Connecting to stream issues

Gath Gothly · Connecting to stream issues

Many times a show starts late because you have problems connecting to a stream. From a honest-to-goodness computer geek to you... here's a bit of troubleshooting information to help you out.

Instead of putting these in steps, this article is meant to be a bit more informative, giving you various places to look at and check. This is VERY generalized and OS/client independent.

This is meant to be for a SL musician or DJ that walks into a venue, gets ready to play, and no one can hear anything. Oh noes... what to do???

The first thing to do is disable any software firewall you have running and try connecting again! Frankly, I just hate software firewalls. BUT... don't listen to me on this count, you need it - use it at all times. Worst case, disable it while you test again.

Anywho onto the troubleshooting...
The stream URL itself. Pull it up in a browser!

ie: http://my.streamserver.com:8734

If you plug the full stream url into your browser, you're presented with an informative page giving you information about the stream. That means the stream server is up and running. It's good to go.

If you can't pull that up... chances are the server itself is dead. The owner has to call whoever they have to to bounce the stream unless they have a restart option through the person they rent it from. You can sound all smart when you say "The stream server is dead, it has to be restarted".

Look at the "Server Status:" line. "Server is currently down." means no one is connected to the server. It means that YOU are not connected to the server! Chances are, you have something messed up with your stream client settings. URL, port, password...

If you're connected, it says "Server is currently up" along with all kinds of cool info like your bitrate and how many listeners you have currently connected.

Click on the "Admin Login" link. Username is "admin" and the password is the stream password you use to connect.

This set of pages gives you LOTS of information. Biggest handy thing is "tail logfile". Click that and try to connect to the stream again. You might see some handy lines in the logfile, such as BANNED or INCORRECT PASSWORD. If you don't see anything in the logfile, chances are you are not connecting to the steam with the proper information - hostname and port. Make sure you have it entered into your streaming client properly.
It looks confusing and you won't understand what you're reading - but it's pretty obvious when you connect or fail.

Note that "View Logfile" shows you the logfile, but does not "follow" the logfile in real time like "tail logfile". Viewing the logfile is nice to let you look at old log lines and troubleshoot old problems.

You can also kick listeners, ban listeners... do some other interesting stuff you probably don't actually want to do. Not unless you REALLY know what you're doing.

Note that if you are connected (stream is up), and you have listeners connected... and no one can hear anything... your mixer, guitar, or mic may be messed up. Are you muted? Ok, of course you aren't. Check again. Oh... you were? Ya... thought so.

Ok, so away from that. You're connected to the stream fine - according to the shoutcast server page above, you're on the stream, but SL doesn't hear anything - you have no listeners listed on the page above.

Back on that initial browser page... Click that listen link... or just plug that stream URL directly into your favorite media player (winamp, windows media player, mplayer). You don't need SL to listen to a stream peoples...
I can't tell you the number of times my SL client wigged out on me, and I listened to someone play with mplayer instead of the SL client.

I can't stress how cool this is. When you go to take over for a previous musician, and the venue owner is going to switch the stream to yours, you can connect and play your stream independent of SL. You can test your stream, make sure its working, well before you start playing. I normally do a test 5-10 minutes before I start and mute my mics, leaving myself connected to my stream. That way, I'm ready to go with a simple push of the mute button when the stream gets kicked over to me.

Look at the SL client logs as well. We can't always see the media URL on the land properties to verify that the stream URL is correct. I leave the SL logs running in a console (I use Linux) in the background. Point is, look at the SL client logs, which gives you the music stream URL you are trying to play. Make sure the stream URL is correct. This is usually a problem when you give a venue owner your stream info. Usually there is also some nice info besides errors in the logs "Can't find host http://mystream.com:8743" - well gee, they got the hostname and portnumber wrong.

I know it's not a lot to go off of, but there's some simple things anyone can do to look at stream issues, and generally these simple steps will let you troubleshoot most issues. Of course there's some high end stuff we geeks do above and beyond this. This little write up is meant to address simple issues that most musicians can work on right there while trying to connect for a gig.

These are the things I do when I can't get a stream going - hit the url in a browser to ensure the server is up. Look to see if I am connected. See if listeners are connected. See if I'm muted (duh... I've done this so many times).

Anyway, hope someone finds this info useful. I've noticed very few people know of any of these little tricks.

Fyrm Fouroux

Thank you very much, Gath. Very informative and should be useful next time.

EvaMoon

Wow! Really great info! Thank you.