No chat window or cam in Jami (alternative to Skype)

[regus]

Hello people!

I decided to ditch Skype and try out Jami instead. Instantly ran into problems with Jami:
- the chat window doesn't show, even if one of my contacts writes to me
- my webcam isn't registered by the programme

I managed to solve the latter issue temporarily by removing and purging Jami and re-installing it in a different manner. Instead of the command line or Aptitude I downloaded the .deb-file and installed by sudo dpkg -i "jami.deb". After the re-installation the cam worked, but the chat window still didn't show. I did it once more and then not even the camera works.

Jami seems like a good programme, but I lack the knowledge to fix the issue and haven't found an easy enough guide to solve it... Any ideas?

I run Gnome on Debian Buster stable.

 

[regus]

Update: When I run the command “sudo apt install gnupg dirmngr ca-certificates curl” from the debian 10 installation guide I get the following message:

“The following packages could not be satisfied:
curl : Dependent on: libcurl4 (= 7.64.0-4+deb10u1) but 7.68.0-1 will be installed”

 

[JasKinasis]

I'm a fellow Debian user. I use dwm instead of Gnome.
I have just installed Jami via the following command:

sudo apt install jami

That installed Jami and any dependencies that weren't already on my machine.

I haven't tested it properly yet, because unfortunately, I don't have any contacts.... Which is a bit sad, I know! Ha ha!

But I managed to add myself as a contact, by pasting my ID into the "search contacts" bar in the top-left.... That added me to my own contact list. Clicking on myself in the contacts brings up a text-chat window allowing me to send messages to myself, or voice/video call myself..... Or so I thought.....
I tried sending messages to myself, and placing voice and video calls to myself - but unsurprisingly - that doesn't seem to work.....

So, completely unphased, I registered a second account for myself - and then attempted to add my first account as a contact for my second account.
And a notification appeared on my desktop for my first account asking whether I wanted to allow, or block the connection with my second account. I clicked on "allow" and it let me send text messages to myself by switching between the two accounts and writing in the text area.

Audio and video calls also worked, but obviously I couldn't answer because I only had the one client running, logged into my second account. If I install Jami on my smartphone and tried connecting it with one of my two accounts, I imagine that it will connect video and audio calls. So from what I can see - there's nothing wrong with it!

So from what I've seen - as long as you have at least one contact in your contact list. AND that contact has "allowed" the connection - Then selecting one of your contacts should bring up an interface that will allow you to send text messages, share files and place audio/video calls with that contact.

As proof - below is a screenshot of the nice conversation I had with myself, with my ID's redacted:

I hope this helps!

 

[JasKinasis]

Update: When I run the command “sudo apt install gnupg dirmngr ca-certificates curl” from the debian 10 installation guide I get the following message:

“The following packages could not be satisfied:
curl : Dependent on: libcurl4 (= 7.64.0-4+deb10u1) but 7.68.0-1 will be installed”

Not sure what to suggest there.
7.64 is the current version of libcurl4 in the Debian stable repos.
Where is the requirement for 7.68 coming from?
Have you added any other Debian repos to your sources.list?

 

[regus]

Wow, thanks for the effort – much appreciated! I didn't get a request to allow or block when my contact wrote me a message. Could just see a small part of the message in the field to the left under his name. And concerning the cam it doesn't work even when I enter settings>media, except for that one time I mentioned. That time I could have a video call with my contact, but still no messages. I must have done something that f**ked up my system...

My sources.list:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ buster/updates main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ buster/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.se.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free

Hmm, I have no idea why I have 7.68 instead of 7.64. The command line I entered which showed the message came from: https://jami.net/download-jami-linux/#open-modal-debian-10
Does it have to do with that I allowed non-free? It was a long time since I edited it and I haven't done my homework.

 

[JasKinasis]

Ah, I see. I just installed the older version of Jami that is in the Debian Stable repos.

Your sources.list looks OK.
But from looking at that download link you posted - you appear to have added the Jami devs Debian repo for their nightly build. So the entry for that repo will probably be in a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d

I'd imagine that libcurl4 V7.68 is coming from the repo containing their nightly build. And it must be conflicting with the V7.64 in the main Debian repo, which is required by curl.

Not sure what to suggest.......

