Index of /project/bitlbee-skype

Skype plugin for BitlBee

1. Status

Okay, this exists now, with lots of thanks to vmiklos for his excellent work!!

It’s not in the main BitlBee and it’ll never be for various reasons, but because it’s a plugin that shouldn’t be a problem.

— Wilmer van der Gaast (author of BitlBee)

One day I browsed the BitlBee bugtracker and found this ticket. Then after a while I returned and saw that it was still open. So I wrote it.

It’s pretty stable (one day I wanted to restart it because of an upgrade and just noticed it was running for 2+ months without crashing), I use it for my daily work. Being a plug-in, no patching is required, you can just install it after installing BitlBee itself.

Note	You will see that this implementation of the Skype plug-in still requires a Skype instance to be running. This is because I’m not motivated to reverse engineer Skype’s obfuscation layer. (Not mentioning that you should ask your lawyer about if it is legal or not..)

2. Requirements

Skype >= 1.4.0.99. The latest version I’ve tested is 2.1.0.81.
BitlBee >= 1.2.4. Use old versions (0.5.1 or earlier) if you have older BitlBee installed.
Skype4Py >= 0.9.28.7. Previous versions won’t work due to API changes. The latest version I’ve tested is 1.0.32.0.
Python >= 2.5. Skype4Py does not work with 2.4.
PyGObject >= 2.8.0. Older versions are part of PyGTK. (And you don’t want to install GTK for nothing, right?)
pyopenssl or python-gnutls.

bitlbee-skype has been tested under Linux and Mac OS X. Skype and Skype4py is available under Windows, too, so it probably works, but this has not been tested.

3. How to set it up

Before you start. The setup is the following: BitlBee can’t connect directly to Skype servers (the company’s ones). It needs a running Skype client to do so. In fact BitlBee will connect to skyped (a tcp server, provided in this package) and skyped will connect to to your Skype client.

The benefit of this architecture is that you can run Skype and skyped on a machine different to the one where you run BitlBee (it can be even a public server) and/or your IRC client.

Note	The order is important. First `skyped` starts Skype. Then `skyped` connects to Skype, finally BitlBee can connect to `skyped`.

3.1. Installing under Frugalware or Debian

Install the necessary packages:

# pacman-g2 -S bitlbee-skype

# apt-get install skyped bitlbee-plugin-skype

(the later from the experimental repo)

and you don’t have to compile anything manually.

3.2. Installing under OS X

Install the necessary packages from ports:

Note	You have to edit the Portfile manually to include the install-dev target, just append install-dev after install-etc.

# port -v install bitlbee
# port -v install py25-gobject

and you have to install bitlbee-skype, skype4py and python-gnutls from source.

3.3. Installing from source

Note	bitlbee-skype by default builds and installs skyped and the plugin. In case you just want to install the plugin for a public server or you want to use skyped with a public server (like `bitlbee1.asnetinc.net`), you don’t need both.

You need the latest stable BitlBee release (unless you want to use a public server):

$ wget http://get.bitlbee.org/src/bitlbee-1.2.4.tar.gz
$ tar xf bitlbee-1.2.4.tar.gz
$ cd bitlbee-1.2.4

Backport r482 and r483 from bzr, to fix plugin support. If you don’t want to use bzr, you can find the patches here.
Now compile and install it:

$ ./configure
$ make
# make install install-dev

To install Skype4Py from source (unless you want to install the plugin for a public server):

$ tar -zxvf Skype4Py-x.x.x.x.tar.gz
$ cd Skype4Py-x.x.x.x
# python setup.py install

To install python-gnutls from source (unless you want to install the plugin for a public server):

$ tar -zxvf python-gnutls-x.x.x.tar.gz
$ cd python-gnutls-x.x.x
# python setup.py install

Note	On OS X you will need the following hacks first:

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/lib
$ export CFLAGS="-I/opt/local/include"
$ export LDFLAGS="-L/opt/local/lib"

Get the plugin code (in an empty dir, or whereever you want, it does not matter):

$ wget http://vmiklos.hu/project/bitlbee-skype/bitlbee-skype-0.8.0.tar.gz
$ tar xf bitlbee-skype-0.8.0.tar.gz
$ cd bitlbee-skype-0.8.0

Compile and install it:

$ ./configure
$ make
# make install

This will install the plugin to where BitlBee expects them, which is /usr/local/lib/bitlbee if you installed BitlBee from source.

