I went through hell getting things working with my new VoIP.
It wasn’t them, it was Linux and my system which were to blame.
First, the new version of Twinkle is still not packaged for PCLinuxOS. I went through a big mess of troubleshooting steps, and I can easily guess why it hasn’t been packaged and probably won’t be for a while.
I have really detailed notes from my previous adventures with compiling Twinkle from source, and so I figured I could take a stab at it.
But what I learned was that qt3 development stuff was completely removed from the PCLinuxOS repository. I ended up going to https://www.ibiblio.org/ for the old 2007 RPMs, thanks to http://rpm.pbone.net/.
But even after all that time and effort, I was not able to compile the latest version of Twinkle. I’m not interested in troubleshooting either.
Here are my notes, for posterity..
su mkdir working-directory cd working-directory apt-get install libsndfile-devel libspeex1-devel libboost1-devel libxorg-x11-devel liblcms-devel libmng1-devel wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/commoncpp/commoncpp2-1.6.1.tar.gz tar -xvvzf commoncpp2-1.6.1.tar.gz cd commoncpp2-1.6.1 ./configure && make && make install cd.. wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ccrtp/ccrtp-1.6.0.tar.gz tar -xvvzf ccrtp-1.6.0.tar.gz cd ccrtp-1.6.0 ./configure && make && make install cd.. wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ccrtp/libzrtpcpp-1.3.0.tar.gz tar -xvvzf libzrtpcpp-1.3.0.tar.gz cd libzrtpcpp-1.3.0 ./configure && make && make install cd.. # Broken link. Now https://web.archive.org/web/20061127084306/http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/linphone/1.3.x/source/ilbc-rfc3951.tar.gz wget download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/linphone/1.3.x/source/ilbc-rfc3951.tar.gz tar -xvvzf ilbc-rfc3951.tar.gz cd ilbc-rfc3951 ./configure && make && make install cd .. # broken link: wget get.qtsoftware.com/qt/source/qt-x11-free-3.3.8b.tar.gz tar -xvvzf qt-x11-free-3.3.8b.tar.gz cd qt-x11-free-3.3.8b ./configure && make && make install # type 'yes' cd .. wget ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/texstar/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2007/RPMS.kde/libqassistantclient1-3.3.8-5pclos2007.i586.rpm rpm -i libqassistantclient1-3.3.8-5pclos2007.i586.rpm wget ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/texstar/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2007/RPMS.kde/libeditor1-3.3.8-5pclos2007.i586.rpm rpm -i libeditor1-3.3.8-5pclos2007.i586.rpm wget ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/texstar/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2007/RPMS.kde/libdesignercore1-3.3.8-5pclos2007.i586.rpm rpm -i libdesignercore1-3.3.8-5pclos2007.i586.rpm wget ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/texstar/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2007/RPMS.kde/libqt3-devel-3.3.8-5pclos2007.i586.rpm rpm -i libqt3-devel-3.3.8-5pclos2007.i586.rpm # Solves: # checking value of $QTDIR... /usr/lib/qt4 # checking for qmake... no # configure: error: Cannot find qmake in $QTDIR/bin. $QTDIR is incorrect. QTDIR="/usr/lib/qt3" # Solves: # checking size of int... configure: error: cannot compute sizeof (int) export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib # Unknown issue.. # checking for libXext... no # configure: error: We need a working libXext to proceed. Since configure # can't find it itself, we stop here assuming that make wouldn't find # them either. # ...?
FAILED
wget www.xs4all.nl/~mfnboer/twinkle/download/twinkle-1.4.2.tar.gz tar -xvvzf twinkle-1.4.2 cd twinkle-1.4.2 ./configure && make && make install cd.. # rm -rf working-directory
Previous notes had kdelibs-devel.. since it went missing, I’m installing it the hard way.. maybe that would fix the libXent issue?
apt-get install libacl1-devel libart_lgpl2-devel libattr1-devel libavahi-client-devel libavahi-qt3-devel libaudiofile0-devel libjack-devel libmad0-devel libpcre0-devel libresmgr1-devel
Stuff to install the hard way:
None of these were found on rpm.pbone.net.. so I’d have to track each project down myself. Sigh. I give up
libartsflow libartsflow_idl libasound libesd libfam libkmedia2_idl libmcop libqtmcop libsoundserver_idl
.. get all that installed, and then I could do:
wget ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/texstar/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2007/RPMS.kde/kdelibs-devel-3.5.10-3pclos2007.i586.rpm rpm -i kdelibs-devel-3.5.10-3pclos2007.i586.rpm
Then I could re-try the twinkle compilation. =/
I just installed the old version from PCLinuxOS. But then I had some ridiculous issues with my audio. I fiddled and fiddled. I muted and I changed volumes. I played with codecs. I played with ports in the front and back of my computer. I played with two different mics.
I had nasty volume, feedback and static issues.
What solved it? I fiddled around with my audio settings with alsamixer to learn that I was piping some of my audio around through the wrong stuff. I don’t have a clue when it comes to audio, but I can troubleshoot well enough to get things working.
This also happens to reproduce an audio trick I could never do with Twinkle, but which somehow Ekiga could do.. a volume boost.
It turns out that this functionality was in alsamixer, but not in aumix-text. aumix-text is practically crippled compared to alsamixer, and I suppose I’ll switch back to alsamixer now.
I also did the smart thing, which was to figure out how to save and restore settings.
alsactl store 0
I edited my rc.local to restore the settings every reboot.
alsactl restore 0
I had some issues with actually receiving calls, but that got sorted out pretty easily. I also get my voicemail messages emailed to me. Woot. Mind you, they email wav files, most likely because of licensing issues with mp3. They could send .ogg if they wanted to, but I wonder how many of their “everyday” users could deal with that. They should implement it one afternoon and then make it an option to use for people like me.
