Arch Linux User Repository

There is a problem with Skype being stuck on the login screen on first launch. That happens when your org.freedesktop.secrets provider doesn't have a keyring configured, i.e. also first launch.

I don't know if this is a quirk of libsecret or Skype itself, but we can't do pretty much anything about it anyway.

Solutions are simple though:

1. Despite the login screen being stuck, the login itself is actually successful. So just kill it and run Skype again, it should be fine after that.

2. Configure your default keyring manually (using seahorse, kwalletmanager etc.) before running Skype.

To get automatic login, install a package that provides org.freedesktop.secrets, e.g. gnome-keyring.

To get a systray icon, install libappindicator-gtk3. On GNOME, then install the appindicator extension.

No problems on my end.

While building I get this error:

warning: https unexpectedly said: 'Version/.git/objects/pack/pack-597ac35cba0f518c446371def883eb47473b7891.keep

Is it only me?

Just built skype, everything is fine, I see no error. So yeah, it's either something on your side, or some sporadic failure on some server.

Any pointers?

Looks as a git related error, but I don't see anything git-related in PKGBUILD. Might it be you're using some aur-helper, and the error come from it when it tried to download the PKGBUILD?

While building I get this error:

warning: https unexpectedly said: 'Version/.git/objects/pack/pack-597ac35cba0f518c446371def883eb47473b7891.keep

Is it only me? Any pointers?

@txtsd, it was out of date because there was a new stable version which I just updated to now. Note that 8.*.0.* are stable versions, 8.*.76.* are preview versions.

Is it normal for the stable package to show an available update which is actually a preview build?

Fun thing is Skype. While following in defence of swap, I replaced the vm.swappiness = 10 I usually used with much larger vm.swappiness = 100 (which btw was worth it, despite me having a slow HDD, not an SSD. Although might be because I also use zswap), and I expected Skype to be one of the 1st apps on my system to go into swap, since I only use it once in the morning, and throughout the rest of the day it just idles in background. Well, for some reason it is far from reality. Skype has 6 processes, and all of them went through, I think, 2 swap storms upon me getting critically low on RAM, with 0 (zero!) kilobytes in SWAP (I monitor it with smem -kc "name user pid vss pss rss swap")! Only on 3rd swap storm Skype has gotten just a tiny bit of its memory into SWAP (0, 0, 1.8M, 24.0K, 1.2M, 2.9M). For comparison: the 2.9M-in-swap process is surrounded (in terms of PSS) by emacs and plasma, that has 6.1M and 53.8M in swap respectively.

Idk yet why Skype behaves that way, but am very curious. An interesting behavior, and can't say one I like. So, anyway, just sharing, in case someone might have an insight into it, or just might be interested.

I was able to work around the current alsa problem by creating aliases in the ~/.asoundrc:

pcm.call {
  type hw
  card PCH
  device 0
}

pcm.mic_call {
  type hw
  card PCH
  device 0
}

pcm.loopback_call {
  type hw
  card PCH
  device 0
}

Thanks @mozo. It's working when I use apulse, so I'm guessing it's an ALSA-related problem. These links I found seem to suggest that too:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8577792.html

https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=63324

@nimbusflow Everything is ok on my end.

Ever since I updated to 8.69.0.77-1 I can't make/answer calls - every time I do, skype automatically logs me out. This happens even with test calls.

Anyone else having similar issues? I haven't tried to downgrade to 8.68.0.100 yet.