3.4. Configuring

Set up ~/.skyped/skyped.conf: Create the ~/.skyped directory, copy skyped.conf and skyped.cnf from /usr/local/etc/skyped/skyped.conf to ~/.skyped, adjust username and password. The username should be your Skype login and the password can be whatever you want, but you will have to specify that one when adding the Skype account to BitlBee (see later).

Note	Here, and later - `/usr/local/etc` can be different on your installation if you used the `--sysconfdir` switch when running bitlbee-skype’s `configure`.

Generate the SSL pem files:

# cd ~/.skyped
# openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -config skyped.cnf -out skyped.cert.pem \
        -keyout skyped.key.pem

Note	Maybe you want to adjust the permissions in the `~/.skyped` dir. For example make it readable by just your user.

If both pyopenssl and python-gnutls are available, then python-gnutls will be used. This behaviour can be overwritten by:

$ export SKYPED_NO_GNUTLS=1

Start skyped (the tcp server):

$ skyped

Start your IRC client, connect to BitlBee and add your account:

account add skype <user> <pass>
account set skype/server localhost

<user> should be your Skype account name, <pass> should be the one you declared in skyped.conf. If you want to run skyped on a remote machine, replace localhost with the name of the machine.

If you are running skyped on a custom port:

account set skype/port <port>

If you want to set your full name (optional):

account set skype/display_name "John Smith"

If you want to see your skypeout contacts online as well (they are offline by default):

account set skype/skypeout_offline false

4. Setting up Skype in a VNC server (optional)

Optionally, if you want to run Skype on a server, you might want to setup up a VNC server as well. I used tightvnc but probably other VNC servers will work, too.

First run

$ vncpasswd ~/.vnc/passwd

and create a password. You will need it at least once.

Now create ~/.vnc/xstartup with the following contents:

#!/bin/sh

blackbox

Adjust the permissions:

$ chmod +x ~/.vnc/xstartup

Then start the server:

$ vncserver

Then connect to it, start an xterm, set up Skype (username, password, enable X11 API and allow the Skype4Py client), quit from Skype, and start skyped. If you want to watch its traffic, enable debug messages and foreground mode:

$ skyped -n -d

5. Features

Download nicks and away statuses from Skype
Noticing joins / parts while we’re connected
Sending messages
Receiving messages
Receiving away status changes
skyped (the tcp daemon that is a gateway between Skype and tcp)
Error handling when skyped is not running and when it exits
Marking received messages as seen so that Skype won’t say there are unread messages
Adding / removing contacts
Set away state when you do a /away.
When you account off, Skype will set status to Offline
When you account on, Skype will set status to Online
Detect when somebody wants to add you and ask for confirmation
Detect when somebody wants to transfer a file
Group chat support:
- Detect if we’re invited
- Send / receive group chat messages
- Invite others (using /invite <nick>)
- Part from group chats
- Starting a group chat (using /j #nick)
Topic changes in group chats:
- Show the current topic (if any) on join
- Notice when someone changes the topic
- Support changing the topic using /topic
Viewing the profile using the info command.
Handling skype actions (when the CHATMESSAGE has EMOTED type)
Setting your display name using the nick command.
Running Skype on a machine different to BitlBee is possible, the communication is encrypted.
Managing outgoing calls (with call duration at the end, including SkypeOut calls if you use a phone number instead of a nick):
- account set skype/call nick
- account set -del skype/call
Managing incoming calls via questions, just like when you add / remove contacts.
Querying the current SkypeOut balance:
- account set skype/balance query
For debug purposes, it’s possible to send any command to skyped. To achieve this, you need to:
- account set skype/skypeconsole true
- then writing skypeconsole: <command> will work in the control channel.
- account set skype/skypeconsole_receive true will make the skypeconsole account dump all the recieved raw traffic for you
If you want to automatically join bookmarked groupchats right after you logged in, do:
- account set skype/auto_join true
Edited messages are shown with the EDIT: prefix. If you don’t like this, you can set your own prefix using:
- account set skype/edit_prefix "updated message:"

