One of the challenges I’ve had as the systems administrator for Still Stream is to automate the playback of a recorded show at a particular time. This probably sounds like a straight forward task but most of the current ShoutCast tools seem to be developed around a DJ broadcasting a live show, or the server playing playlists on repeat.
After giving this problem some thought I pinned down some requirements for a basic project:
- Must be compatible with a ShoutCast v1 streaming server
- Runnable on my Ubuntu Linux server
- Streams one mp3 file and then quits
- The mp3 file is to be specified at the command line
- Task can be scheduled via cron or at
Researching these utilities wasn’t straight forward so I had to try sc_trans, icegenerator, and ezstream before I settled on liquidsoap. It’s a great all round tool which is highly configurable. Plus it’s included in the Ubuntu package collection.
To get a working set up I started by focusing on an XML file (stillstream.liq) to give liquidsoap its configuration details:
source = playlist.once("/home/innerteapot/Music/stillstream.m3u", on_done={shutdown()} )
output.shoutcast(%mp3, host="yourserver.com",
port=8765,
password="supersecret",
genre="Ambient",
url="http://stillstream.fm/",
name="Still Stream All Ambient",
fallible=true,
source)
set("log.file",false)
set("log.stdout",true)
set("log.level",3)
The second part of the setup is a simple shell script to generate the playlist, stop the autodj, stream the file, and start the autodj again:
#!/bin/bash
if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]
then
echo "usage: stillstream_broadcast "
exit 1
fi
echo "===> Preparing playlist"
echo `readlink -m "$1"` > /home/innerteapot/Music/stillstream.m3u
echo >> /home/innerteapot/Music/stillstream.m3u
echo "===> Streaming"
date
curl "http://yourserver.com/api/?key=secretkey1234567890&action=stop" && \
echo && \
liquidsoap /home/innerteapot/etc/stillstream.liq
curl "http://yourserver.com /api/?key=secretkey1234567890&action=start" && \
echo
date
I’m using the readlink command to get the full path to the file. I’ve also thrown in some && operators to ensure that the dj stop command is successfully triggered before liquidsoap attempts to run. The corresponding echo commands are there to improve the output formatting a little. Makes the resulting emails from the at scheduler easier to read.
Invoking using the at command goes something like this:
$ at 10pm warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh at> stillstream_broadcast Music/AWE20141122-Nevermore02-128k.mp3 at>
So there you have it. Streaming from the command line.
Now I can finally schedule Adventures in Sound 🙂