October 06, 2004

Any known issues with streaming FLV files from Linux/Apache Servers?

We are currently finishing up development of a web site for a client and have moved to migrating the site to their server. One of the sites features is displaying product and event related videos. Videos are displayed by streaming FLV files to a custom player we developed. The player is told which FLV to load by being passed the URL through a Flashvar.

The system has been working fine all through development on our Windows 2003 server, however after moving the site to the clients Linux server, the FLV files no longer stream. The player opens, but no video. I tested on another Linux (Redhat) server with a different provider and had no problems such problem.

We have tried a few things to remedy the issue:

1.We thought perhaps the server was not recognizing the FLV file type, however we were able to successfully download the FLVs when accessing them directly.

2.Previously the links in the Falshvars were relative paths. Changed these to absolute paths, but it made no difference.

3.CHMODed the FLV files to open up permissions. Again, no change…but not surprised really

4.Chatted with the hosts support team for about 30 minutes, but they were unable to figure out why it was not working as well.

5.Reloaded the files to the server to make sure nothing was corrupt.

6.Currently linking to the files on our server, but that is obviously not an ideal fix, however it will do in the short term.

Has anyone experienced this problem or have suggestions on resolving it? (Other than switching hosts…)?

Thanks,
Kris

Posted by Kris at October 6, 2004 03:28 AM
　



Comments

Just out of curiousity what flavor of Linux are they running. I was gonna stream flv's from suse and am wondering now if that will be a problem.

I have a feeling though that this is not an issue w/ the flavor of linux but a config or security issue instead.

Posted by: Joe Martinez at October 6, 2004 03:39 AM

I should have checked before I flatly stated Linux...you know what they say about assumptions.

The host is actually running FreeBSD 4.8 with Apache/1.3.29.

Posted by: Kris at October 6, 2004 03:53 AM

have you set the mime types on the server? is that what you meant by #1?

Posted by: joe at October 6, 2004 04:44 AM

Have you tried to change the owner to nobody?

Posted by: Fabricio C Zuardi at October 6, 2004 06:13 AM

We use FreeBSD 4.10 and have no problem. Ditto with 4.8 or 4.9 that we used in the past. We just used the standard media components and the XMLConnector.

Posted by: iS at October 6, 2004 06:31 AM

Can you directly link to the file and download it to your harddrive as a FLV?

If so I would explore the path approach.

Posted by: chadvavra at October 6, 2004 07:04 AM

Hi All -

Thanks for all the responses thus far. I am always impressed by the speed at which the community reacts. Info below on each of your suggestions.

Joe - Yes, mime type is what I meant by #1..hard to remember terms at 3:30am ;)

Fabricio - I used CHMOD and set permissions to 777, but have not tried 0.

chadvavra - That is what I was referring to on # 1 and #2, but thanks for the suggestion.

Regards,
Kris

Posted by: Kris at October 6, 2004 12:15 PM

Changing owner to nobody is essential in order to have everything to work... chmod 777 is not enough... usually.

Posted by: void at October 7, 2004 06:39 PM