Hello all:

Well so far I have been scouring the internet for anyone that is putting a Flash Media Server on a VPS. So far I have only found one person and that's it.

In any case I will be posting my experience with the FMS here as well as any tips or suggestion I come across.

I am relatively new to Linux but will be using CentOS 4 OS as it is the closest that resembles Red Hat Enterprise.

This will be my initial setup.

- Lindos 80 Setup -

Cent OS 4
Flash Media Server 2 (Developers version) max 10 connections

-Linodo 120 setup
Once I get a stable install I will add the following services ontop of the FMS server
MySQL with 1 database
PHP 4 for my personal blog (using the one database)
Apache ( to run my completely FLASH based site)



The above is a basic setup with see how FMS2 can handle the VPS environment. Being that is a video streaming server I am sure I will put quite a lot of stress on the server. In any case I will post my experiences and suggestions for any one to read

Also, please feel free to let me know of any tweaks I can do to improve the performance of this Particular OS. Again I am new to CentOS with limited Linux experience.

Sincerely
Steve

OK:

This is to help any of you that are interested in Flash media server or flash communication server. I want to add a disclaimer now to let you know that my linode was my FIRST ever venture into the realm of Linux, so some things I will put in this tutorial may seem a bit obvious.

~~Info~~
From my testing of ALL the distros only one handles the Flash Media server 2 with little to no problems and that is the RedHat9 distro. If you do decided to go tweaking crazy on FMS2 on anything other than RedHat 9 you will Definitely need to install the, "libnspr4-4.1.2-1.i386.rpm" or you will get NOWHERE

Please note that Flash Communication server 1.5 will run on CentOS 4, Debian, and Fendora with relative ease.

I have been testing this server on a linode 80 account. This is fine for testing purposes, and can easily stream 5-10 concurrent connections. The streams will be smooth and flawless (depending if you encoded the video right of course) I had friends in New York, L.A., Indonesia, Singapore, Korea, Japan, and The Checz Republic test the fluidity of the streaming and it was all good. (thanks to a nice network)

If you are doing any real streaming of course then a 120 + account will be a minimum. I hope this helps you and if any one has any questions please feel free to ask me. Ohh and of course any corrections to the tutorial

~~RedHat 9 Install~~~~

1) Fixing Up2Date
Step 1
Start by editing

macros.specspo

in the

/etc/rpm/

directory by adding the following code to the 1st line of the file.

%__dbi_cdb create private cdb mpool mp_mmapsize=16Mb mp_size=1Mb

Step 2
Go to Redhat and download the current SSL certificate or your updates will go nowhere. Put the updated certificate RHNS-CA-CERT into your

/usr/share/rhn

folder.

Step 3

up2date -u

4) Library fix

mv /lib/tls /lib/tls-disabled

5) Setting the host name

echo YOURHOSTNAME >/etc/hostname 
/bin/hostname -F /etc/hostname

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Warrning doing a (up2date -u) upgrade does break FMS and FCS. Please feel free to find out why I
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

6) Setting up a user and group for Redhat for FCS OR FMS
You really don't want to run either FCS or FMS as a root user or as nobody. It's good practice to give them there own group

~Command for Flash Media Server 2

groupadd fms
useradd -g fms fms

~Command for Flash Communication Server 1.5

groupadd fcs
useradd -g fcs fcs

4) Installing FCS or FMS
FCS and FMS are only supported by RHEL, so it will bitch at you unless you ignore it. In the install directory add the following code

./installFMS -platformWarnOnly

Follow the onscreen directions and after installation you will be up and running. All you will have to do is to drop some videos in your applications folder and stream to your hearts content



~~~Flash Communication Server 1.5 random info~~~~~
This version of the server is buggy, and it is suggested that you set up a cron job to reset the server ever night

~~~Flash Media Server 2 random info~~~~~~
This version is still buggy, but so much faster than 1.5 For some reason the admin server wont start unless you have the server running first. some times it works, some times it doesn’t? So start the server first, then the admin server next

~~~Info for both flavors~~~~
If you wish to download the Flash communication server 1.5 from Macromedia you can go to this link as it is not listed on the site any more. This was a pain to find.
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=flashcom
The script to start, stop and restart your server are as follows

To start the media server
./server (restart, stop, start)

To start the admin server
./adminserver (restart, stop, start)

Feel free to check out the video on my site and let me know what you think. It will help me do some more server testing and tweaking. Besides it deals with all kinds of extreme sports from around the world, so there is some cool stuff there to see. (Flash 8 player only)

Hope this helps, as it is my first tutorial here

Sincerely
Steve Reynolds
Owner/Producer
Expedition Sports Extreme
www.xsxtreme.com

So you were unable to get FMS2 to run on CentOS?

mspres:

I spent the MOST time on CentOS as it is the closest to RHEL. But no matter what I did it just would not work. It would install, and I would have to add that library file I mentioned and it would finally work, kind of.

The server would start up, the Adminserver would start, I could pink the server, and see the applications I installed, but it just wouldn’t accept connections any connections and or stream the data.

The log file wouldn’t show anything was wrong with it, and it didn’t scream at me at any way. The problem is there is a very small community out there that has much experience of it on Linux.

I new where to look, and still people where all baffled. The few problem I did run into, I could fix cause it gave me a reason, but in CentOS 4 and or 3 there was just no feedback.

I have heard of it working, but it is beyond me. Again I spent the last month getting update to date with Linux, which I might say I have done pretty well with.

I personally would like to run it on CentOS my self, so if you can get it to work please let me know how you did this. My knowledge of the inner working of Linux, is just too limited. But considering the Information on the web to follow there wasn’t much help.

For instance there is a bug in the install that macromedia hasn’t even mentioned, but one that the web community has fix for it's self.

In any case good luck.

For reference, I have had flash media server 3 running a live application ( a viral game thing, recording voice messages) happily for months on a linode (see it at uncoverthecure.net)
OS is centos 5.

huh, I've never touched FMS before, I just installed it on CentOS 5 on one of the Linodes at work.