About Ezstream

Ezstream is a command line source client for Icecast media streaming servers. It began as the successor of the old "shout" utility, and has since gained a lot of useful features.

In its basic mode of operation, it streams media files or data from standard input without reencoding and thus requires only very little CPU resources. It can also use various external decoders and encoders to reencode from one format to another, and stream the result to an Icecast server. Additional features include scriptable playlist and metadata handling. All of its features make ezstream a very flexible source client.

Supported media formats for streaming are MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora. Native metadata support includes MP3 (ID3v1 only) and Ogg Vorbis, and many more formats when the optional TagLib support has been compiled in.

Ezstream is free software and licensed under the GNU General Public License.

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Download

Latest version: 0.5.3 [ Changes ]

Package	Download Link
Source .tar.gz (all platforms)	ezstream-0.5.3.tar.gz MD5: a07941d52a4705f8d02c9c9ee6e05750
Windows NT/2000/XP binary	ezstream-0.5.3-win32.zip MD5: f2e7484bcd3f51a5f30fd10d4649add3

Older releases can be found at http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/ezstream/.

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Further Information

Dependencies

• libshout 2.2.x (http://www.icecast.org/download.php)
• Dependencies of libshout, such as libogg, libvorbis, libtheora, etc. (http://www.vorbis.com/ and http://www.theora.org/)
• libxml 2.x (http://xmlsoft.org)
• Optional: Taglib 1.x (1.4 or newer recommended, used via the libtag_c wrapper) (http://developer.kde.org/~wheeler/taglib.html)
• Optional: GNU libiconv (or iconv() in libc) (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/)

UNIX (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, ...)

On UNIX and UNIX-like systems, such as Linux and *BSD, binary packages for the required libraries are usually available. To compile ezstream, ensure that the respective -devel packages are installed as well, if applicable. Further steps, and more, are explained in the README and INSTALL files inside the distribution package.

It might be a good idea to check whether the operating system vendor provides a binary package of a recent ezstream release and install that one instead of building from source.

Windows

Windows users can simply copy the ezstream.exe file from the binary distribution archive (.ZIP) to any location of their choosing. As of version 0.3.0, the Win32 version of ezstream no longer requires any .DLL files and is entirely self-contained. Because of this simplicity, an installer is no longer provided. Users, who wish to be able to run ezstream anywhere on their system, can add the directory that contains ezstream.exe to their PATH environment variable.

Even more ...

Comprehensive documentation of ezstream and its configuration is included in the man page ezstream(1).

Those, who are interested in how ezstream development progresses, can stay informed by occasionally looking at the NEWS file. It is kept up-to-date with important changes in ezstream as they happen.

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Release Notes

Ezstream 0.5.3 has been released on December 1st 2007.

Version 0.5.3 is a minor bugfix release.

Changes

• src/ezstream.c:
  • FIX -- Prevent (very) long-running ezstream processes from dying without error message by ignoring SIGPIPE where available.

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Support

Reporting Problems

In case of problems with ezstream, please make sure to re-read the documentation first and double-check your configuration. A lot of effort has been put into the ezstream(1) manual, and it should -- at least in theory -- answer all questions.

Of course, ezstream isn't immune to bugs. After checking whether your bug is already known, or a newer ezstream release fixes your problem, it is much appreciated that you file your complete bug report (see below) with the Xiph.org bug tracker.

If you encounter one of the following issues, you most definitely found a genuine bug:

• Ezstream crashes with a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV).
• Ezstream aborts with an "Internal error".
• A long-lived ezstream process keeps requiring more and more resources until they run out.
• A newer version of ezstream behaves surprisingly different, compared to an earlier release, even though the configuration hasn't changed. Such a behavioral change would have to be clearly intended and noted in the NEWS file, or it is considered a bug.
• A part of the documentation is missing, unclear, or plain wrong.

Of course, sensible feature requests are also welcome. Please select enhancement in the "Type:" drop-down menu for those reports.

The Good Bug Report

Since it's hard to read someone else's mind, especially over the Internet, a bug report needs to be "good". A good bug report is never too short, and contains all the necessary information to allow the developer to research, reproduce, understand and fix the problem.

Unless you are able to provide a fix (unified diff with explanation) to your problem, please follow this guide as closely as possible:

• Be precise.
  Vague phrases like "It doesn't work", "It crashes" or "There is a strange problem" are not helpful without a verbose explanation. Do not be afraid of bug reports that seem too lengthy; it's a fact of life.
• What are you using?
  Include information about the ezstream version, your operating system name, version and architecture.
• What did you do?
  Include the exact sequence of steps and events necessary to reproduce the problem. This includes, at the very least:
  • Any command line options passed to ezstream.
  • The ezstream configuration file, in full. (Please censor passwords and host names, but keep it intact otherwise.)
• What happened?
  Describe the problem that you're having, including all error and log messages that you might be seeing. In case of a crash or an "Internal error", if you're up to it, include a gdb backtrace:
  • Rebuild ezstream with debugging symbols. This can be achieved by building with "DEBUG=-g" in the environment.
  • Reproduce the issue and get a fresh core dump. On some systems, core dumps need to be enabled with "ulimit -c unlimited".
  • Run gdb(1) with the core dump. The name of the file containing the dump is either ezstream.core or just core (adjust the following command, if necessary): "gdb ezstream ezstream.core"
  • Get the backtrace, by typing "bt full" at the (gdb) prompt.
  • Include the complete backtrace in your problem report. Note that coredump files are only meaningful on the system where ezstream crashed, and are useless elsewhere - do not include the core dump itself in your report.
• Do not diagnose the problem.
  Or, well, do not do so without including the other information as well. A diagnosis won't lead to a fix unless it can be verified by analyzing all of the symptoms. The only acceptable shortcut is a working patch in the report! :-)

Good problem reports help make ezstream better, and your efforts are very much appreciated!

Contact

The current maintainer of ezstream is Moritz Grimm (mdgrimm at gmx dot net).

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