All,

Ok, everything is now functioning as it should and at the time of posting, I'm in a confident position as to the state of play at S.A.

Essentially, I upgraded S.A.'s dedicated server to a new box and whilst this went well (although it did involve a number of lengthy, delicate and complex tasks including data migration of the entire website and forum, plus configuring the new box to how I needed it), I encountered a very large and totally unexpected issue when upgrading to the latest SHOUTcast server platform - version 2.0.0.29 (x64).

With the old dedicated server still running, I had all of the software and configuration settings in place on the new server and installed SHOUTcast 2.0.0.29 (x64) and was 'good to go'. Or so I thought ... Like most dedicated servers, there are multiple IP addresses assigned to it, performing different tasks - with the underlying applications and services specifically assigned to each one. The new SHOUTcast servers were installed and configured to stream the music being played from a specific, single IP address (with multiple port configurations), it refused to do so. Or should I say, when SAM connected to the new dedicated server, it began streaming from a different IP address, which had already been configured for other purposes.

I contacted the control panel software company (as I had configured and set-up the new SHOUTcast settings using this, once it was installed), explained my situation and they were not aware of any issues. As far as they were concerned, I should and could be able to stream from any IP address that I had without any issues. There is even an IP configuration option both in the control panel and the SHOUTcast server itself. Despite the control panel software company testing the new S.A. dedicated server, control panel and configuration settings, they could not establish an issue nor a problem.

Strange ... So I contacted SHOUTcast directly. Bearing in mind that SHOUTcast is open source software, I had to wait for a technical response.

Even though there was no mention within the documentation, it transpired that the new version of SHOUTcast can only be run from the main, default IP address of any server it is installed upon - and the option to select an IP address from the pool of addresses (whilst present), does not work with it always 'falling back' to the primary IP address each and every time when in use.

With the domain name 'stellar-attraction.net' already configured, the new server server in situ and the contract on the old expiring, I was well and truly "up against the clock" to have to start re-configuring domain names, IP tables, port forwarding and mapping and many, many other manual tasks. It had obviously taken a great deal of time and many late nights on my part to already get to the (what I thought was ...) "good to go" situation, only to have to unravel a lot of configuration and have a major re-think as to the new server's set-up. I also had to take on board the new versions of a lot of the applications which were now running on this new dedicated server.

Anyway, all of these tasks have now been completed and at the time of writing, S.A. is functioning as intended. Without tempting fate (and fingers crossed !) it will continue to do so without any further issues.

Apologies for this totally unexpected series of events, loss of music being streamed and inconvenience. As always, I have worked as hard and for as long as I can to return S.A. to a normal, reliable and functioning state.

In the meantime, continue to enjoy.

Darran

Thanks D!!  Good to be back

What a bummer that that took so long!
Don't you hate being an inadvertent beta-tester of production software?!
Well done Darran and thanks for all your efforts.
I'd been able to see SA website for a while, but couldn't hook into the stream. Now happily listening to some vintage Genesis.
(Am I being conservative in my progressive tastes?!)

Andrew P wrote on 11^th Jul, 2013 at 1:23am:


Indeed Andrew, this would most certainly appear to be the case ! Whilst there is some excellent new functionality within the latest SHOUTcast release, it's certainly very buggy and a lot of the glitches haven't been documented or made exactly obvious ...