Installation

In this chapter you will learn how to install and start Flussonic Media Server, how to upgrade to the latest version or how to downgrade to the previous version if necessary.

Table of contents:

• Prerequisites
• Installing Flussonic Media Server
• Activating Flussonic Media Server
• How to change the administrator's password?
• Updating Flussonic Media Server
• Which version is currently installed?
• How to revert to the previous version?
• Rolling release updates
• Starting and stopping Flussonic Media Server
• Running Flussonic in a Docker container

Prerequisites

Before you install Flussonic Media Server, make sure the following conditions are met:

• Your system satisfies the system requirements.
• HTTP port 80 is open and no other applications in your OS listen to this port (by default, Flussonic Media Server uses HTTP port 80).

Installing Flussonic Media Server

You can install Flussonic Media Server on Ubuntu, CentOS/RedHat and other RPM-based distributions.

On Ubuntu

Supported architectures: amd64, arm64.

Supported OS versions: Ubuntu LTS 22.04, 20.04.

Install 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;

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

On RPM-based CentOS/RedHat and others

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

Activating Flussonic Media Server

Right after the installation is finished, you have to activate Flussonic Media Server and set the license key, administrator's username and password.

To activate Flussonic Media Server:

1) Start the server by running the following command in the terminal:

service flussonic start

2) Open the Flussonic web interface by entering the http://FLUSSONIC-IP:80/ (where FLUSSONIC-IP is the IP address of your Flussonic server) URL in the browser.

3) Enter the license key you received and set the administrator's username and password that you are going to use. You can find your license key in the client area on my.flussonic.com/.

Read more about Flussonic license at Using the License Key.

4) Check if your Flussonic installation is correct by running the following command:

service flussonic status

Now Flussonic Media Server is ready to work.

When you start the web interface for the first time and activate the Flussonic Media Server, a configuration file is created automatically. It contains the default settings, such as the path to the Pulse database and session log. To learn more about a configuration file, see Flussonic Media Server configuration management.

If you already have an experience with Flussonic, you can also prepare this file manually: specify the login and password in this file and copy it to the server immediately after installation.

How to change the administrator's password?

You can change the administrator's password by editing the config file or using the web interface.

Editing the configuration file

To change the administrator's password by editing the configuration file:

1) Open the /etc/flussonic/flussonic.conf config file and change the password in the edit_auth directive.

2) To apply the changes, reload the server configuration by running the following command:

service flussonic reload

Using the web interface

To change the administrator password using the web interface:

1) Go to the Config page in the side menu.
2) Head to the Settings tab and find the Access section. Enter your new password in the Admin UI password field and repeat the password in the field below. Then click Save to apply the changes.

Updating Flussonic Media Server

To update Flussonic Media Server, update the packages and install Flussonic:

apt-get update
apt-get -y install flussonic
service flussonic restart

Which version is currently installed?

To check the version of Flussonic Media Server currently installed on a computer, run the following command in the terminal:

dpkg -l | grep flussonic

How to revert to the previous version?

It is sometimes necessary to install the previous version of Flussonic Media Server. To do this, specify the exact version of the flussonic package and its dependencies.

Suppose you want to revert to version 22.11.

1) Get versions of dependencies by using apt-cache:

apt-cache show flussonic=22.11  | egrep '^(Depends|Suggests):'

Result will be like:

Depends: flussonic-erlang (=24.0.6.3), flussonic-transcoder-base (=22.08.3)

2) Install packages with these versions:

apt-get install flussonic=22.11 flussonic-erlang=24.0.6.3 flussonic-transcoder-base=22.08.3

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.

The instructions below 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 fails.

How to install a rolling update

1) Remove the currently installed version of Flussonic and its dependencies:

apt remove flussonic

2) Change the repository to the one with the 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

1) Remove the currently installed version of Flussonic and its dependencies.

apt remove flussonic

2) 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

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.

To run Flussonic in a Docker container, use:

docker run -p 80:80 -v /etc/flussonic:/etc/flussonic flussonic/flussonic

To run Flussonic in a Docker container with hardware transcoding using NVIDIA NVENC, use the following command:

docker run --rm -p 80:80 -v /etc/flussonic:/etc/flussonic --gpus all -e NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES='all' flussonic/flussonic:latest

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 (QSV)
• WebRTC protocol