Streaming Service with Icecast

Note: we will be using the icecast-kh fork that contains some extra stuff and features/fixes/improvements that may eventually land in vanilla icecast.

Installation for a Simple Setup

Software

Note: At time of writing, icecast-kh suffers from a small compilation problem with OpenSSL.

• Install dependencies (Debian)

apt install libxslt1-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libtheora-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

• Get the sources

cd /usr/src
git clone https://github.com/karlheyes/icecast-kh

• Compile and install

cd icecast-kh
./configure --with-openssl
make
make install

Firewall

• Make sure you listen on 8000, adjust your iptables:

-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 8000 -j ACCEPT

You can adjust to your liking, 8000 is the default for Icecast.

Basic Configuration

Simple setup with icecast accepting 4 sources, changing process ownership to nobody:nogroup, and running in a chroot.

• log files in chroot:

mkdir /usr/local/share/icecast/log
chown nobody:nogroup /usr/local/share/icecast/log

• /usr/local/etc/icecast.xml:

  <icecast>
      <location>𓅣</location>
      <admin>top.cool@c_est.super.deluxe</admin>
  
      <limits>
          <clients>64</clients>
          <sources>4</sources>
          <queue-size>524288</queue-size>
          <client-timeout>30</client-timeout>
          <header-timeout>15</header-timeout>
          <source-timeout>10</source-timeout>
          <burst-size>65535</burst-size>
      </limits>
  
      <authentication>
          <source-password>hackme</source-password>
          <relay-password>hackme</relay-password>
          <admin-user>admin</admin-user>
          <admin-password>hackme</admin-password>
      </authentication>
  
      <hostname>echo.lurk.org</hostname>
  
      <listen-socket>
          <port>8000</port>
      </listen-socket>
  
      <fileserve>1</fileserve>
  
      <paths>
          <basedir>/usr/local/share/icecast</basedir>
          <logdir>/log</logdir>
          <webroot>/web</webroot>
          <adminroot>/admin</adminroot>
          <alias source="/" dest="/index.html"/>
      </paths>
  
      <logging>
          <accesslog>access.log</accesslog>
          <errorlog>error.log</errorlog>
          <loglevel>1</loglevel> <!-- 4 Debug, 3 Info, 2 Warn, 1 Error -->
          <logsize>10000</logsize> <!-- Max size of a logfile -->
       </logging>
  
      <security>
          <chroot>1</chroot>
          <changeowner>
              <user>nobody</user>
              <group>nogroup</group>
          </changeowner>
      </security>
  </icecast>

Service file and autostart (systemd)

• Create a /etc/systemd/system/icecast.service unit file:

[Unit]
Description=Icecast
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/icecast -c /usr/local/etc/icecast.xml
ExecReload=/usr/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

• Enable the service on boot:

systemctl enable icecast

• Manage the service with

service icecast start
service icecast status
service icecast stop

MOAR Configuration

With the previous section you will get something up and running, stable and all. It's a good starting point to tweak things further.