Skype or Chromium ... I think

Geezer

Geezer

I only really use chromium for skype, and it has been working fairly well for some time now.

I just upgraded chromium from the ports to version 94.0.4606.81. I am not sure what version it was just before.

Now skype works ... mostly. Video works, I can see them and they can see me. They can hear me, but I cannot hear them.

Sound does work in chromium, I can play videos on youtube and listen to them. In fact in skype sound sort of works. When I phone someone, I get the skype-ish ringing tone. But as soon as it connects, I hear nothing. This is even so with a test call.

I don't know if this is a skype-for-web problem or a chromium problem. All I want to do is revert to the previous version of chromium.

I use the ports with synth, and have kept the ports up to date with git -C /usr/ports pull . I am currently on 2021Q4. I seem to feel that the version from 2021Q3 worked.

How can I get the port for chromium for 2021Q3?

Is there anyone else that uses skype, who has recently upgraded? And does it work for you?
 
Have a look at the excellent guide on Using Git to manage ports by ShelLuser :

ShelLuser said:
Now let's say for the sake of argument that we have a server which tracks quarterly, and we need to urgently re-configure ("customize") one of the packages. Now what?! I mean... sure: download ports collection, build port and then diving head first into dependency hell?! Nope!

Now we can resolve this problem very easily thanks to Git:
Code: 
peter@vps:/usr/ports $ git branch -r | grep 202.
origin/2020Q1
origin/2020Q2
origin/2020Q3
origin/2020Q4
origin/2021Q1
origin/2021Q2
See what I mean? For every quarterly release FreeBSD made sure to provide a branch. So all we have to do is to switch our Ports collection to the branch we need: # git switch 2021Q1, then we simply install our customized port (and eventually upgrade to the latest release).
Click to expand...
 
SirDice said:
Switch branches.
Click to expand...

Have done git -C /usr/ports switch 2021Q3 and then git -C /usr/ports pull gives me
Code: 
remote: Enumerating objects: 48, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (48/48), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (33/33), done.
remote: Total 33 (delta 23), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (33/33), 21.28 KiB | 369.00 KiB/s, done.
From https://git.FreeBSD.org/ports
   6bf0135b415e..d3db7630c797  main       -> origin/main
Already up to date.

How should I be switching branches? Or better still, can I merely change branch for one port (and dependencies)?
 
eternal_noob said:
I don't know if it's smart to use an outdated browser, securitywise. I'd fix the problem with the recent version of Chromium.
Click to expand...

I would prefer not to use chromium at all. But I will accept the moderate security issue and only use it for skype.
 
Geezer : Does the web cam work? Is yours built-in or USB?

I realize this is a bit of a tangent, but depending on how this conversation goes, I might do something similar myself.

Edit: have you tried Firefox or Konqueror for this?
 
 
SirDice said:
Switch branches.
Click to expand...

Switching branches seems to work going forwards, but not backwards. In the end, I created another dataset (/user/ports_previous) and did git clone https://git.FreeBSD.org/ports.git -b 2021Q3 /usr/ports_previous. That did it.

Unfortunately, after trying to build chromium-92.0.4515.159_1, I got
error: use of undeclared identifier 'hb_subset_input_set_retain_gids'; did you mean 'hb_subset_input_set_flags'?

I did go to my laptop, where I had locked the package for iridium a long time ago, and tried to run it now, and got
ld-elf.so.1: /usr/local/share/iridium/iridium: Undefined symbol "hb_subset_input_set_retain_gids"

Maybe it is just not possible to run an older version of chromium anymore.

astyle said:
Geezer : Does the web cam work? Is yours built-in or USB?

I realize this is a bit of a tangent, but depending on how this conversation goes, I might do something similar myself.

Edit: have you tried Firefox or Konqueror for this?
Click to expand...

Webcam works perfectly. Plug in USB.

Have tried firefox. Need to change the user-agent. But even so, strange things happen. Each party sees themselves not the person they are talking to.

Have not tried konqueror, and don't want to go down KDE dependency hell.

If you can get it working, [the_big] if [/the_big], then I would highly recommend it.

eternal_noob said:
English is not my mother tongue but i think "moderate" means something different.
Click to expand...

You seem pretty adept at English. Hope your German is as good.


Still baffled.
 
So far, no one has acknowledged the PR. They probably don't want to. Can of worms. Is the bug in chromium or skype? The maintainers might give this PR the elbow.


In the meantime, I have recompiled chromium, but changed the options from the default of SNDIO to the dreaded PULSEAUDIO.

Incredibly, that sort of fixed it ... badly. Sound and microphone both work, but with howling feedback. I can get rid of the feedback if I turn the microphone down so low that I cannot be heard. It would probably be alright with a headset. (Ain't got one, don't want one.)

I never got feedback before, when it was on sndio. Is that one of the differences between sndio and pulseaudio then, feedback? I had always assumed that the lack of feedback on a skype call was a function of skype itself. Trouble is, I get feedback even when I am not on a call with skype. The microphone is on all the time. All the [expurgated] bloody [/expurgated] time. Is that a pulseaudio thing?


Is there no one else here who uses skype - under Freebsd that is and not [shock-horror] windows [/shock-horror]? Do you have perennial problems?
 
Geezer said:
Is there no one else here who uses skype - under Freebsd that is and not [shock-horror] windows [/shock-horror]? Do you have perennial problems?
Click to expand...
I'm actually interested in getting Skype to work under FreeBSD - and Geezer , your posts suggest to me that it's possible. But for now, I'm just on the sidelines, gathering info, and watching others take the time to fight through the pitfalls and develop workarounds. I might take the plunge next year - if I don't have too much other stuff on my plate at that point.
 
Geezer said:
… no one has acknowledged the PR. …
Click to expand...

If you mean, no response from maintainers, it could be that none of the maintainers uses Skype for Web.

Or (more likely) other bugs are much higher priority; 258573 bugging many people is a show-stopper to some things.
 
astyle said:
I'm actually interested in getting Skype to work under FreeBSD ... I might take the plunge next year - if I don't have too much other stuff on my plate at that point.
Click to expand...

Dear astyle I recommend skype under Freebsd, and there is no reason to wait. While there may be a few issues occasionally, there are certainly fewer issues than using windows. When it works, it seems to work magically.

There is very little to do. Install www/chromium,or build from ports. There are only two options really, sndio or pulseaudio. You may want to try them both. I have got it working on both my laptop, with built in webcam and microphone, and desktop with plugin webcam and a different microphone plugged into the soundcard (as opposed to the microphone built into the webcam).

It takes a bit of messing around, and waiting a few hours for the build. Skype does seem to log itself off at random times, and there is always the uncertainty that new versions of chromium or skype will change things.

If you have people that you want to communicate with by skype, I recommend it.
 
MeowMan said:
I am sorry, but what is the difference between Skype and Chromium?
Click to expand...
? Skype is for video chat. Chromium is a browser on which Google's Chrome and Microsoft Edge are based. I agree, this thread's title is a bit confusing. If you get Skype going under FreeBSD, then the browser in which you run Skype doesn't really matter. However, at this time, it looks like Chromium on FreeBSD does a better job than others in getting along with Skype. Haven't tried that for myself yet, though.
 
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