Bug#1036082: linphone: Unable to enable H.264 video codec required for Zoom SIP connections

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

Package: linphone
Version: 4.2.5-3
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

Any calls to the SIP endpoint for the Zoom video chat service fail. I
discovered <URL: https://github.com/bemoody/linphone-deb > with a
recipe for how to get it working, but the "Enable H.264 video compression"
step fail. When I try to enable the video codec, a popup message ask if
it is OK to download the codec, but even if I accept the download and
press the strange empty 'confirm' popup afterwards, the H.264 video
codec option stay disabled.

And without H.264 video codec available, the call is rejected. I
verified this using Jami, which I normally can use to connect to the
SIP endpoint of Zoom, but it will fail when I disable H.264.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.6
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-0.deb11.5-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_WARN
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages linphone depends on:
ii linphone-desktop 4.2.5-3

linphone recommends no packages.

linphone suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

[Dennis Filder]

X-Debbugs-CC: Petter Reinholdtsen <pe...@hungry.com>

On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 08:06:49AM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:

> Any calls to the SIP endpoint for the Zoom video chat service fail. I
> discovered <URL: https://github.com/bemoody/linphone-deb > with a
> recipe for how to get it working, but the "Enable H.264 video compression"
> step fail. When I try to enable the video codec, a popup message ask if
> it is OK to download the codec, but even if I accept the download and
> press the strange empty 'confirm' popup afterwards, the H.264 video
> codec option stay disabled.
>
> And without H.264 video codec available, the call is rejected. I
> verified this using Jami, which I normally can use to connect to the
> SIP endpoint of Zoom, but it will fail when I disable H.264.

Do you have the package mediastreamer2-plugin-openh264 installed? It
is necessary to use H.264 and will also pull in the required package
containing the H.264 codec.

If you do have both installed and it still does not work you have to
provide more info (e.g. linphone logs etc.).

Regards.

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Dennis Filder]

> Do you have the package mediastreamer2-plugin-openh264 installed? It
> is necessary to use H.264 and will also pull in the required package
> containing the H.264 codec.

Nope. It do not seem to be available in Bullseye. I'll try with a
Bookworm machine and see if there is greater success there.

Are you able to connect to Zoom yourself?

Note, the majority of my issue with the current behaviour is the pretend
to download and enable H.264 stuff, which appear to not really happen.
Perhaps the download code should be disabled or changed to suggest
installing mediastreamer2-plugin-openh264? How is this feature behaving
in newer versions?

> If you do have both installed and it still does not work you have to
> provide more info (e.g. linphone logs etc.).

OK.

--
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Petter Reinholdtsen] <pe...@hungry.com> writes:
> Nope. It do not seem to be available in Bullseye. I'll try with a
> Bookworm machine and see if there is greater success there.

I tested on Bookworm, and while it is different, I did not manage to
call the SIP endpoint of Zoom.

With the mediastreamer2-plugin-openh264 package installed, the H.264
option show up as enabled, and disabling and enabling it do not ask for
anything to be downloaded. This is great.

The problem is that I try to connect it to my local Asterisk server,
which appear to not work. I get a proxy account with the correct
settings, but linphone do not seem to reach the server.

Ignoring this, I try to enter the sip address of the Zoom room I want to
connect to, but entering it in the upper text field just pop up a 'add
contact' prompt that do not work (the 'sip address' field seem to be
write protected), and just pressing [enter] after cut-n-pasting the SIP
address just clear the field.

Cut-n-pasting the SIP address in the text field just below it also did
nothing.

In short, while H.264 might be working with Linphone in Bookworm, I
have no idea how to test it with my current setup.

Perhaps it only work when accepting the terms of the external service?

> Are you able to connect to Zoom yourself?

Would be interesting to know the answer to this question.

> Note, the majority of my issue with the current behaviour is the
> pretend to download and enable H.264 stuff, which appear to not really
> happen. Perhaps the download code should be disabled or changed to
> suggest installing mediastreamer2-plugin-openh264? How is this
> feature behaving in newer versions?

It behave a lot better. I guess this issue can be seen as solved with
linphone version 5.1.65-4. Still have not found a way to make Linphone
useful, but at least the download popup seem to be gone.

I am happy to debug some more, and am available on #debian-voip if
someone want direct contact.

[Dennis Filder]

X-Debbugs-CC: Petter Reinholdtsen <pe...@hungry.com>

On Wed, May 17, 2023 at 08:05:44PM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Petter Reinholdtsen] <pe...@hungry.com> writes:
> > Nope. It do not seem to be available in Bullseye. I'll try with a
> > Bookworm machine and see if there is greater success there.
>
> I tested on Bookworm, and while it is different, I did not manage to
> call the SIP endpoint of Zoom.
>
> With the mediastreamer2-plugin-openh264 package installed, the H.264
> option show up as enabled, and disabling and enabling it do not ask for
> anything to be downloaded. This is great.
>
> The problem is that I try to connect it to my local Asterisk server,
> which appear to not work. I get a proxy account with the correct
> settings, but linphone do not seem to reach the server.

If you're behind NAT-ing router like most people then you usually need
some kind of SIP proxy that connects to your ISP's SIP gateway to make
it work. So, if Linphone is not working with your Asterisk server you
need to fix that first somehow.

> > Are you able to connect to Zoom yourself?
>
> Would be interesting to know the answer to this question.

Well, I don't really use Zoom, mainly for privacy reasons, so you're a
bit on your own here.

> It behave a lot better. I guess this issue can be seen as solved with
> linphone version 5.1.65-4. Still have not found a way to make Linphone
> useful, but at least the download popup seem to be gone.
>
> I am happy to debug some more, and am available on #debian-voip if
> someone want direct contact.

Okay, I will close the bug report then.

Regards.

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Dennis Filder]

> If you're behind NAT-ing router like most people then you usually need
> some kind of SIP proxy that connects to your ISP's SIP gateway to make
> it work. So, if Linphone is not working with your Asterisk server you
> need to fix that first somehow.

This was on the local network, on the same subnet as the Asterisk
server.

> Well, I don't really use Zoom, mainly for privacy reasons, so you're a
> bit on your own here.

I do not expect anyone to use Zoom voluntarely, I was just asking if you
had actually tested it following the recipe mentioned earlier in the
issue.

In any case, sad to learn that Linphone is still useless to me. I was
hoping it could provide an alternative SIP client to replace Jami, which
has proved to be a bit unstable.