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 the autoDJ, 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:

Login to the affected account and click the Logs link under the Statistics heading.
Click the AutoDJ Log link in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
Review the source log to determine the cause of the startup failure. Note that the source log is displayed from OLDEST to NEWEST so you need to select the very last page of log data to see the recent entries.

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 enabled re-encoding for the autoDJ, 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 disable re-encoding in all of your mount points on the Mount Points tab of your stream settings.
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 one of the following:

The pathname your sc_trans or ices binary is incorrect.

To check your path, log in to your server via SSH as root and type:

grep _BIN /usr/local/centovacast/etc/cc-control.conf

The path to your ices-cc binary should appear as ICESCC_BIN=; the path to your sc_trans v2 binary should appear as `SCTRANS2_BIN='; etc.

To verify that the pathname is correct, login to your server via SSH as root.

For sc_trans v2, type the pathname and press enter. If the path is correct, you should see something like:
```
msg:<***> Logger startup
msg:<***>
msg:***************************************************************
msg:** TRANScast Distributed Network Audio Content Provider
msg:** Copyright (C) 2000-2011 Nullsoft, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
msg:** Use "sc_trans filename.conf" to specify a config file.
msg:***************************************************************
```
For ices or ices-cc, type the pathname followed by a space, and then "-V". For example, /usr/local/centovacast/ices/bin/ices -V. If the path is correct, you should see something like:
```
ices-cc 0.4.2
Features: LAME libxml Vorbis
System configuration file: /usr/local/centovacast/ices/etc/ices.conf
```
If you receive errors of any kind, this indicates that your pathname is incorrect.
There is a permissions/ownership problem on your files/directories.

Follow the instructions in the Permissions Problems section of the Disaster Recovery article to ensure that your permissions are set correctly.
A configuration problem is preventing sc_trans or ices from starting up. For example, if the port number you have chosen is already in use by another program on your server, you may see this error.

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