Sunday, December 20, 2009

Make Skype Video Work In Ubuntu

When I tried to use my webcam in skype all I was getting was garbled video. Other programs like cheese worked with the video just fine.


So, I set out to find the answer on Skype forums. Here's where I found the answer.

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-997807.html

#1. Run "LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype" at the command line and test the video in Skype again.

(If that gives you an error, you may need this instead: LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype)

#2. Create a new file in your home directory called skype. (/home/user/skype)

#3. Edit the file skype and put the command from #1 in it.

#4. Run "chmod +x skype" in order for the script to be executable.

#5. Edit the skype launcher and change the command to /home/user/skype. Substitute user for your user name of course.



Now Skype video will work without the hassle of running an archaic command from the terminal.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Repairing RPM Errors

On SLES10SP2, I was trying to run yast online update, and kept getting a bunch of errors, including this one....

"rpmdb: fatal region error detected; run recovery"

To resolve the problem I first had to do the following...

Change to the rpm directory..
#cd /var/lib/rpm
Remove file locks from rpm directory..
#rm -f __db*
Rebuild the rpm database. This will take a few minutes.
#rpm --rebuilddb

After that completed, I was able to apply updates without incident.

Source info for post......