Arch Linux

jlindgren

Member

Registered: 2011-02-27

Posts: 260

Skype will not sign in

I installed skype from the amd64 multilib section.  It starts up fine; however, when I try to sign in, it just sits indefinitely.  The program is not frozen; it continues to show the spinning gray arrows, and Etherape shows some outgoing network traffic.  I have no firewall installed.  I can sign in using the Windows version of Skype running in a virtual machine of Windows 2000 within Arch.  The Linux version of Skype also works for me if I shut down and boot Debian instead (same kernel version, 2.6.37).  So I'm mystified as to what the problem could be.  Any ideas?

thestinger

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Toronto, Canada

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 478

Re: Skype will not sign in

I had this happen before because Skype was trying to update itself and failing. I think I fixed it by deselecting that option in preferences. Not sure it will fix your problem (just a shot in the dark ) and I don't use Skype anymore.

jollysnowman

Member

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2010-12-08

Posts: 35

Re: Skype will not sign in

Might be a dumb question, but are you sure your credentials are correct? Skype works fine for me (I have the auto-update option turned on, but I just turned it off to see if it would cause a change). I'm also on 64-bit.

jlindgren

Member

Registered: 2011-02-27

Posts: 260

Re: Skype will not sign in

Yes, I'm sure my credentials are correct, but good to ask.

I have found that if I move ~/.Skype out of the way on my Debian system, then I cannot log in there either.  But if I copy the working ~/.Skype/shared.xml from Debian to Arch then I can log in on Arch also.  <HostCache> seems to be the critical entry.  So the Linux version of Skype seems to be unable to rebuild this host cache when needed.  Yet Skype 5.0 installed for the first time on Windows 2000 in a virtual machine was apparently able to rebuild it without any problems.

I'm using a university-provided internet connection which I know does block some ports (IRC chat for example), so perhaps this breaks the Linux version of Skype while the newer Windows version has some way to get around it.