 

[regus]

Great pointers mate this really helped : ) I downgraded libcurl4 to .64 and deleted jami from sources.list.d. It fixed the problem with the camera, now it works again.

Still the chat window error remains. I must have messed up somewhere else too. Now at least I can see my friend's attempts to write me, but the window is rather distorted and I cannot write or send any message.

 

[JasKinasis]

Great pointers mate this really helped : ) I downgraded libcurl4 to .64 and deleted jami from sources.list.d. It fixed the problem with the camera, now it works again.

Still the chat window error remains. I must have messed up somewhere else too. Now at least I can see my friend's attempts to write me, but the window is rather distorted and I cannot write or send any message.

Can you upload/post a screenshot of the Jami application with the distorted window? Maybe it might yield some clues?

 

[regus]

As I resize the window a little bigger or lower and click my user name the window might change a little bit as can be seen in the screenshots below. I somehow managed to write "ff" once, but I cannot see the text as I write it, and I cannot press the buttons.

Spoiler: Some screenshots of my Frankendebian Jami

I don't know if it gives any more clues but in Aptitude I noticed libimage-magick-q16-perl 8:6.9.10.23+df is kept in its current state to avoid breaking the following dependencies:

* libimage-magick-q16-perl (held/unchange, 8:6.9.10.23+dfsg-2.1+b2) suggests imagemagick-doc (delivered by imagemagick-6-doc 8:6.9.10.23+dfsg-2.1+deb10u1)
* libimage-magick-q16-perl (held/unchanged, 8:6.9.10.23+dfsg-2.1+b2) replaces perlmagick (< 8:6.8.3.10-1~ [UNAVAILABLE]

 

[regus]

I downgraded most of its dependencies to the correct version for stable, but got stuck. The first of the two dependencies is now gone, the other is stuck because of perlapi-5.28.1 which is marked "UNSATISFIED" under libimage-magick-q16-perl. When I try to downgrade perlapi to perl-base 5.28.1-6+deb10u1 and I go to Preview (pressing G) I get a message saying:

"Some packages were broken and have been corrected:

Keep the following packages in their current version:

libimage-magick-q16-perl [8:6.9.10.23+dfsg-2.1+b2 (now) ] perl-base [5.30.0-9 (now) ]"

Can't seem to be able to get pass it.

Ah, I made a mess... : (

 

[JasKinasis]

Weird.... The Jami screen in your screenshots looks identical to what I get.

I think the Frankendebian thing is a separate issue.

I think the version of Jami in the repos works pretty well, but it is a little buggy. If you left click or double click your contact, the chat window pops up, but I don’t think it sends the notification to your contact, so that could be a problem.
If you were left-clicking the contact to bring up the conversation, that might be what is triggering the bug you were talking about.

If so, try right-clicking the contact and using "add conversation" to bring up the chat. That definitely does send the other user a notification, but you won’t be able to chat with them until they accept the connection with you.

So again, if this is your first time contacting someone in Jami - and the other user hasn’t Okayed the connection yet, this may also be causing this bug.

Jami does seem to be lacking in documentation, I couldn’t find any decent documentation for new users. I’ve just had to play with it to learn how it works. And how to work around some of the bugs in the current version in the Debian stable repos.

The search/add contact bar is a bit iffy sometimes too. I’m half tempted to try building it from source using the projects GitHub - to see if a more recent tagged release (or perhaps even the most up to date, bleeding edge version) works better.

And I haven’t tried resizing the Jami window. I don’t use a traditional desktop with Debian. I use dwm (tiling window manager). Most of the time, I use dwm in monocle mode. So the Jami window has always been full-screen. I also put it in its own tag/workspace.
So there may be some bugs with resizing the window too. I haven’t tested that.

I’ll have another play with Jami later and will try adding some extra programs to the tag/workspace with Jami in it and will experiment with dwm’s tiled and floating modes to see how Jami behaves when the window is resized.

 

[regus]

I'm too much of a newbie to be sure, but I get the feeling there's something else/more that's wrong in my system than just a few bugs in Jami, my camera problem seems related e.g., it still doesn't work. My contact accepted my request, but the screen still looks weird and I can't see what I write.

Thanks for taking the time and being so supportive – cheers! : )