Icecast - Jan 2005 - listener authentication for multiple mountpoints; client connections seems high

Two quick questions:

1.  Is it ok to use the same password file for multiple mountpoints, or 
will that cause problems?

2.  Why would my clients number 113 larger than my number of listeners? 
  It was right earlier today, but when I restarted the sources it 
increased by 113, and it has stayed that high since then.  I find it 
especially odd since I have clients set to 100 in icecast.xml, and this 
constantly exceeds it.

Thanks,
Joel

I asked this questions before, but I think it got lost/ignored in all 
the traffic.  So I'm asking it again.

Why would my clients number always be 113 larger than my number of 
listeners?  It was right earlier today, but when I restarted the sources 
it increased by 113, and it has stayed that high since then.  I find it 
especially odd since I have clients set to 100 in icecast.xml, and this 
constantly exceeds it.

Where does this number come from, and what does it mean if it isn't the 
sum of the clients for each stream?  I know it should include static 
content as well, but I don't have 113 clients constantly downloading 
static content.  And why is it allowed to exceed my max clients anyway?

I actually asked another question too, but I think I'll ask one at a 
time this time so it's more likely to get noticed.

Joel

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Joel Ebel wrote:
> it increased by 113, and it has stayed that high since then.  I find it
> especially odd since I have clients set to 100 in icecast.xml, and this
> constantly exceeds it.
> Where does this number come from, and what does it mean if it isn't the
> sum of the clients for each stream?  I know it should include static
> content as well, but I don't have 113 clients constantly downloading
> static content.  And why is it allowed to exceed my max clients anyway?
I think it 'remembers' all connections and keeps just incrementing that
number as new connections occure. See it as a counter for the total amount
of connections since the server was started. The true number of connected
clients can be extracted from the stats.xsl files in the servers admin
pages.

Regards,
Frank Keijzers

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On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 13:19:08 -0500, Joel Ebel <jbebel@ncsu.edu>
wrote:
> I asked this questions before, but I think it got lost/ignored in all
> the traffic.  So I'm asking it again.
> 
> Why would my clients number always be 113 larger than my number of
> listeners?  It was right earlier today, but when I restarted the sources
> it increased by 113, and it has stayed that high since then.  I find it
> especially odd since I have clients set to 100 in icecast.xml, and this
> constantly exceeds it.
> 
> Where does this number come from, and what does it mean if it isn't the
> sum of the clients for each stream?  I know it should include static
> content as well, but I don't have 113 clients constantly downloading
> static content.  And why is it allowed to exceed my max clients anyway?
> 
> I actually asked another question too, but I think I'll ask one at a
> time this time so it's more likely to get noticed.
> 
> Joel
That's very strange. I've never seen that behaviour. Perhaps you could
give some more detailed explanations of how you've got things set up?

At a minimum:
  - icecast version (and what platform you're running it on)
  - icecast config file (with passwords blanked out, of course)
  - description of _precisely_ what figure you're looking at that's
113 off, and where you found that number.
  - description of what sources you have connected, etc.

Mike

So here was my other question that got missed.
> 1.  Is it ok to use the same password file for multiple mountpoints, or 
> will that cause problems?
I just want to us the same passwords for two different streams.  I'm 
also curious if this is in any way related to clusters or grouping 
mentioned in the new features of icecast 2.2.  I don't think it is, but 
I can't find any good documentation on what clusters or groups are, or 
how to use them if I wanted to.

Thanks,
Joel

Joel Ebel wrote:
> So here was my other question that got missed.
>> 1.  Is it ok to use the same password file for multiple mountpoints, or
>> will that cause problems?
I shouldn't think so, but I've not used this feature.
> I just want to us the same passwords for two different streams.  I'm
also
> curious if this is in any way related to clusters or grouping mentioned in 
> the new features of icecast 2.2.  I don't think it is, but I can't
find any
> good documentation on what clusters or groups are, or how to use them if I 
> wanted to.
Clustering and grouping are both to do with YP listings. clustering allows 
you to list the same actual stream housed on different servers in the same 
directory listing, hence the need for a password.

Geoff.



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At 07:40 PM 1/13/2005, you wrote:
>So here was my other question that got missed.
>
>>1.  Is it ok to use the same password file for multiple mountpoints, or 
>>will that cause problems?
no problems at all with this.
>I just want to us the same passwords for two different streams.  I'm
also
>curious if this is in any way related to clusters or grouping mentioned in 
>the new features of icecast 2.2.  I don't think it is, but I can't
find
>any good documentation on what clusters or groups are, or how to use them 
>if I wanted to.
cluster - a group of mountpoints from different icecast servers that should 
all contain the same exact content.  This is usually only used when a relay 
is setup.  In this case you configure the original stream and all it's 
relays with the same "cluster password" and they will appear as a
single
"unit" on the stream directory (YP).  When someone clicks on the
listen
link for that cluster, they are served an m3u that contains all the 
mountpoints in that cluster.

groups - The stream directory will group all mountpoints coming from the 
same listing IP and the same server name into a "group".  You might
use
this if you were broadcasting a single station in multiple bitrates.  In 
this case you would probably have a mountpoint for each bitrate.  And if 
you gave them all the same server name (server descriptions can be 
different) then they will be visually grouped together on the stream 
directory. http://dir.xiph.org/index.php?sgenre=&stype=&search=sluchaj
is a
good example of a server grouping... Note that you cannot do anything to 
make this grouping occur via icecast (outside of making sure that streams 
you want to group will come from the same listing IP and will have the same 
server name).  It is done by the stream directory itself.

oddsock