primary user?--I'm not totally clear what I am playing with here.)

I appreciate all who are taking the time to help with this.

--relentlesscactus

Actually, it's running as a completely different Unix level user (Mac OSX is really Unix under all of the shiny bits). But, it just happens to display itself on your screen. Unix can do odd things like that. I don't think you can attach a secondary emblen to it, but like I say, I'll need to play with things a bit, and my time is already allocated for the weekend.

I have to say that I'm intrigued by what your wanting to do, and somewhat annoyed that I don't know how to do it. Luckily, I like annoyances like that, because it lets me learn stuff.

Did you get a chance to make my last change? Here's something else you can do. The su command can run a command for you automatically. You simply do something like this:

su - commonarea -c "nohup /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype " && exit

That's all on one line, for the record.

This should ask for commonarea's password, start Skype and exit the terminal session.

The next thing we'll discuss is how to automate this a little bit, by just giving you one thing to click on. Then, I'll tell you about how to get it working for you w/o a password. Both of those steps are going to require a little additional Unix knowledge though. Then, I'll work on changing the emblem and trying to get it to work from the Docl.

Duckhead--

I hope you are still out there.

I finally got to use this and both the new things work. I can run skype after quitting the terminal.

Now what would be great would be:
1) Have the command saved so I can retrieve it.
2) Have it run automatically (even better)
I almost had the above messing around, but I don't quite know enough yet . . .
3) Not have to type in password.
4) Have the Terminal close itself?

Any help appreciated . . .

I am, but hadn't heard from you in a while. I'll post an update shortly with what's left. How did you do items 1-2? If you can give me what you're using now, that would be helpful.

I didn't really. I was just trying to figure out the Terminal window, but I don't know enough about Unix to really get anywhere. I was hoping to find a way to save the command and retrieve it.

No problem. The issue is that the next piece gets a little hairy. We're going to be editing files, and doing some command line stuff. Do you know anyone with Unix wizardry that can help you out?

Basically, to save the command you need to put it in a file. Just create a normal file in TextEdit, and save it in your home directory. I'll use the name skype2, but you can call it whatever you like. That file will have the following content:

==========================
#!/bin/bash

su - commonarea -c "nohup /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype "
exit
==========================

Take the pieces between the ===========, but not the ======== themselves. You should recognize everything but the first line. That's a special command in Unix (called the she-bang) whereby a file can tell the OS what program to use to run it. Weird, eh?

Now, this file has the proper contents that you need to click on it and run. But, we have to set the file permissions. To fix that open a Terminal window and type in "chmod u+x skype2" substitute skype2 for whatever you call your script. That makes the script executable by it's owner. I think you can also use do this with Finder, and the Get Info command. I know it works from Terminal though.

Now, test it by typing in ./skype2 in Terminal. It should ask you for the password for the commonarea user, start Skype, and put you back at the terminal prompt. If it doesn't let me know and I'll figure out what I did wrong. At this point you can exit Terminal.

If that works, you can simply click on it from Finder, or create an alias on your Desktop. it should start Terminal, ask for commonarea's password, start Skype, and close Terminal. You can probably have it start on login also, but I don't know how to do that. Let me know if that doesn't work.

That should take care of your #1,2, and 3. The last piece is the passwordless start. That can be accomplished by a facility called sudo,but I'll have to test on my Mac first. I'll get back to you on that later.

Thanks. It'll be a little while before I take the next step. I have a Unix friend, but he is not close by. One more thing, can the Terminal close itself as the last step?

Actually, you could probably grant him access to your box over SSH. I would offer to do it for you, but you should definitely not trust me with root access to your box. Does the Terminal not close itself after doing what I have above?

thanks for the dialogue. I have been struggling to do the same thing: multiple user tabs/windows open at the same time under tiger.
1. I set up the skype2 text file, saved it in my home directory, ran the chmod command, and then attempted to run the script from terminal. No obvious action happened. My other skype window remained open, but no second window opened, and no password appeared.
2. I went back and tried using the
su - commonarea -c "nohup /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype " && exit
. I entered my usual user password, and even tried the root pw, and it always gave the response of:
su: Sorry.


=========
progress, I think. I used a second computer system user name, and when prompted, used the pw for that user. Result:
su: no directory.

Thanks.
intlvjg


I, too, have multiple projects which I want to keep apart from each other by using multiple usernames. And, I would like to be able to switch between tabs or even have a split window to show the simultaneous actions. Like Adium, which I love using for multiple accounts at the same time. Adium is so well done that it should be an example of what multitasking is all about.
========

Ok. it worked. Thanks.
I had to log in to the second user on the mac, launch skype, agree to user agreement, and get to an open window with contacts. Then, when I switched back to my main mac user account, and ran the terminal script, it worked. I now have two skype windows open on my desktop.
this is really good. now, the next step is how to automate this sequence. It is cumbersome to have to wait for a second user to launch on the mac.
One skype icon on the dock, one skype startup, but with multiple skyper userwindows open. Or, better yet, multiple users within a single skype window. Thanks, again. now, it's time for other work.

This all assumes that you have a user named commonarea, and they have a Skype account. You may change the commonarea user if you're using a different username. If that's all setup, you should enter commonarea's password, not your own.

Okay, to summon up (I tried this and it works):

• Create a user account in System Preferences with short user name, for example , USER2.
  
• Create a new plain text document containing the code duckhead92 wrote above:
  
  CODE
  #!/bin/bash
  
  su - USER2 -c "nohup /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype "
  exit
  Note that USER2 is the name of the newly created user in step 1 and that the path should match the path of your Skype's location
  
• Save the document some place.
  
