Icecast2

#lang-c #radio #streaming #web #webradio 

Icecast is a streaming media server which currently supports Ogg Vorbis and MP3 audio streams. It can be used to create an Internet radio station or a privately running jukebox and many things in between. It is very versatile in that new formats can be added relatively easily and supports open standards for communication and interaction.

Icecast is distributed under the GNU GPL, version 2. A copy of this license is included with this software in the COPYING file.

Find the Icecast2 documentation here

Prerequisites

Your URL needs to be setup:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace web domain list
isabell.uber.space
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Installation

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cd ~/tmp
[isabell@stardust tmp]$ wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/icecast/icecast-2.4.4.tar.gz
[isabell@stardust tmp]$ tar -xzf icecast-2.4.4.tar.gz
[isabell@stardust tmp]$ cd icecast-2.4.4
[isabell@stardust icecast-2.4.4]$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME
[isabell@stardust icecast-2.4.4]$ make
[isabell@stardust icecast-2.4.4]$ make install

If there were no errors, you can safely remove the installation directory and archive:

[isabell@stardust icecast-2.4.4]$ cd ..
[isabell@stardust tmp]$ rm -r icecast-*
[isabell@stardust tmp]$

As --prefix=$HOME was used, components of icecast are in the home directory now:

  • ~/bin/icecast (icecast binary)

  • ~/etc/icecast.xml (config)

  • ~/share/icecast/ (files of the web interface)

  • ~/share/doc/icecast/ (documentation)

Configuration

Before editing a config, it’s best practice to copy the untouched config file to a *.dist file.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cp ~/etc/icecast.xml ~/etc/icecast.xml.dist
[isabell@stardust ~]$

You can then later compare your config with the default one with diff.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ diff ~/etc/icecast.xml ~/etc/icecast.xml.dist
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Use this snippet to generate random passwords:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ pwgen 32 1
topsecretrandompassword

Edit ~/etc/icecast.xml and change the following entries:

<hostname>isabell.uber.space</hostname>

<source-password>y0uRS3cR3t_1!</source-password>

<admin-password>y0uRS3cR3t_2!</admin-password>

<relay-password>y0uRS3cR3t_3!</relay-password>

<admin>yourmailadress</admin>

<location>YourLocation</location>

<listen-socket>
   <port>8000</port>
   <shoutcast-mount>/stream</shoutcast-mount>
</listen-socket>

<paths>

   <ssl-certificate>/home/isabell/share/icecast/isabell.uber.space.pem</ssl-certificate>
</paths>

Use the port you were assigned by uberspace port add above.

Create ~/share/icecast/update-cert.sh to consolidate certificate keys into one file.

#!/bin/sh
CRTFILE=/home/isabell/etc/certificates/isabell.uber.space.crt
KEYFILE=/home/isabell/etc/certificates/isabell.uber.space.key
PEMFILE=/home/isabell/share/icecast/isabell.uber.space.pem

cat $CRTFILE $KEYFILE > $PEMFILE
chmod 640 $PEMFILE
supervisorctl restart icecast

Change permissions and execute this script initially.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ chmod +x ~/share/icecast/update-cert.sh
[isabell@stardust ~]$ ~/share/icecast/update-cert.sh
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Edit crontab with crontab -e and add following line for monthly execution.

@monthly /home/isabell/share/icecast/update-cert.sh > /dev/null

Create the directory for the log files.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ mkdir -p ~/var/log/icecast/
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Try to manually run icecast with your config to print out possible errors.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ ~/bin/icecast -c ~/etc/icecast.xml
[isabell@stardust ~]$

If it is running without errors, close it with Ctrl+C. Otherwise most likely you need to fix them in your config.

Now you can set up the service by creating a file ~/etc/services.d/icecast.ini with the following content. Be sure to place your username.

[program:icecast]
command=%(ENV_HOME)s/bin/icecast -c %(ENV_HOME)s/etc/icecast.xml
autostart=yes
autorestart=yes

After creating the configuration, tell supervisord to refresh its configuration and start the service:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ supervisorctl reread
SERVICE: available
[isabell@stardust ~]$ supervisorctl update
SERVICE: added process group
[isabell@stardust ~]$ supervisorctl status
SERVICE                            RUNNING   pid 26020, uptime 0:03:14
[isabell@stardust ~]$

If it’s not in state RUNNING, check the logs.

Configure web server

Note

Icecast is running on port 8000.

To make the application accessible from the outside, configure a web backend:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace web backend set / --http --port <port>
Set backend for / to port <port>; please make sure something is listening!
You can always check the status of your backend using "uberspace web backend list".
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Additional configuration

Find more configuration possibilities in the configdocu.

With this basic setup you can already stream audio from a source client like mixxx to your icecast server by providing

  • the listening port,

  • source as username and the source-password,

  • your hostname or ip address.

On the icecast website you can find a list of other possible clients.

Administration

You can find your logs in ~/var/log/icecast/.

You may want to change the log level from Info 3 to Debug 4 for debugging.

<loglevel>4</loglevel> <!-- 4 Debug, 3 Info, 2 Warn, 1 Error -->

After having changed the icecast.xml you need to restart the service.

Best practices

Source streaming can be done locally by oggfwd in combination with ffmpeg to encode to Ogg Vorbis format.

[isabell@localhost ~]$ ffmpeg -i $yourinputfile -vn -acodec libvorbis -b:a 128k -f ogg -y /dev/stdout |
oggfwd isabell.uber.space $yourlisteningport y0uRS3cR3t_1! /stream.ogg

A more detailed setup for live streaming concerts with JACK audio server can be found at: https://lar.ven.uber.space/streaming_setup

Updates

Note

Check the latest news regularly to stay informed about the newest changes.

Tested with icecast-2.4.1 and Uberspace 7.3.10

Written by: benks <uberspace@benks.io>