[Icecast] Config and other areas of struggle

[Marvin Scholz]

On 22 Jul 2016, at 20:39, Damien Sykes-Lindley wrote:

> Hi there,
Hello!

> […]
> I then tried accessing the stream directly from the url and found to 
> my surprise that the stream was working. Since my browser has stream 
> playback support, it started playing straight away.

If your browser is able to play the stream, Icecast works and if it does 
not with a different player, that's likely a player issue or you used 
the wrong URL.

> Once I was pretty sure that I could connect, albeit in a nonstandard 
> way, to my stream and server interface on localhost, I then decided to 
> see if my stream was being broadcast to the world. Unfortunately that 
> failed in all areas. Despite having forwarded my ports through my 
> router, tried all sorts of combinations, with many more references to 
> the documentation and server/streamer restarts, I could not access it 
> through my domain address whatsoever.

Make sure you are not explicitly binding Icecast to 127.0.0.1 as then, 
it would not be possible to access it by other means than using 
localhost. If it was working before in your browser using the local 
address, than it's likely that it's not a problem with Icecast or how it 
is configured.

> […]
> So, I'm wondering:
> 1. Playback: I initially thought this was to do with extensions, but 
> since I was encoding in mp3, I didn't think an extension was needed. 
> Could there be any other reason as to why my browser is playing but my 
> media player isn't?
See above.

> 2. Mountpoints: I noticed that when configuring, mountpoints were only 
> either used for Shoutcast compatibility or for more advanced control. 
> Does the server simply create the mountpoint specified in the stream 
> settings?
Yes, if you do not require special configuration for a specific 
mountpoint, you can just use the source password with your source client 
and Icecast will implicitly "create" the mountpoint set in your source 
client.

> 3. Format: Again, I noticed that the server has no way to specify what 
> format it needs to use. Is that also defined by the stream somehow?
The server does not do any transcoding, it knows the format based on the 
content-type, so there is no need to set it. All the encoding is done by 
your source client.

> 4. Outside world: Is this something to do with bound addresses and the 
> like? I can't imagine it somehow, because I think all those are to do 
> with your hosts file and again, the documentation said this was an 
> advanced topic. If not then what else, if anything, am I missing?
No idea, never had such problems, maybe someone else is able to provide 
more information about this.

> 5. 32 v. 64 bit: I am running a 64-bit system but could only find a 
> 32-bit Icecast. Does this matter?
There is no 64 bit version of Icecast, that's not problem. You can just 
use the 32-bit Icecast on a 64 bit system.

>
> System configuration looks like this:
> OS: Windows 7 64-bit (SP1 Build 7601)
> Browser: Mozilla Firefox 47.0.1
> Icecast: 2.4.3
> Streamer: SAM 3.8.3 alongside Station Playlist Studio 5.11
> Media player: Winamp 5.7.3323
You might want to try some other player, like the VLC media player and 
tell us if it works with that, as it should.

> Any help appreciated.
> Thanks.
> Damien.