• Open up Terminal and type
  
  CODE
  chmod u+x
  Add a space at the end of that line and drop the doc you created in step to on your Terminal window. It should append the path automatically. Press enter/return.
  
• Now go back to Finder and control-click the document. Choose "Open With…" while pressing the option key (It'll change it to "Always Open With…") and select Terminal (or iTerm or what else) so whenever you double-click it it'll open in Terminal.

Accesorize!
Copy/paste Skype's icon from Skype's Get Info window to the script's Get Info window.

Btw, I got keychain error when launching it. Maybe I need to login as the new user at least once to suppress the alert.

This is excellent news if it works, thanks to everyone for their efforts, I can't wait to get home and try it.

One thing I was thinking was whether it might cause problems having 2 instances of Skype running over the same incoming port number on the same machine. I currently run Skype on two different machines on my home network, and have found the best way is to set the preferences of each to use different port numbers - e.g. 54001, 54002 and then port-forward each port to the different machines.

Now you should also be able to do this with two instances running on two user accounts by opening up Skype under each user and setting the prefs accordingly, forwarding both ports to that machine on your router, and opening up both those ports on that machines firewall.

Or maybe it "just works" without all this :-) I'll try it later.... Regards, Ben

The method works great when you type via the terminal, but I wasn't able to fully automate it, the problem seemingly being that of needing to enter the 2nd user's password during the shell/terminal session.

Coming at it from a slightly different route, that of using AppleScript, I came across two great scripts written by Andreas Schuderer, designed to launch applications under a different user:

"Peek-o-Matic" and "Launch as User"

The first is probably most useful, as it remembers the application you want to launch, and the user you want to run it under. The only aspect lacking for a 100% automated solution is the need to type the *admin* password (not the 2nd User password) when you run the script. But otherwise it works very nicely indeed.

On another note, I used the "double ports" method described in my last post... not sure if it was necessary... but it works fine and I can make and receive calls from either account.

Regards,

Ben

What I did:

Installed Skype for MacOSX with Account1

Installed Parallels with WINXP, installed Skype for Win with Account2

Calling in both directions works...

occamsrazor: Thank you! Launch-As-User and Peek-O-Matic work perfectly!

For anybody who wants multiple instances of Skype working simultaneously on Mac - these two little apps work wonders! I've even tried calling from both at the same time and it works. The difference between the two is that Peek-O-Matic kind of locks into Skype, while Launch-As-User seems to be a vehicle through which you can launch Skype each time ( I gather ).

Anyways - as far as I'm concerned it's gotta be safer than messing with Terminal.

Here's the solution

For all you out there who wanted to have multiple skype on your screen this is the real solution !!! It works very nice and convinient.

once we get this Software life is just easy. We can login and use to Multiple sype account simultaneously now.

I am really glad to use his services... and paying $10.00 as donation to this software is just nothing as compared to the trouble we face.

Please visit

www.freewebs.com/davidcartnor/softwares.htm

for more details

Thanks
The Master

Did you actually read this thread before posting?

What you offer is NOT even compatible with Mac

Stop spamming the Mac forum and read before you post.

http://forum.skype.com/index.php?act=boardrules

Ryan,

Just tried that and got:

No such file or directory

I even copied and pasted to make sure and yes, Skype is stored in my applications folder. Does this work with Leopard?

Eric

Sorry,
i also need to have two accounts of skype on the same computer and I read all your posts but i didn't understand much. I am a new user of mac and not very familiar with it. Isn't there a way to have two accounts on the same user? Isn't there a programm for mac like the one for windows that permits to open more accounts without creating antother user on the computer?
Thank you in advance to whom can help me.

No one can help me? Please!!!!!

Short answer: on a Mac, you can only access one account at a time.

Ryans command does work! you just need to drop the "."

The advice from Skype support is
to open up another skype instance (mac os x) using the terminal command suggested:

1. Create another user on the mac.
2. Open up Terminal
3. Type 'su - USERNAME' (where USERNAME is the shortname of the new user)
4. Type 'open /Applications/Skype.app'
5. The second Skype instance should appear.


.... didn't work..(well it just opened up your current accounts skype app minus automatic login - or nothing if you are already logged in.

Ryan on this thread suggested:

1. Create another user on the mac.
2. Load up Terminal
3. Type 'su - USERNAME' (where USERNAME is the shortname of the new user)
4. Type ./Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype
5. Voila!

In step 4 remove the "." and it does work!

Is there any explanation for this?

Really want to know why!

There is no automation available just cut "n" paste into a sticky this:

/Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype to use again and again. Also I found you need a new terminal window for each additional user you want to login.

..now paying for skype out you need multiple paypal accounts.....

This is a temporary solution only!

Would anyone be so kind as to start at the beginning and set up a new user account on my Mac? I keep going in circles -- I go to Skype and my only option is to sign in as my old user name. Am I missing something obvious?

wouldn't it all be simpler and more useful if skype just enabled multiple log ins on the same desktop software... is this in the pipes?

Hi there... I'm trying to run that terminal command (using OSX 10.5.5) and get:

-bash: ./Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype: No such file or directory

This is after I "su" as my secondary user (shortname is "skype"). Any ideas?

I did it step by step in leopard, but it's not happening anything
-second try: on the terminal appear this
-bash: /Users/mainuser/Desktop/multiskype.txt: Permission denied