Re: Regarding Openbsd and zoom/hangouts etc

On Mon, Aug 02, 2021 at 07:04:47PM +0300, Riza Dindir wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I amthinking of using openbsd as my OS, and desktop, giving up windows,
> after I am having trouble updating the system.
>
> I have a question. Is it possible to use zoom, hangouts or other
> conferencing/communication systems using the browser
> (iridium/chrome/firefox, etc) on openbsd?
>
Hi;

Zoom won't owrk on OpenBSD. You can go their test page and try it for
yourself https://zoom.us/test . Howvever jitsi works great.

Here are my notes on configuring audio and video on OpenBSD, so it
willwork with jitsi. https://meet.jit.si/

The primary reference is:

https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq13.html
in addition to the man pages.
To get audio and video working on OpenBSD:

Add yourself to group wheel in /etc/group. Do as root:
# chmod g+rw /dev/video0
or whatever your video device is. Find it in dmesg.

In /etc/sysctl.conf (file is in /etc/examples) add:

kern.audio.record=1
kern.video.record=1

Add the following lines to /etc/mixerctl.conf (mixerctl.conf
is in /etc/examples).

# $OpenBSD: mixerctl.conf,v 1.1 2014/07/16 13:21:33 deraadt Exp $
#
# mixerctl(1) configurable parameters. See mixerctl.conf(5) for
details.
#

# output volume value for most audio cards
# outputs.master=200
record.enable=on

You'll have to experiment as your laptop may not have the same
entries as my mixerctl.conf. Invariably they should begin with
"record." Do # mixerctl -av to find the settings

As an aid in getting your microphone to work use aucat (see man 1
aucat).
To do a test recoding do:
$ aucat -o test.wav
to play back the rscording, to see if your microphone is working do:
$ aucat -i test.wav

I have used Jitsi several times from my OpenBSD T420 Laptop. The
only difficulty was sharing my desktop. Firefox froze when doing
that. My guess is that happens because of pledge. Video and audio
worked great. Response times can be bad if you use Jitsi over WiFi.
I switched to ethernet and my signal strength improved.

To adjust the volume of the microphone and speakers use cmixer.
cmixer is in packages.


Kind regards,
Jonathan