A friend of mine is working as a journalist on a french radio, La Clé des Ondes, which is broadcasted as well on FM (Bordeaux area) and as a webradio.

I’m currently helping him to evaluate a migration from the current Windows proprietary streaming setup to free software solutions.

This post is more like a friendly reminder post-it for me, last time I’ve done such IT was on Debian 9, I didn’t even know that ifconfig disappeared :]

The idea is to find a free software solution that fits his needs, in other words, that allows him to perform at least as well as his current setup. There are a lot of existing solutions, but fortunately he already limited the search range on two linux clients : Rivendell and Libretime

The roadmap is the following :

• Reinstall an old unused rig with a fresh stable Debian
• Use KVM to spawn 3 virtual machines :
  • One icecast2 server (for broadcasting)
  • Solution A, connected to the icecast server, on stream 1
  • Solution B, also connected to the icecast server, on stream 2

The virtual host

Nothing much to say here, except the need to setup a bridge interface in order to make the virtual machines accessible via network.

• Identify physical interface and specify it as manual to avoid conflict with NetworkManager service
• Setup the bridge interface

KVM and virt-manager

List the required packages (and used tutorials)

Server 1/3 : icecast2 server

Nothing much to say, as we’re in a test setup, we don’t have to tweak the configuration. Port 8000 is used (TCP). Debian’s dpkg-reconfigure setup is enough.

Basic streaming with ices2

I didn’t suceed capturing directly the virtual audio master output, so I simply set ices2 input module on playlist mode.

Testing the stream

Obviously, do not forget to setup the home router NAT rules.