Error when starting RTMPSUCK on Ubuntu 10.4 LTS: Failed to start RTMP server, exiting

Originally Posted by walterk01

To stop/kill any app via the terminal use "Ctrl+c" while the terminal window is open.
If its been closed it should stop but if not run system monitor (System->Administration->System Monitor or Alt+F2 then type "gnome-system-monitor" without the quotes) search for the process in the Processes tab and either Kill or End it, this is the linux version of windows Ctrl+Alt+Del
Theres also a cmd you can use from the terminal to end or kill processes that are already running but you need to know the exact process ID number and cant just kill it by app name "kill -9 process id" to get the exact id you can run from the terminal "ps aux" which will list every process currently running , and the user it belongs to. Its going to be a long list and the ID number will be next to the username.

Thank you!

I've opened the system monitor and there are no rtmpsrv or rtmpsuck processes running.

Then I ran

sudo iptables -t nat -F
sudo iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 1935 -m owner  \! --uid-owner rtmp  -j REDIRECT
sudo su rtmp

Then if I run

./rtmpsrv

or

./rtmpsuck

I get the same error:

ERROR: startStreaming, TCP bind failed for port number: 1935
ERROR: Failed to start RTMP server, exiting!

Any idea how to fix this without rebooting? What is the best way to close rtmpsrv / rtmpsuck? Is it CTRL+C?

[walterk01]

yes even in your proxy user account ctrl+c should kill the process.
I still cant figure out why it wont bind though.
Even if you are running firewall gui frontends like firestarter or gufw it shouldnt be a problem something is using port 1935.
I cant remember the app or syntax you use to see what ports are being used by what apps at the moment

[mcpogue]

the command you are looking for is:

netstat -nl

But I'm still having trouble getting rtmpsuck to bind myself too

if I run the above command, I see this:

tcp     0.0.0.0:1935     0.0.0.0

which simply means that the computer is listening for all incoming and outgoing tcp connections on port 1935, I wish that rtmpsuck and rtmpsrv had the option of giving an ip address to bind to, such as the loopback address or 192.168.1.100 as it stands now, it seems as if the server is trying to bind to ALL addresses on port 1935, that is bound to cause problems if it thinks that some other program is already listening on port 1935

[mcpogue]

it is nice to see that stream recorder could duplicate my exact error so you fellas know I wasn't hallucinating and that I was being a good boy and following directions!

[mcpogue]

Finally got it to bind, however after redirecting with iptables and switching to special user, i run

./rtmpsuck

and i see

streaming on rtmp://0.0.0.0:1935

go to firefox and play the stream and...

nothing, just sits there...no output

any ideas?

[walterk01]

Did you switch to the proxy account before using rtmpsuck?
Did you remember to make the directory it is saving to shared across both user accounts, yours and the proxy?
Are you sure its a rtmp/rtmpe stream?
It could be regular http flv/f4v stream and in that case the firefox addon DownloadHelper would be all thats needed.
If it is rtmp check the syntax used for the rule monitoring, remember to include "\!" without the quotes.
If you did all that and no stream try other rtmp sites see if theres no downloading what happens when you invoke rtmpsrv?
Does anything display?

[mcpogue]

Originally Posted by walterk01

Did you remember to make the directory it is saving to shared across both user accounts, yours and the proxy?

How do I create a shared directory?

[walterk01]

In your original account (not the proxy) in nautilus (the file browser for ubuntu) right click on the directory you would like to save files in or create it and then right click and select "Sharing Options"
Next make sure to check "Share this Folder" and "Allow others to create and delete files in this folder" then click "Create Share" and then ubuntu will take it from there either your folder will become shared or you will be notified via pop up that ubuntu needs to download and install some extra packages and after it has then the folder will be shared across all user accounts and now proxy via rtmpsuck will be able to save files to that folder.

I recommend after compiling rtmpdump you install it system wide with

sudo make install

because this way you dont have to be in the rtmpdump folder or point to it when you switch accounts to the proxy one, simply typing "rtmpsuck" when in the proxy account will work.

[mcpogue]

any idea how to do that on Fedora? I switched from Ubuntu because the GUI keeps freezing up on me with a pink screen, no login or panels visible, and rebooting does not fix the problem. Anyway, I'm reaching a point of frustration now where I am almost ready to give rtmpsuck and rtmpsrv the office, because I have tried on two different distros to get them to work to no avail. rtmpdump is a great program but without one of the other two, it becomes very difficult to determine the hidden stream url without using a debbuger to pour over a memory dump of firefox.

At first I could not get either program to bind at all, causing the error at the top of this thread, now after finally getting rtmpsuck to bind, it just sits there grinning at me with "streaming on 0.0.0.0:1935" and no further output. And YES I did redirect the output with the owner match with iptables and no I did not forget the escaped negation operator /! in the line. When you mentioned creating a "shared folder" I assumed you meant a shared directory in linux where members of a certain group could read and write files to a common directory, and that is what I did. I had no idea you meant create a network share, which I have no idea how to do because this machine is not a member of a workgroup or domain, and I am not really sure that I should because of security risks to my pc. But if that is what is required to get these programs running then someone please help. By the way, the site I am trying to stream is hulu, but I have navigated to other sites to try fetching their urls, but with the same result..........nothing

[walterk01]

You dont need to set up a workgroup etc since its not going to be samba but the proxy account will not be able to save anything on your main account unless theres a shared directory.
I guess what could be done is switch to or create a directory on the proxy account and have rtmpsuck download to that and you wouldnt have to worry about permissions and shared folders but of course you'd have to still move whatever files you saved to your main account anyway.
As for doing it on Fedora, like ubuntu Fedora's default gui is gnome so it should be exactly the same or similar.
Did you try running rtmpsrv?
If the syntax for downloading was generated, then it definitely is the lack of a shared directory, when i first tried rtmpsuck i was stumped as to why it wouldnt save anything while rtmpsrv was generating the syntax.
Lack of a shared directory was the problem.
I decided to stick with rtmpsrv, just use that to generate the syntax to download and after exiting the proxy ,canceling the monitoring rule invoke rtmpdump, rtmpsuck is really only supposed to be used as a last resort when rtmpdump fails at least according to the old 2.1 documentation maybe its changed, i havent read up on it.

Edit:
Heres what i discovered for 2.2e on my system.
rtmpsrv now generates the syntax and automatically begins downloading the file, if its invoked in shared folder/partition so rtmpsuck should not be necessary.