6. What needs to be done (aka. TODO)

Notice if foo invites bar. Currently you can see only that bar joined.
Public chats. See this feature request, this is because it is still not possible (under Linux) to join_chat to a public chat..
Add yasrd (Yet Another Skype-Related Daemon) to allow using a public server for users who are behind NAT.

7. I would like to have support for …

If something does not work and it’s not in the TODO section, then please contact me! Please also try the git version before reporting a bug, your problem may be already fixed there.

In fact, of course, I wrote this documentation after figured out how to do this setup, so maybe I left out some steps. If you needed any additional tricks, then it would be nice to include them here.

8. Known bugs

File transfers are view-only from BitlBee. Quoting the relevant documentation: File transfers cannot be initiated nor accepted via API commands. So it’s not something I can add support for, sadly.

9. Screenshots

You can reach some screenshots here.

10. Additional resources

You can reach the Changelog here, and a gitweb interface here.

The Skype API documentation is here if you’re interested.

11. Testimonials

00:56 < scathe> I like your skype plugin :)

It's really working great so far.

Good Job and thank you!
Sebastian

Big respect for your work, i really appreciate it.

Martin

Thanks for bitlbee-skype. As a blind Linux user, I cannot use the
skype GUI client because qt apps ar not accessible yet with the
available screen readers. bitlbee-skype allows me to make use of skype
without having to interact much with the GUI client, which helps me a
lot.

Lukas

02:12 < newton> i must say, i love this little bee ;)
02:15 < newton> tried it out today with the skype plugin, good work!

18:10 < miCSu> it works fine

13:56 < seo> i just want to thank you :)
13:56 < seo> for bitlbee-skype
13:57 < seo> it's working very well, so, again, thank you for your work, and for sharing it

22:16 < ecraven> vmiklos: thanks a lot for the skype plugin for bitlbee!

I'm blind and so I have to use a screen reader, in my case Gnome-Orca.
But since Skype is written in QT, while Orca uses gtk+, I have no direct
access to the Skype interface. That's why I desided to use Skyped and
Erc.
The text console is fully accessible.
Thank you very much.

Hermann

i love that bitlbeeplugin. big thx for that.

michael

23:47 < krisfremen> thanks for creating this fabulous piece of software vmiklos :)

12. Thanks

to the following people:

Wilmer van der Gaast, for answering questions about the BitlBee plugin interface
Arkadiusz Wahlig, author of skype4py, for making suggestions to skyped
Gabor Adam Toth (tg), for noticing extra code is needed to handle multiline messages
Cristobal Palmer (tarheelcoxn), for helping to testing the plugin in a timezone different to mine
Risko Gergely, for his SkypeOut ideas
people on #bitlbee for feedback

Back to my projects page.

