[icecast] lots of icecast help needed

[Asymmetric]

At 19:57 2/27/2001 -0600, dj66 wrote:
>Hi, I've been running Icecast on my server for over five months now and am
>having lots of problems with it.  I must have pulled out half of my hair on
>this product, mostly due to lack of support.  (I mean, have you ever gotten
>an answer to your question at icecast.org?)  I've tried it all:  sc_serv,
>Icecast, shout, ices, streamcast, liveice.  I could greatly use any help.

I'm having problems of my own, but more on that later.. ;)

>I am using the latest Icecast (latest Ices, libshout and libshout-perl) from
>CVS.
>
>First, my server isn't being posted to yp.icecast.org or yp.shoutcast.com.
>Error results:
>WARNING: Connect to yp.icecast.org failed
>directory_add([yp.shoutcast.com:80]) failed, could not connect.  (retry in 0
>seconds)

I can't say for sure what could be causing this, but I'm having problems 
with yp.shoutcast.com myself.  I get:

icecast.logfile.log:[27/Feb/2001:20:03:08] [1:Calendar Thread] 
directory_add([yp.shoutcast.com:80]) failed... directory server error 
#404... (retry in 290 seconds)

etc.

I haven't looked into it yet, but I will.  If I figure anything out, I'll 
let everyone know.. I suspect shoutcast/nullsoft jerkoffs have changed 
their format or something on purpose to make it incompatible with 
icecast.  This seems to be a running theme with them.. isn't it three 
strikes and you're out?

1. icy protocol.  This thing is uber-lame.. coding for it is a nightmare, 
it's unpublished and undocumented, and stinks of people with little to no 
experience designing protocols.

2. gnutella protocol.  See 1, and then multiply by ten.

One to go!

>Right now I am using Ices, with metadata on.  (I can see the song titles
>streamed in WinAmp and in the web interface).

How is that working for you?  I'm using winamp and the shoutdsp on a 
windows box to source my streams to shoutcast and icecast, depending on my 
mood.  I've found that if I turn on metadata in icecast, the streams do 
exactly as the warning says they "might" do.. which is totally garble, 
screech, squeal, and loose sync.  It would be great if they could get this 
to work properly, as winamp is without a doubt the single most popular 
mp3/stream player in the world.

>Interestingly enough if I use sc_serv, and Ices (or shout or streamcast) in
>icy mode my server name gets posted to yp.shoutcast.com but my song names
>don't get posted.  We are trying to use yp.shoutcast.com as a means of
>drawing more people to the site.  Any ideas what's going on here?

It sounds to me like you have a conflict of protocols here.  Winamp is the 
only (to my knowledge) source that does it the icy way, all the rest use 
the x-audiocast headers.. so while your server may be able to parse and 
display both, I don't think it can forward both.  AFAIK, sc_serv will only 
send titles in icy mode and doesn't understand x-audiocast; icecast 
understands icy and x-audiocast modes, but will only send reliably in 
x-audiocast mode.  I expect that yp.shoutcast.com doesn't understand 
x-audiocast either.

This would mean that you need to use an icy mode source -and- server to get 
this to work properly, or at least a server that understands and can output 
both modes, which doesn't exist.

>Second, is there a www admin template variable for showing last 10 songs?
>There is one for the current song, but last 10 or 5 would be insanely
>better.  Is there a logged file, or logged playlist, somewhere that has
>this?  I have not been able to find it.  I image I could write a perl script
>as part of the playlist handler, but this must have been done already?

I'd like to hear what you come up with on this too.  This is one of the 
areas that sc_serv has a real win over icecast.  I miss the ability to 
define my own templates and have the output generated by the stream server 
automatically.

I'm almost to the point that I'm going to use a single-client sc_serv just 
for generating templates and touching yp.shoutcast.org, and running my 
icecast server as a client to the sc_serv so that I can get the multiple 
source capability.

I run a pretty small (for now) streaming station at http://rfnj.org but 
there are two things that I really want to do reliably and easily.

1) Generate a simple template that will output a very small file I can 
include via apache SSI that contains the currently playing song title, the 
stream bitrate, the number of users currently listening on that stream, and 
the maximum number of users supported.  This was terribly simple to do with 
shoutcast, and is proving to be a big hassle in icecast.

2) Have multiple sources that will cascade down to a default.  I need this 
functionality because I have a couple of DJs that do live shows at regular 
days/hours of the week.  With shoutcast this is a massive headache, because 
the only way to do it is for them to kick me (the main show) off the server 
and then connect their own sources before mine reconnects.. this results in 
all the listening clients being kicked off the stream.  This functionality 
works pretty well in icecast, however I do wish I could have it 
automatically switch listeners to the highest numbered source that's 
connected automatically.  As it is, the DJ has to switch them all by hand 
at the start of the broadcast, which is kind of a pain.

>Libshout likes to take down Ices and Streamcast once every other day or so,
>but it's something I can live with and work around.

Heh.  I have the same kind of problem with winamp.  If I disconnect winamp 
from icecast, it just hangs indefinitely.  Killing it causes icecast to 
hang in such a way that it can no longer accept connections and I have to 
restart it as well.

Good luck, and maybe we'll see some updates to icecast (and the website) 
sometime this year. ;)

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