Skype and Google-Talkplugin don't start, may be audio/video config problem

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Sunday 13 November 2011 16:06:47 Mario Storti wrote:
> I have Fedora 16, and my problem is that I can't run Skype neither
> Google-Talk Plugin for videoconferences. Skype simply crashes
> 
[snip]
> 
> And Google-Talk also doesn't start, it offers me to install the plugin
> for chat and video, but in fact I have it installed and I think that
> it is the latest version.
> Name        : google-talkplugin
> Version     : 2.1.6.0
> 
> The most amazing thing is that I can run OK both Skype and
> Google-Talkplugin UNDER OTHER USER IN THE SAME MACHINE (my user is
> `mstorti', and I created another `mstorti2' just to try things). Right
> now my workaround is to switch to user `mstorti2' each time I have a
> videoconf, but it is getting too annoying!! :-(

This should be a clue that there is some stale/incompatible config file in your 
home directory, from previous version of Fedora. You want to backup and 
delete/rename relevant config files, and let the software recreate them.

The key here is to figure out *which* config files are the problem.
 
> Also I can say that I used Skype/Google-Talkplugin without problems
> before, I think that something was messed up with some upgrade almost
> 6 months ago (perhaps when upgrading to Fedora 15 or near).

This means that there are no hardware/driver problems.

> I think it is a problem of configuration of either the camera of the
> audio, but
> 
> * I have audio OK, for instance in Amarok or Firefox/Youtube
> * I can record audio in Audacity
> * I test my camera in System Settings -> Multimedia -> Phonon -> Video
>     Recording and it seems OK.
> 
> The only conflict that I note is that when I start a video on YouTube
> I can't hear at the sometime music from Amarok for instance. (It's
> probably useless anyway, but I report this because normally I could to
> that before all this problem started).

This is *not* proper behavior. Pulseaudio should mix audio signals from all 
sources. You *are* using pulseaudio, right?
 
> I am sometimes tempted to do a fresh install of Fedora from scratch,
> but I'm somewhat lazy because I have a lot of packages locally
> installed (I'm using this system since 2007) and I'm skeptic that it
> will help.

If just changing the user helps, the complete fresh reinstall will definitely 
eliminate the problem. But I think it's an overkill. You just want to recreate 
your local user's config files, that's all.

HTH, :-)
Marko