asterisk users - Mar 2016 - Using Asterisk to play Icecast streams

Hi all,

A long time ago I built an Asterisk system that plays IceCast streams via
moh.

extensions.conf:
Exten => moh,1,Set(SIP_CODEC=ulaw)
Exten => moh,2,Answer
Exten => moh,3,MusicONHold(test_new)
Exten => moh,4,Hangup

musiconhold.conf
; test_new
[test_new]
mode=custom
application=/etc/mystreams/test_new.sh

test_new.sh
#!/bin/bash
wget -q -T 120 -O - 'http://myURL.com/my_test_stream' |
/usr/local/bin/madplay -Q -o raw:- --mono -R 8000 -a -10 -

Over all this does work good however:
1) I want to be able to add a few hundred streams per box. Not all streams
are being listed to at once. Once you add a MOH class to musiconhold.conf
it stays up forever (which I can understand why). When trying realtime
madplay wont be loaded until it's called in the dial plan.  After that it
is in Asterisk until I restart asterisk. If we have 20-30 streams it's OK
but once that grows it can bog down the machine.
2) I found that it for some reason the stream returns a 404 (it goes off
line etc.) then 10-15% of one core gets locked up until the stream comes
back online. The issue is that if a few  streams have an issue then I am
locking up one care. From debuging the scripts it seems Asterisk keeps
calling my bash script over and over. In the full I get:
[2016-03-14 06:39:23] WARNING[12534] res_musiconhold.c: poll() failed:
Interrupted system call
[2016-03-14 06:39:23] WARNING[12534] res_musiconhold.c: poll() failed:
Interrupted system call
I tried using realtime along with a script that would check each stream and
if there was a 404 to delete it from MySQL. This did not help. Asterisk
would keep repeating the above logs till Asterisk was restarted.

Is there any way to have Asterisk remove a class if it's not in use? What
would be the right way to go about building such a system?

EDIT: I found that adding a simple sleep 2 to my bash script would slow
things down and if a stream went down it would lower the CPU usage by a lot.

TIA.

Dovid
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20160316/4ee1a58f/attachment.html>

On Wed, 16 Mar 2016, Dovid Bender wrote:
> 1) I want to be able to add a few hundred streams per box. Not all 
> streams are being listed to at once. Once you add a MOH class to 
> musiconhold.conf it stays up forever (which I can understand why). When 
> trying realtime madplay wont be loaded until it's called in the dial 
> plan.? After that it is in Asterisk until I restart asterisk. If we have 
> 20-30 streams it's OK but once that grows it can bog down the machine.
> 2) I found that it for some reason the stream returns a 404 (it goes off 
> line etc.) then 10-15% of one core gets locked up until the stream comes 
> back online. The issue is that if a few? streams have an issue then I am 
> locking up one care.
For these and other reasons, I think streaming is dumb (in most cases).

I have a client that wanted to allow his customers to enter URLs for their 
moh. Bad idea. They kept entering invalid URLs which would cause bits to 
crash. Further, we started getting complaints from URL providers as to why 
we were streaming 24x7 and from our colo about the bandwidth.

My solution* (which the customers either haven't figured out yet or
don't
mind) was:

1) Customers submit URLs to my client.

2) Once entered into the system, the customer can select the 'station' 
from a web page.

3) I record 24 hours of the stream and then use sox to break into separate 
files on the silence between songs.

4) I create a moh class that random plays the files.

*) My client approved the solution which may be of questionable legality 
depending on the stream.

-- 
Thanks in advance,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Edwards       sedwards at sedwards.com      Voice: +1-760-468-3867 PST
             https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-edwards-4244281

Steve,

These are live streams of events so I can't simply rip the audio. As I
mentioned at the end of my email putting in a sleep did help a bit however
there are only so many streams Asterisk will grab nicely at once with out
spiking the CPU. I also tinkered a bit with real time here is what I found:
1) If we have cachertclasses=no then Asterisk will only pull the stream if
some one is listening to that particular class. the upside of this is that
we only pull a stream if we need it. The down side is if say there are four
people listening to StreamX then we have four separate connections to
StreamX.
2) If we have cachertclasses=yes set then Asterisk then we have the
opposite of #1. The stream will be pulled if some one starts listening to
it. If anyone hangs up then we still keep pulling the stream so over time
if every stream is touched then we will over load the CPU.

I guess I am trying to find a match between the two. Only pull the stream
if some one is invoking MOH for this moh class and if there is no one else
on hold to kill it. If this is not available yet we are willing to pay for
a patch.


On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 4:03 PM, Steve Edwards <asterisk.org at
sedwards.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Mar 2016, Dovid Bender wrote:
>
> 1) I want to be able to add a few hundred streams per box. Not all streams
>> are being listed to at once. Once you add a MOH class to
musiconhold.conf
>> it stays up forever (which I can understand why). When trying realtime
>> madplay wont be loaded until it's called in the dial plan.  After
that it
>> is in Asterisk until I restart asterisk. If we have 20-30 streams
it's OK
>> but once that grows it can bog down the machine.
>>
>
> 2) I found that it for some reason the stream returns a 404 (it goes off
>> line etc.) then 10-15% of one core gets locked up until the stream
comes
>> back online. The issue is that if a few  streams have an issue then I
am
>> locking up one care.
>>
>
> For these and other reasons, I think streaming is dumb (in most cases).
>
> I have a client that wanted to allow his customers to enter URLs for their
> moh. Bad idea. They kept entering invalid URLs which would cause bits to
> crash. Further, we started getting complaints from URL providers as to why
> we were streaming 24x7 and from our colo about the bandwidth.
>
> My solution* (which the customers either haven't figured out yet or
don't
> mind) was:
>
> 1) Customers submit URLs to my client.
>
> 2) Once entered into the system, the customer can select the
'station'
> from a web page.
>
> 3) I record 24 hours of the stream and then use sox to break into separate
> files on the silence between songs.
>
> 4) I create a moh class that random plays the files.
>
> *) My client approved the solution which may be of questionable legality
> depending on the stream.
>
> --
> Thanks in advance,
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steve Edwards       sedwards at sedwards.com      Voice: +1-760-468-3867
PST
>             https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-edwards-4244281
> --
> _____________________________________________________________________
> -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
> New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs:
>                http://www.asterisk.org/hello
>
> asterisk-users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20160316/a8c06d3f/attachment.html>