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>stream.domain.tld</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.

NGINX Reverse Proxy

At time of writing, reverse proxying for icecast is not really worth it. Will explain a bit more eventually.

TLS/SSL Support

It's possible to use existing X.509 certificates to provide HTTPS access to both listeners and sources. For this to work the server and intermediate certificates with the private key.

• merge fullchain.pem with privkey.pem (example with Let's Encrypt certs)

cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.tld/fullchain.pem > /usr/local/share/icecast/icecast.pem
cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.tld/privkey.pem >> /usr/local/share/icecast/icecast.pem

• Adjust icecast.xml config file with <ssl-certificate> and <ssl-allowed-ciphers>:

      <paths>
          <basedir>/usr/local/share/icecast</basedir>
          <logdir>/log</logdir>
          <webroot>/web</webroot>
          <adminroot>/admin</adminroot>
          <ssl-certificate>/usr/local/share/icecast/icecast.pem</ssl-certificate>
          <ssl-allowed-ciphers>ECDH+AESGCM:DH+AESGCM:ECDH+AES256:DH+AES256:ECDH+AES128:DH+AES:ECDH+3DES:DH+3DES:RSA+AESGCM:  RSA+AES:RSA+3DES:!aNULL:!MD5:!DSS</ssl-allowed-ciphers>
          <alias source="/" dest="/index.html"/>
      </paths>

Note: If you have used the config file of this documentation, then icecast will be reachable both on http://stream.domain.tld:8000 and https://stream.domain.tld:port. You may want to keep it like that as some clients (both for listening and emitting) do not support TLS/SSL. If you want enforce TLS/SSL, you can adjust your config file so that:

    <listen-socket>
            <port>999</port>
            <ssl>1</ssl>
    </listen-socket>

Moar Cores!

In icecast-kh it's possible to choose how many threads to use for processing clients. This should be based on the number of CPUs or cores. This can be adjusted in icecast.xml with the following line inside <limits>:

<workers>4</workers>

Relaying an External Stream (the lazy way)

This can be done simply by just pointing to the stream you want to relay. Careful though, you need to point to the remote server IP, not the domain. If you add <on-demand>, the stream will be relayed only if it is requested.

    <relay>
        <server>10.10.10.10</server>
        <port>1234</port>
        <mount>/blabla.mp3</mount>
        <local-mount>/blabla.mp3</local-mount>
        <on-demand>1</on-demand>
        <relay-shoutcast-metadata>0</relay-shoutcast-metadata>
    </relay>