Troubleshooting
From Ekiga
Video problems
My webcam doesn't work with Ekiga, what can I do?
The first thing to do is to use the Ekiga configuration assistant, it will help you testing your driver compatibility and testing the robustness of your driver. It will also give you interesting hints to help debugging your problems. Notice that there are two plugins for Video4Linux cameras (V4L and V4L2). Please try both as some drivers do not support V4L2 yet.
Once you have tested your driver compatibility using the Ekiga configuration assistant, it is recommended to test the webcam again with xawtv. If it works with xawtv, you know the driver implements SOME of the V4L/V4L2 specification, but Ekiga uses different V4L calls than xawtv, for example, Ekiga requests a different screen size, and image format.
If it works with xawtv but not with Ekiga, you can try:
- a web/mailing list search for Ekiga and the name of your camera to see what other people think of your camera with Ekiga,
- Don't blame Ekiga: Many video drivers are tested so that they work with xawtv, but not against the full V4L specification. The video grabber code in Ekiga was very carefully written to follow the V4L specification and no one has found code in video handling that is wrong.
- You can contact us through the mailing list to report any problem you will find.
Ekiga only displays a part of the real picture in the video window, what can I do?
If your driver doesn't natively support 176x144, Ekiga will try capturing at a larger size, and scale the picture down. The normal behavior of a driver is the following :
- Ekiga asks for 176x144, the driver does not support it
- Consequently the driver reports "FAILED"
- Ekiga asks for 320x240, the driver supports it
- Consequently the driver reports "OK"
- Ekiga captures at 320x240 and resizes to 176x144 which is what it needs
If the picture isn't scaled, please report the problem to us on the mailing list.
GSPCA driver bug
The behavior of the gspca driver is the following :
- Ekiga asks for 176x144, the driver does not support it
- Instead of reporting a failure, the driver starts capturing 320x240 images, and crop them (the upper left part) to pass 176x144 images to Ekiga
Ekiga can do nothing about this, you should report the problem to the gspca driver author.
I can see people, but they do not see me
The first thing to check is the "General History" (Tools → General History).
- If no channel is opened for video transmission (H.261), it means that you forgot to enable video support or that the remote user forgot to enable video support in the Edit → Preferences → Video Codecs section.
- If a channel is opened for video transmission (H.261), but that the remote user doesn't see you, it means that he is behind a misconfigured NAT/PAT gateway. This article may help you.
People can see me, but I can't see them
The first thing to check is the "General History" (Tools → General History).
- If no channel is opened for video reception (H.261), it means that you forgot to enable video support or that the remote user forgot to enable video support in the Edit → Preferences → Video Codecs section.
- If a channel is opened for video reception (H.261), but that you don't see the remote user, it means that you are behind a misconfigured NAT/PAT gateway. This article may help you.
Audio problems
I'm testing my audio setup with the Ekiga configuration assistant, and I have problems, what can I do?
You have to analyse the error message given by the configuration assistant:
- The message indicating that the device can't be opened for reading or writing means that there was an error opening the device. If the device could be opened for playing, but that the error message complains that it couldn't be opened for recording, it means that you have full-duplex problems. The solution is to use a different device for playing and recording, or to install ALSA from http://www.alsa-project.org. This article on how to use ALSA may help you. If the first error message to appear mentions that the device can't be opened for playing, it can also mean that you have permissions problem.
- The message indicating that the device could be opened, but that it is impossible to read from or to write to this device means that another program is already using the device, preventing Ekiga from using it. You can check what program is using the device using $ lsof /dev. It can also mean that you have permissions problem.
- If You get error messageboxes on calls by concurrent sounddevice usage of Ekiga with other applications saying that the audiodevices can't be opened, select the "default" device in all Ekiga audio device settings (for the ringer, too), only the "default" device has dmix access defined implicitely in libasound2, manual dmix setup in ~/.asound.rc or /etc/asound.conf is no longer neccessary for the "default" device with newer ALSA version installations, dmix is now enabled by default for cards not supporting multiple audiostream playback, move such old files out of the way first to test. There is a warning from the Twinkle author(s) for using "default" for the microphone, but I cannot confirm such, report to the ALSA user mailinglist if You run into bad sound issues from the mic, use a broad band codec like G711a (ALAW/PCMA) to test to assure it is not a narrow band codec issue and check Your network performance before reporting to ALSA project.
- If you don't get any error message, but that you don't hear yourself with a 5 seconds delay while talking in your microphone, it means that you have full-duplex problems. You can test recording with another tool called rec, if recording with this tool works, but that you don't hear yourself with the 4 seconds delay using the Ekiga configuration assistant, it proves the full-duplex problem. If recording with that tool doesn't work either, then you have to check your installation again, and possibly your cables. Beware of non PC-standard headsets and microphones with dynamic mics build in, most usual PC-soundchips have no circuit to support them, only condenser microphones, You'll need expensive audio professional soundcards or preamp adapters for dynamic mic support, mostly.
