Problems starting server: Source startup failed

Question:

When I attempt to start a stream, Centova Cast displays:

Sever could not be started : Source startup failed

Answer:

This indicates that you have configured your stream to use a server-side streaming source, but your streaming source software (eg: sc_trans or ices) is refusing to start.

To determine why the source could not start, you will need to review the source logs. To do so:

  1. Login to the affected account and click the View Logs link under the Management heading.

  2. Scroll to the bottom of the log page and select click the Source Log link.

  3. Review the source log to determine the cause of the startup failure.

Some potential reasons for startup failure are listed below.

  • No Media to Play

    The most common problem is that the streaming source has no media to play. Both ices and sc_trans will exit immediately if they do not have a valid playlist to work with, which will cause the above error.

    To correct this error, you simply need to upload some media (eg: MP3's), rebuild your playlist, and then start the server again. Or, if you do not want to use a server-side source with your stream, simply turn off streaming source support for the stream, and then start the server again.

  • Ices: Re-Encoding without liblame

    If the streaming source output says something to the effect of:

    Support for reencoding with liblame was not found. You can't reencode this.

    ...this indicates that you have changed the Channels, Sample rate, or Crossfade settings on the Source tab in the stream settings, but you have not compiled ices with liblame support.

    Without liblame, ices cannot transcode your stream to the specified parameters. To fix this problem, you should either recompile ices with liblame support, or set the channels, sample rate, and crossfade settings to auto, 0 (zero), and 0 (zero), respectively.

  • If your source log says the following:

    LAME: error resetting sample rate.

    ...this indicates that the bit rate / sample rate combination you have chosen is not supported by LAME, the MPEG encoder library used by ices. For example, LAME does not appear to support 24kbps encoding at 44.1KHz -- you need to use 22.05KHz with 24kbps streams. Simply change your sample rate on the Source tab of the stream configuration editor.

If the source log is empty, this usually indicates that the path to your streaming source is incorrect. To fix this, edit /home/centovacast/system/config.php and modify the appropriate settings.

NOTE: This article is for Centova Cast v2 only; an alternate version exists for Centova Cast v3.