In preparation for a pending product interview, I decided to use the Skype application that was installed by default in Ubuntu eee.  But I also wanted to record our conversation.  I figured that someone would have already created an app to do that.  That's when I came across the Skype Call Recorder.  The free open source software is quite new with it's latest version at 0.5.  You can configure it to record manually or automatically and save the recordings as either MP3, Ogg Vorbis or WAV files.  It also supports split stereo recording.  Skype Call Recorder has packages for Ubuntu, Debian, Xandros (Asus Eee PC), RPM and various other distributions available from their site.  Of course, you could always download the source code and compile it yourself.

After installation, I started the Skype Call Recorder and Skype.  I did the mandatory test call and the recorder worked perfectly without a hitch.  But I wanted the app to save the recordings to the flash drive.  So I opened up the recorder's preferences, set it to the new target directory, and that's when my troubles started.

For some reason, the Skype Call Recorder refused to save to the flash drive.  I figured it might be because of the permissions on the drive.  So I tried to change it to make it readable and writable for all users.  Well, that didn't work.  I couldn't change the permissions.

Perhaps if I changed the group to make it the same as mine?  Couldn't change that as well.

Then I thought maybe perhaps because the flash drive was formatted as FAT32.  So I changed the filesystem to EXT2. Hmm. Still no love.

Finally the following combination worked:

1. Make sure you're recording to an EXT2 filesystem. It might work on EXT3 or some other Linux filesystem, but I never tried it.
2. After inserting the flash drive and letting Ubuntu mount it, I typed the following:
   chown -R myUsername:myUserGroup /media/flashdrive
   where the flashdrive is the drive name assigned by the system

So I'm finally able to save the Skype recordings directly to the flash drive.

I so definitely need a bigger SD card for my Eee. :)