Microphones and Skype on Ubuntu 7.10

I wrote a post a while back about getting Microphones and Skype working in Ubuntu. This has been one of my most viewed posts, and as Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) is about to be released, I thought I would update my previous post.

Turning on the Microphone
Getting the microphone working in Ubuntu 7.10, was really easy, I did the following:

• Plugged the Microphone in.
• Double clicked on the volume icon in the panel.
• Clicked Edit then, Preferences.
• Ticked the Microphone, Mic boost, and Capture boxes.
• Once they were ticked a Recording/Capture tab and a Switches/Options tab appeared in the volume control panel.
• I went through each volume setting and made sure nothing was turned down or muted.
• In the Switches/Options tab select Mic Boost.

Done, the microphone worked just fine, I tested the Mic using the Sound Recorder tool found in: Applications -> Sound and Video -> Sound Recorder

Installing Skype

• Add the Skype repository (If you don't know how to add repositories please see: Repositories/Ubuntu) deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free
• Reloaded or updated the package information
• Install Skype: # sudo apt-get install skype

Security and Skype
I no longer have the need to use Skype, however there is a security problem with Skype running on Linux, for more information please see: http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=95261

I suggest using AppArmor, (which is now a default application on Ubuntu 7.10) to create a security profile for Skype.

Microphones & Skype on Ubuntu

Today I installed Skype in Ubuntu 7.04. There can be a number of problems running Skype in Ubuntu. Yet my biggest concern was getting my microphone working.

Microphone Troubleshooting
After doing an Internet search I found the following things to try:

A) The microphone capture is turn off by default to turn it on:

1. Double click the volume icon on the panel.
2. Now click Edit, Preferences.
3. You then need to make sure Microphone, Mic boost, and Capture are ticked.
4. Now there should be a Recording/Capture tab in volume control panel.
5. Go through each volume setting and make sure nothing is turned down or muted.
6. In the Switches/Options tab make sure you select the Microphone as the input source.

B) Edit /etc/esound/esd.conf to look like this:
[esd]
auto_spawn=1
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 1
spawn_wait_ms=100
# default options are used in spawned and non-spawned mode
default_options=

C) Restart alsa-utils:
# sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart

D) If all of the above fail you can try installing the new version of the alsa drivers. This is the only thing that worked for me:
# wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.14.tar.bz2
# tar -xjf alsa-driver-1.0.14.tar.bz2
# cd alsa-driver-1.0.14
# ./configure
# sudo make
# sudo make install

If all of these things fail you can visit: Ubuntu Forums.

For more info please see: Zero-Sum: Ubuntu Microphone Problems and solutions, and DebuggingSoundProblems

Installing Skype

I installed Skype from the Skype Repository

1. Add the Skype repository*: deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free
2. Reload or update the package information
3. Install Skype: # sudo apt-get install skype

Once Skype was installed I went into the options and played around with the sound device settings until they worked. Now I have Skype running in Ubuntu.

If you have problems running Skype Please see the Ubuntu community Skype page. If you need help adding a repository then please see: Repositories/Ubuntu.

**Edit 29/10/07
Update: I've written a new post called: Microphones and Skype on Ubuntu 7.10.

Setting up the Sound card in FreeBSD

Setting up the sound card in FreeBSD
System:

• This howto is for FreeBSD and FreeBSD based systems.

Prerequisites:

• root access to the system
• A text editor (I will use vi for this tutorial)

As FreeBSD is a server operating system things like sound are not configured to work out of the box. Yet getting sound working is a very simple task once you know how.

Step one:
Firstly you need to find out what driver you need to use with your sound card, (If you already know this you can move onto Step two). This step is not as scary as it sounds.

First try to load the snd_driver module, This module loads all of the most common sound device drivers at once:
# kldload snd_driver

You can now easily see which driver to use, by using the following command:
# cat /dev/sndstat
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm)
Installed devices:
pcm0: at io 0xd800, 0xdc80 irq 5 bufsz 16384
kld snd_ich (1p/2r/0v channels duplex default)

The output will vary depending on your system. Yet from the above output we can see that snd_ich is the driver needed.

*Note if you did not get a response you can do a couple of other things:

1. You could look at the FreeBSD 6.1 Hardware Notes, or the FreeBSD 5.5 Hardware notes to find out if your card is supported.
2. Investigate the use of another sound system e.g. OSS (Open Sound System).

If anyone has any other suggestions please let me know.

Step two:
Now that we know which sound driver to use you can load that exact sound driver every time you boot by adding it to your /boot/loader.conf file. You do this by adding a line like this:
snd_YourDriverName_load="YES"
an example using the above driver would be:
# vi /boot/loader.conf
add:
snd_ich_load="YES"

For more information please see: FreeBSD Handbook - Setting up sound and snd(4) man page.

Exaile (Media Player) on Ubuntu

I have been looking around for a while for a good OpenSource media player. The only one I found that even came close to what I wanted was AmaroK, Yet this is written for KDE, and I run Gnome. Anyway after looking around for a while I stumbled across Exaile at Gnome files.
This is a really nice media player, it is very simular to AmaroK, yet it feels lighter to run, and it's for GTK+.

"It incorporates many of the cool things from AmaroK (and other media players) like automatic fetching of album art, handling of large libraries, lyrics fetching, artist/album information via the wikipedia, last.fm support, optional iPod support" Exaile

To install Exaile in Ubuntu (Edgy) is really easy:
Download the Edgy version from here: exaile_0.2.5b_i386.deb

*Note If you have another OS other than Ubuntu Edgy, then see the download page: Download

Now open the directory in which you downloaded the .deb file.
Then click on the .deb file it will open GDebi package installer, and click Install.
This program will get the needed dependencies as well as install Exaile, very handy.