[GnomeMeeting-list] Broken Configuration Assistant, Undocumented strictness in Accounts info

[ael <law_ence dev ntlworld com>]

I thought that I would record some of the problems that I had trying to
get ekiga going while they are fresh in my memory.

1) Tried to install on linux i386 debian sarge.
   a) apt-get install worked, but any attempt to run complained about no
  audio plugin and promply terminated. That prevented normal access to
the documentation :-) Oh for man pages!. But ok one can get around that,
but newbies will be sunk.

   b) Checked that plugin was in proper place. It was the right alsa
plugin. I don't remember what happened next, but I think I tried
installing an alsa plugin library just in case. Ekiga then seg faulted.

I gave up temporarily and tried a different machine:

2) Next tried linux amd64 debian sarge on another box. No ekiga
available according to apt-get/aptitude etc. Discovered debs at
http://www.gnomemeeting.org/index.php?rub=5, downloaded and installed.
This time ekiga came up without seg faulting.

 a) Ran the configuration assistant and entered all ekiga.net details.
   Much later, it was discovered that the Assistant had not really
entered *any* of these details: it appeared to work but was in fact
entirely nonfunctional. I noticed that there was no account in the
Account window, but assumed this had some other function. Hours later
after chasing phantoms, this was uncovered.

 b) Ekiga complained about the nat router and said that the STUN test
was partially blocked. Using "NONE" or "IP translate" seemed to fail,
even when 5000-5100 ports opened on NAT router. Much time spent trying
to connect to 500 ekiga net  Often reported a security failure. At the
time this looked like a problem with the router, but again it turned out
to be that the details in the "Accounts" window had to match in every
detail those at ekiga.net. Of course, username and password, but why the
other stuff like the "User" which seemed only cosmetic?

3) Returning to the i386 debian sarge box, I was able to install from
the http://www.gnomemeeting.org/ 386 debs. And eventually get a
connection to 500 ekiga net 

  a) The documentation for the Audio sliders on the main Ekiga window
does not seem to explain their purpose. At least when experimenting,
they resisted any attempt to modify them until a call was in progress
and then only when certain codecs were selected. I assume that they were
modifying the i/o of the codecs since they appeared to have no
connection with the alsa mixer settings. Nor did they have any apparent
effect when they were moved during a call.

I am completely new to voip and ekiga, and fully appreciate that it a
magnificant piece of free software. But it really was very difficult
indeed to get going. The debug switches on ekiga were really useful, but
it would have been nice if it had logged what was going on somewhere
when there were problems.

I hope this is useful feedbacvk and may help others if they hit similar
problems.

I may be back: although I could hear the message (eventually) from
500 ekiga net, I did not seem to be able to hear an echo. Either the
latency was absurdly short, or I still have some problems to sort out.

ekiga  2.0.2-1
libopal-2.2.0 2.2.2...
libpt-1.10.0 1.10.1.dfsgfsg
etc


A.E.Lawrence