Installation

• Read before you install Flussonic: How do I change my password?
• Installing on Debian/Ubuntu
• Installing RPM on CentOS/RedHat
• The number of open descriptors
• Updating Flussonic Media Server
• Which version is currently installed?
• How to revert to the previous version?
• Starting and stopping Flussonic Media Server
• System requirements

Read before you install Flussonic: How do I change my password?

Extremely important!

Once the installation is complete, use the following administrator login and password for managing Flussonic Media Server: flussonic and letmein!.

Do change them immediately after the installation, so as not to compromise the security of your server.

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:

/etc/init.d/flussonic reload

Another way to change the administrator password is using the Web interface (Config > Access):

Installing on Debian/Ubuntu

Supported architectures: amd64, armhf, arm64. The i686 architecture is not supported.

Required OS version: Ubuntu 16.04 and newer, Debian 8 Jessie and newer.

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:

/etc/init.d/flussonic start

Open in browser Flussonic admin web interface on the page http://flussonic-ip:8080/ and paste there license key that you have received (change "flussonic-ip" to the real address of the server). On this page you can change administrator login and password.

License key stored in /etc/flussonic/license.txt file, you can put the key there before start.

You can check whether your Flussonic installation is correct by visiting http://flussonic-ip:8080/ where flussonic-ip is the address of the hosting server to which you installed the software. You can also run the following command:

/etc/init.d/flussonic status

Now installation is complete, and Flussonic Media Server is ready to operate. However, for best performance with a high client volume, we suggest you do some system tuning.

You also need to completely disable a swap, as its presence is not compatible with video streaming. If the server doen't have enough RAM, it can't be extended b y a swap.

Installing RPM on CentOS/RedHat and the like

Important! 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
# Save the key in /etc/flussonic/license.txt
/etc/init.d/flussonic start

The number of open descriptors

By default, in OS Linux the max number of open files per process is set to 1024. This means that once the number of connections goes slightly over 1000, new connections will be refused even though there is still enough resources. Add the following lines to /etc/security/limits.conf:

root            soft    nofile 65536
root            hard    nofile 65536

The number of open descriptors exceeds the number of client connections.

Important! The syntax in the limits.conf file may vary from OS to OS. This documentation gives a working example of syntax for Debian/Ubuntu. Under other systems, syntax may be different.

Updating Flussonic Media Server

To install updates, simply update the packages and install Flussonic:

apt-get update
apt-get -y install flussonic
/etc/init.d/flussonic restart

Which version is currently installed?

dpkg -l | grep flussonic
# ii  flussonic   3.71.14   amd64        Videostreaming server

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.

1. Get dependencies' versions by using apt-cache:

   apt-cache show flussonic=19.06.1  | egrep '^(Depends|Suggests):'
    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)
   

2. Install packages with these versions:

   apt-get install flussonic=19.06.1 flussonic-erlang=21.3.6 flussonic-transcoder-base=4.6.2
   

Important! 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).

Important! 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:

/etc/init.d/flussonic start

to stop the service:

/etc/init.d/flussonic stop

to restart the service:

/etc/init.d/flussonic restart

to reconfigure with client connections live:

/etc/init.d/flussonic reload

System requirements

Please see the minimum system requirements to the host server for running Flussonic Media Server in the table below. In reality, the requirements may slightly vary depending on the number of concurrent connections to Flussonic server.

Important! When calculating host server capabilities, all resources required for normal functioning of the operating system and other services running parallel to Flussonic must be taken into account.

Minimum system requirements

For stable streaming video playback with a high volume of concurrent connections, we recommend distributing the traffic load among several real servers. For detailed information on clustering of Flussonic servers, please see the Clustering section.

Please note that when files on disk are used as the data source, the disk subsystem bears the main burden. Consequently, when planning the host server architecture for running Flussonic Media Server, special attention should be paid to the hard disk performance. For more detail on this subject, please see file streaming.

If the host server is protected with a firewall, exception rules must be set for ports and protocols used by Flussonic Media Server.

For the commercial version, it is also vital that Flussonic Media Server itself has access to the Internet via HTTP and HTTPS protocols.

Nightly builds

We release a new Flussonic version every month, but we also have a repository with nightly builds. Every day we update it with new Flussonic builds that contain new features and bug fixes. Nightly builds 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.

Every such build passes thousands of autotests and should be suitable for production environment, but we don't guarantee it. Nightly builds don't undergo manual tests and have undocumented features.

Important! You use a nightly build at your own risk even if our support engineers suggest it to you. Be careful with using nightly builds in production environment: do everyday backups and be ready to downgrade your Flussonic instance to an official release.

The support team will always help you, but within the basic support plan we can't immediately react to each incident. Our experience shows that most issues can be solved by yourself. However, if you unsure of your Linux skills, don't try installing nightly builds.

These instructions will help you to install a nightly build, return back to the official release, back up the configuration, and prepare the information for the support team if the installation has failed.

How to install a nightly build

Remove the currently installed version of Flussonic and its dependencies:

apt remove flussonic

Change the repository to the one with nightly builds and install Flussonic:

rm -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/erlyvideo.list;
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 official release

Remove the currently installed version of Flussonic and its dependencies.

Important! 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:

rm -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/erlyvideo.list;
echo "deb http://apt.flussonic.com binary/" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/flussonic.list;
apt update;
apt install flussonic;
service flussonic restart

Important! If Flussonic fails to start, run the commands systemctl status flussonic.service and journalctl -xe and send their output to our technical support team.