I do not hear people, but they can hear me, or I can hear people but they don't hear me
The first thing to do is to use the Ekiga configuration assistant, it will help you to test your driver compatibility and to test the robustness of your driver. It will also give you interesting hints to help debugging your problems. Once you are sure that things are working correctly because you have tested your audio setup with the assistant, you can debug further.
The first thing to check is the "General History" (Tools → General History).
- If you are transmitting sound, you should see that Ekiga starts 2 channels, one for transmission, and one for reception. If no channels are opened for audio transmission and reception, it means that you have no common codec with the remote Endpoint. Please report all codec handshake or interop issues to the Ekiga and openh323.org developer mailinglists.
- If audio channels are opened for transmission and reception, ie if there is a common codec, and if you have tested your audio configuration with the Ekiga configuration assistant and that it worked but you have no sound during calls, it means that you or your friend is behind a NAT/PAT router or firewall that drops the audio packets. Check that it is not the case. Also make sure that your friend has a correct audio setup.
FIXME: more infos here about where the problem is (firewall/router -> which side?)
Echo cancellation doesn't work or not O.K. I use the microphone from my webcam and my sound card for audio output.
Echo cancellation will only work if you use the same sound device for in and out audio. e.g. echo cancellation won't work if you use the microphone on your webcam and the output sound from your soundcard (PCI). The reason is that the echo cancellation mechanism needs to sync the in and out sounds and this can't be done properly yet using two different drivers. Please report echo cancellation issues to the Ekiga and openh323.org developer mailing list.
We advice using a headset with condenser microphone builtin for best audio quality, because of room acoustic issues, too.
other problems
I have GConf errors when I start Ekiga, what can I do?
On Linux/Unix
First restart the GConf deamon by killing it with this command:
$ killall -9 gconfd-2
If it doesn't work, try changing the permissions with:
$ chmod -R 4755 /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/ $ killall -9 gconfd-2
If it doesn't work, either GConf is not properly setup on your system, either you don't have compiled Ekiga with the right GConf flags.
Not all distributions install GConf settings in /etc/gconf, but
$ gconftool-2 --get-default-source
should always give you the place where default GConf settings are installed.
When starting, Ekiga will test the value for a given key, and compares it to what it expected to receive. If what he receives doesn't match whith what he expected, then there is a problem.
On Windows
Delete the configuration file store in C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR LOGIN\Applications Data\ekiga.conf
This problem comes when you switch between the developpement and stable release of Ekiga.
SDL fullscreen is not of very good quality, is it normal?
Yes, because Ekiga is making a fullscreen image from a QCIF image (176x144).
Ekiga is crashing all the time, is it normal?
No, Ekiga has been tested many times and since a long time by several users. No software is 100% perfect, that means that you can get one segmentation fault on several thousands of calls, but not regular segmentation faults. If you get regular segmentation faults, it can be because:
- you compiled new versions of the libraries without uninstalling the old libraries
- you installed an Ekiga version compiled with a given version of the OPAL libraries, but it is linking at runtime to an older or a newer version of those libraries
- your video driver doesn't support well the image format and size requested by Ekiga and is sending garbage data (see question related to video problems to find out how to fix that)
Unable to register to ekiga.net ?
This error can be produced by a complicated password. Capture the debuging output of ekiga (see here for GNU/Linux and here for Windows), and look if you found:
.... REGISTER sip:ekiga.net SIP/2.0 CSeq: 1 REGISTER User-Agent: Ekiga/2.0.9 ... SIP/2.0 401 Unauthorized CSeq: 1 REGISTER Server: Sip EXpress router (0.9.6 (i386/linux)) ... REGISTER sip:ekiga.net SIP/2.0 CSeq: 2 REGISTER User-Agent: Ekiga/2.0.9 ... SIP/2.0 401 Unauthorized CSeq: 2 REGISTER Server: Sip EXpress router (0.9.6 (i386/linux)) ... REGISTER sip:ekiga.net SIP/2.0 CSeq: 3 REGISTER User-Agent: Ekiga/2.0.9 ... SUBSCRIBE sip:xxxxx@ekiga.net SIP/2.0 CSeq: 4 SUBSCRIBE User-Agent: Ekiga/2.0.9 ... SIP/2.0 401 Unauthorized <=== Here the error CSeq: 3 REGISTER Server: Sip EXpress router (0.9.6 (i386/linux)) ...
They are a bug that prevent to use some characters like "%[]()'". So avoid to use this character, and prefer to use a longuer password than a short password to be safe (like a pass phrase). Ex: "Today is monday, and tomorrow is the birthday of my grant-father"
