Installation
This chapter describes how to install Flussonic Media Server. Prior to installation, please read the System requirements page.
Contents:
- Administrator's password and login
- Installing on Ubuntu
- Installing RPM on CentOS/RedHat
- Updating Flussonic Media Server
- Which version is currently installed?
- How to revert to the previous version?
- Starting and stopping Flussonic Media Server
- Running Flussonic in a Docker container
Administrator's password and login
On the start page Flussonic asks you to enter the license key that you have received and the Administrator's username and password that you are actually going to use.
Caution
Both login and password must NOT include any of the following characters: @, ;, #, [, \, /, =
You can later change the Administrator password by using the web interface (Config > Access):
Danger
In Flussonic versions prior to 20.10 immediately after the installation change the default login and password flussonic
and letmein!
and specify your own login and password. In order to change the Administrator password, you can edit the config file /etc/flussonic/flussonic.conf
and change the value of the edit_auth
directive.
When you are done manually editing the config file, run the following command:
service flussonic reload
Installing on Ubuntu
Supported architectures: amd64, arm64. The i686 architecture is not supported.
Required OS version: Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04.
Installing Flussonic Media Server using Debian package:
wget -q -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/flussonic.gpg http://apt.flussonic.com/binary/gpg.key;
echo "deb http://apt.flussonic.com binary/" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/flussonic.list;
apt update;
apt -y install flussonic flussonic-transcoder;
Note. The package flussonic-transcoder
is necessary only if you plan to use the CPU to perform transcoding.
To learn what packages you can install, use the following command instead of the command above:
apt-get -y --install-recommends --install-suggests install flussonic
Now you are ready to start Flussonic Media Server:
service flussonic start
Open in the browser the Flussonic's web interface http://FLUSSONIC-IP:80/
, (change FLUSSONIC-IP
to the real address of the hosting server to which you installed the software.
In the web interface http://FLUSSONIC-IP:80/
paste the license key that you have received. Also, set the Administrator's login and password.
To check whether your Flussonic installation is correct, run the following command:
service flussonic status
Now installation is complete, and Flussonic Media Server is ready to operate. However, for best performance with a large number of clients, we suggest you do some system tuning.
You also need to completely disable swap, as its presence is not compatible with video streaming. If the server doesn't have enough RAM, it can't be extended by swap
.
Flussonic configuration file
Starting from version 20.10, Flussonic is delivered without a ready-made configuration file. When you start the web interface for the first time and save the entered username, password and license key, a configuration file is automatically created and it contains the default settings (the path to the Pulse database and session log).
If you have experience using Flussonic, you can also prepare this file manually, specify the login and password there and copy it to the server immediately after installation.
Installing RPM on CentOS/RedHat and the like
Danger
We strongly recommend that you avoid using RPM-based distributions: CentOS, RedHat, Suse, etc. This is due to a number of reasons. We do not provide technical support on issues concerning RPM packages and distributions to users who have purchased less than 10 user licenses.
Installing Flussonic Media Server from Yum repository:
cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/Flussonic.repo <<EOF
[flussonic]
name=Flussonic
baseurl=http://apt.flussonic.com/rpm
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
EOF
yum -y install flussonic-erlang flussonic flussonic-transcoder
service flussonic start
Updating Flussonic Media Server
To install updates, simply update the packages and install Flussonic:
apt-get update
apt-get -y install flussonic
service flussonic restart
Which version is currently installed?
dpkg -l | grep flussonic
How to revert to the previous version?
It is sometimes necessary to install the previous version.
To do this, you must specify the exact version of the flussonic
package and its dependencies.
Suppose you want to revert to version 19.06.1.
- Get dependencies' versions by using
apt-cache
:
apt-cache show flussonic=19.06.1 | egrep '^(Depends|Suggests):'
Result will be like:
Depends: flussonic-erlang (=21.3.6) | flussonic-erlang_21.3.6, flussonic-transcoder-base (=4.6.2) | flussonic-transcoder-base_4.6.2
Suggests: flussonic-transcoder (>= 4.5)
- Install packages with these versions:
apt-get install flussonic=19.06.1 flussonic-erlang=21.3.6 flussonic-transcoder-base=4.6.2
Danger
Before installing packages create a backup of the configuration files in the directory /etc/flussonic
and .db
files in the directory /opt/flussonic/priv
(this directory is used by default, you can change the path in the configuration file).
Danger
We cannot guarantee the server's operation on those Linux distributions for which we do not provide installation packages.
Starting and stopping Flussonic
Use the following commands:
to start the service:
service flussonic start
to stop the service:
service flussonic stop
to restart the service:
service flussonic restart
to reconfigure with client connections live:
service flussonic reload
Running Flussonic in a Docker container
Flussonic Media Server is available for installation to Docker containers.
Installation in Docker will allow you to run Flussonic on different operating systems if they support Docker, not just Ubuntu. It also allows you to take full advantage of Docker's benefits: isolation, security, container orchestration, and more. We recommend Docker for testing and experimentation, for small scape services, and when you use only TCP/HTTP
protocols.
How to run Flussonic in a container:
docker run -p 80:80 -v /etc/flussonic:/etc/flussonic flussonic/flussonic
Note
Make sure that port 80 is not used by other applications.
Limitations:
We do not recommend using the following Flussonic functions when it runs in a container, because additional configuration is required:
- UDP ingest (IGMP)
- Hardware transcoding (NVENC,QSV)
- WebRTC protocol
Rolling release updates
We release a new Flussonic version every month, but we also have a repository with rolling updates (that are released between two major releases). Every day we update it with new Flussonic builds that contain new features and bug fixes. Rolling updates are Release Candidate versions that we run in our laboratory and offer to some customers who want to get updates before the next official release comes out.
These instructions will help you to install a rolling update, return back to the major release, back up the configuration, and prepare the information for the support team if the installation has failed.
How to install a rolling update
Remove the currently installed version of Flussonic and its dependencies:
apt remove flussonic
Change the repository to the one with rolling updates and install Flussonic:
echo "deb http://apt.flussonic.com/repo master/" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/flussonic.list;
apt update;
apt install flussonic;
service flussonic restart
How to return to the major release
Remove the currently installed version of Flussonic and its dependencies.
Danger
Before removing the packages, create a backup of the configuration files located in the directory /etc/flussonic
and the .db
files in the directory /opt/flussonic/priv
(this directory is used by default, you can change the path in the configuration file).
apt remove flussonic
Change the repository to the one with official releases and install Flussonic:
echo "deb http://apt.flussonic.com binary/" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/flussonic.list;
apt update;
apt install flussonic;
service flussonic restart
Danger
If Flussonic fails to start, run the commands systemctl status flussonic.service
and journalctl -xe
and send their output to our technical support team.