Skype on Squeeze amd64 (64 bits)
Tips how to go around Skype issues
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Running skype on Squeeze 64 bits

The problem
You might have noticed that if you have a "standard" system running Pulseaudio, Skype crashes stupidly with the following message:

Inconsistency detected by ld.so: dl-open.c: 643: _dl_open: Assertion
`_dl_debug_initialize (0, args.nsid)->r_state == RT_CONSISTENT'
failed!

What is really happening?
The issue here is that Skype is compiled for 32 bits, and wants to load only 32 bits versions of everything. Despite repeated request on Skype forums and bug tracker, it seems that the Skype developers don't seem to care at all about us. They didn't provide a 64 bits version for Debian or Ubuntu at all (even the 64 bits package is a hack that is in fact a 32 bits version with ia32-libs dependencies).

As I have switched my laptop to Squeeze, and that I've been running in 64 bits mode since a long long time, and live far away from my peers (I am a French man living in China, and I often chat with my friends over Skype), I tried to dig the issue. I have found out that in fact, what is missing, is a 32 bits version of 2 libraries: libgdbm3 and libwrap0.

Unfortunately, these 2 libraries are not available in a 32 bits flavor in Debian if you run an amd64 arch computer.

The solution The solution is pretty trivial. Copy the 32 bits binaries of libgdbm3 and libwrap0 in /usr/lib32 and /lib32 respectively. As installing files just like this using cp is very ugly, I hacked the 2 packages lib32-gdbm3 and lib32-wrap0. I have to hilight it once more: these 2 debian packages that you will find linked below are ugly hacks! It's just a copy of the *_i386.deb content wrapped into an amd64 package so that you can install it in your system. It's still better than just copying the library files with cp, but it's not as good as if there really was some lib32 packages available in Debian.

Install it on your system
Install the Skype dependencies:
apt-get install ia32-libs ia32-libs-gtk libasound2-plugins libqt4-core libqt4-guilib32v4l-0
Then just do this on your computer: 
wget ftp://ftp.gplhost.com/pub/skype/lib32-gdbm3_1.8.3_amd64.deb
wget ftp://ftp.gplhost.com/pub/skype/lib32-wrap0_7.6.q_amd64.deb
dpkg -i lib32-gdbm3_1.8.3_amd64.deb lib32-wrap0_7.6.q_amd64.deb
Then you can download Skype for Lenny and install it on your 64 bits Squeeze system: 
dpkg -i --force-architecture skype-debian_2.1.0.81-1_i386.deb

Running Skype
You can run Skype as usual (with the LD_PRELOAD to have the video working with the lib32v4l-0 package:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

Last word
I can only tell ONCE MORE that Skype needs to support open source distributions better. The fact that they don't provide 64 bits binaries is really lame. If Skype people are reading: Debian guys like me are ready to help even for free if you need. Update to this issue
The latest version of ia32-libs include the files in the above packages. So if you used the packages that I made earlier, you will have issues upgrading. To fix, simply do:
dpkg -r lib32-gdbm3
dpkg -r lib32-wrap0 then upgrading will continue (do apt-get -f install and apt-get dist-upgrade once more to fix...).