HOWTO: >=skype-4.3 with alsa and minimal pulseaudio

[steveL]

[pablo_supertux]

I still having troubles with apulse. I tested it today with a debian 6 and it worked like a charm. So when I got home, I tried to install it on my gentoo but it's a mess with all the dependencies and blocks...

I have an amd64 system, so I guess I need to build some libs as 32bit.

I've read some of the problems encountered in the thread and did what it was suggested:

I put -abi_x86_32 in /etc/portage/profile/use.mask, uninstalled pulseaudio and made an emerge @preserved-rebuild to rebuild the libraries. At first it all went wrong, because emul-linux-x86-soundlibs conflicts with apulse. So I uninstalled emul-linux-x86-soundlibs and skype without pulseaudio and apulse were installed. after that a emerge @preserved-rebuild showed me errors again:

[mv]

Meanwhile it is possible to unmerge and mask all emul-linux-* packages: The tree contains now qt ebuilds which know abi_x86_32 (you have to put everything from dev-qt which you have into /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords, of course, currently).

Thus, the best way to switch to to abi_x86_32 completely is currently probably:

• emerge --unmerge $(eix -I# emul-linux)
  
• Switch to the new profile default/linux/amd64/13.0/no-emul-linux-x86
  This masks the emul-linux-* packages and unmasks the abi_x86_32 flag
  
• Add some packages to package.accept_keywords (see below)
  
• Add abi_x86_32 for a lot of packages to /etc/portage/package.use (see below)

An updated list for the last two points is here:

[neumond]

Installed skype with apulse via multilib (abi_x86_32). Experienced many bugs: skype hangs when someone calls me, it's only possible to speak if you start the call. The strangest thing was minecraft sigsegv. OpenAL application tries to open device with some bad name causing segmentation fault on standard C function strlen! Decided to install pulseaudio

[Levns]

I just made the whole migration from pulseaudio to apulse (finally !) and.. nope, Skype does not produce any sound.

Basically, I have a peculiar setup: a Loopback interface that all my ALSA applications use (hw:0,0) and I have a JACK server running which links the over side of this loopback interface (hw:0,1) to my actual audio cards (using zita-ajbridge, from the pro-audio overlay), both for input and output. This setup works well for all my ALSA applications.

However, even when running

[mv]

Just for anybody who follows this thread:
With apulse-0.1.4, it is not sufficient just to run "skype": I edited the first post correspondingly.
Also I gave a hint in the first post to some ~/.asoundrc which was recommended to me in another thread and which works fine for me.

@Levns: However, this is only a simple setup; I never tried to combine things with jack.

[Levns]

@mv: Well thanks for editing your first post. It had in fact nothing to do with my setup, I was just missing the LD_LIBRARY_PATH thing.

Seems to work now.

[mv]

Editing the first post again: Wrapper scripts are no longer needed with >=skype-4.3.0.37-r5.
Note, however, that if you run a pax kernel you should probably wait for the next release of the skype ebuild which hopefully contains a fix for the bug which was introduced by that latest change in the skype ebuild (or you must manually paxmark /opt/bin/skype-bin).

[sl70]

This is really driving me crazy. I went through the whole procedure and finally was able to build @world with no emu_x86 packages. But then when I went to build skype and acroread, no luck at all.

Typical pattern:

needs gtk+:2 with abi_x86_32 -- do it
needs cups with abi_x86_32 -- do it
now it needs gtk+:2 with -abi_x86_32 -- do it
now it needs cups with -abi_x86_32 -- do it
now it needs cups with abi_x86_32 -- I throw my hands in the air

I really need acroread and skype for work. Any help?

[v_andal]

I just created 32-bit chroot and install there applications that need emu_x86 packages. Maybe does not look as nice as abi_x86_32, but it works without much hassle.

[mv]

[sl70]

[mv]

[sl70]

Ah, I see! Thanks very much, MV.

[sl70]

OK, another problem. Thanks to the kind help of MV, I was able to emerge @world and acroread without emul libs, but now when I try to build skype I'm failing. skype requires qtdbus[abi_x86_32] (among others), which is only available for the testing version, ~qtdbus-4.8.6-r1. However, the dev-qt packages also require qtchooser, the only version of which, 0_p20140613, requires <dev-qt/qtdbus-4.8.6:4 (and all the other qt* less than 4.8.6).

Any idea how to resolve these blocks?

[mv]

[mani001]

Although I can install skype with apulse without a glitch, this is not working for me... I'm trying to use a USB Logitech webcam...which is not the problem since I'm able to record audio from Audacity. I also checked the volume and it's fine...Any suggestion?

Cheers

[depontius]

I began looking at this whole multilib/no-emul thing today, and find a serious blocker...

It appears to me that in order to get abi_x86_32 you need qtsql-4.8.6-r1.
But qtsql-4.8.6-r1 also requires virtual/mysql-5.6-r2, which in turn needs either dev-db/mydql-5.6+ or dev-db/mariadb-10.0+. Either of these has a horrible knock-on rippling through the rest of the installation. For instance, apr-util-1.5.3-r2 requires virtual/mysql-5.5, and there are others.

I guess I give up, for now. On bugzilla this is listed as "working as intended", but that's quite a big difference between qtsql-4.8.5 and qtsql-4.8.6-r1.
_________________
.sigs waste space and bandwidth

[mv]

[depontius]

[Naib]