 Name                    Last modified      Size  Description
 Parent Directory                             -   
 Changelog               08-Mar-2010 23:48   85K  
 HACKING                 31-Aug-2009 17:56  332   
 Makefile                09-Dec-2009 13:02  2.3K  
 NEWS                    27-Sep-2009 13:28  6.0K  
 README                  08-Mar-2010 23:48   13K  
 asciidoc.conf           27-Sep-2009 13:22  595   
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.0...> 21-Aug-2007 21:14   74K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.0...> 21-Aug-2007 21:14  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.1...> 22-Aug-2007 01:27   75K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.1...> 22-Aug-2007 01:27  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.2...> 31-Aug-2007 00:56   76K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.2...> 31-Aug-2007 00:56  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.3...> 04-Sep-2007 19:07   77K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.3...> 04-Sep-2007 19:07  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.4...> 16-Sep-2007 00:27   79K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.1.4...> 16-Sep-2007 00:27  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.0...> 07-Oct-2007 23:01   82K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.0...> 07-Oct-2007 23:01  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.1...> 30-Oct-2007 15:29   83K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.1...> 30-Oct-2007 15:29  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.2...> 20-Nov-2007 10:58   84K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.2...> 20-Nov-2007 10:58  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.3...> 24-Nov-2007 00:51   84K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.3...> 24-Nov-2007 00:51  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.4...> 14-Dec-2007 02:16   85K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.4...> 14-Dec-2007 02:16  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.5...> 16-Dec-2007 23:43   88K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.5...> 16-Dec-2007 23:43  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.6...> 10-Jan-2008 17:37   88K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.2.6...> 10-Jan-2008 17:37  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.3.0...> 12-Jan-2008 21:28   92K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.3.0...> 12-Jan-2008 21:28  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.3.1...> 21-Jan-2008 14:57   93K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.3.1...> 21-Jan-2008 14:57  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.3.2...> 23-Feb-2008 03:46   94K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.3.2...> 23-Feb-2008 03:46  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.4.0...> 29-Feb-2008 03:13   96K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.4.0...> 29-Feb-2008 03:13  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.4.1...> 31-Mar-2008 02:38   97K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.4.1...> 31-Mar-2008 02:38  252   
 bitlbee-skype-0.4.2...> 20-Apr-2008 23:41   99K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.4.2...> 20-Apr-2008 23:41  260   
 bitlbee-skype-0.5.0...> 24-May-2008 03:02  101K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.5.0...> 24-May-2008 03:02  260   
 bitlbee-skype-0.5.1...> 18-Jun-2008 19:38  102K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.5.1...> 18-Jun-2008 19:38  260   
 bitlbee-skype-0.6.0...> 28-Jun-2008 02:15  102K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.6.0...> 28-Jun-2008 02:15  242   
 bitlbee-skype-0.6.1...> 05-Sep-2008 21:55  101K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.6.1...> 05-Sep-2008 21:55  242   
 bitlbee-skype-0.6.2...> 05-Sep-2008 22:06  101K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.6.2...> 05-Sep-2008 22:06  242   
 bitlbee-skype-0.6.3...> 08-Sep-2008 09:32  102K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.6.3...> 08-Sep-2008 09:32  242   
 bitlbee-skype-0.7.0...> 07-Jan-2009 01:38  107K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.7.0...> 07-Jan-2009 01:38  242   
 bitlbee-skype-0.7.1...> 13-Feb-2009 23:39  109K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.7.1...> 13-Feb-2009 23:39  242   
 bitlbee-skype-0.7.2...> 29-Apr-2009 19:26  124K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.7.2...> 29-Apr-2009 19:26  242   
 bitlbee-skype-0.8.0...> 27-Sep-2009 13:29  126K  
 bitlbee-skype-0.8.0...> 27-Sep-2009 13:30  242   
 checkpatch.pl           07-Dec-2009 15:11   72K  
 client.sh               21-Dec-2008 20:17   54   
 config.mak.in           05-Sep-2008 21:55  301   
 configure.ac            12-Dec-2009 01:19  2.1K  
 shot/                   07-Mar-2010 20:53    -   
 skype.c                 08-Mar-2010 23:48   32K  
 skyped.cnf              12-Jan-2008 21:14  1.1K  
 skyped.conf.dist.in     19-May-2008 20:22  242   
 skyped.py               08-Mar-2010 23:48  9.5K  
 skyped.txt              27-Sep-2009 13:22  1.1K  
 t/                      07-Mar-2010 19:40    -

Apache Server at vmiklos.hu Port 80