Adobe Media Server 5.0.6 Configuration And Administration Guide Mediaserver 506 Config Admin En

User Manual: adobe Adobe Media Server - 5.0.6 - Configuration and Administration Guide Free User Guide for Adobe Media Server Software, Manual

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ADOBE MEDIA SERVER
Configuration and Administration Guide
®

Legal notices

Legal notices
For legal notices, see http://help.adobe.com/en_US/legalnotices/index.html.

Last updated 8/21/2014

iii

Contents
Chapter 1: Deploying the server
Configure ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Load balancing

........................................................................................................ 7

Deploying edge servers

................................................................................................ 8

Deploying 64-bit servers

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Chapter 2: Configuring the server
Configure the server for virtual hosting
Working with configuration files
Configuring performance features
Configuring security features

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Performing general configuration tasks
Configuring content storage

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Configuring Apache HTTP Server

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Configure Apache for Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming and Apple HTTP Live Streaming
Configure HTTP Streaming failover
Using a third-party web server

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Configuring Differentiated Services (DiffServ)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Chapter 3: Using the Administration Console
Connecting to the Administration Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Inspecting applications

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Manage administrators

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Managing the server

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Chapter 4: Monitoring and Managing Log Files
Working with log files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Access logs

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Application logs

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Diagnostic logs

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Chapter 5: Administering the server
Start and stop the server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Checking server status
Checking video files

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Managing the server on Linux
Scramble tool

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Chapter 6: Using the Administration API
Working with the Administration API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Chapter 7: XML configuration files reference
Changes to configuration files from 4.5 to 5.0.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Changes to configuration files from 4.0 to 4.5

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

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Contents

Adaptor.xml file

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Application.xml file

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Logger.xml file

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Server.xml file

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Users.xml file

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Vhost.xml file

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

Chapter 8: Diagnostics Log Messages
Message IDs in diagnostic logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

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Chapter 1: Deploying the server
Configure ports
When you install Adobe Media Server, you can accept the default ports on which Adobe Media Server and Adobe
Media Administration Server listen. You can also enter new ports. The default ports for Adobe Media Server are 1935
and 80. The default port for Adobe Media Administration Server is 1111.
To test which ports a client can connect to on a Adobe Media Server hosted by Stefan Richter of FlashComGuru,
see FlashComGuru Port Tester.
To test which ports a client can connect to on your own Adobe Media Server, use a port tester developed and
hosted by Jake Hilton.

Port requirements
The following table describes ports on which clients must be able to establish connections to the server:
Port number

Protocol

Transport

Description

1935

RTMP/E

TCP

By default, Flash Player and AIR clients make RTMP
connections to Adobe Media Server over port 1935
over TCP.
To communicate with Adobe Media Server over the
RTMP protocol, clients attempt to connect to ports
in the following order: 1935, 80 (RTMP), 80 (RTMPT).

1935

RTMFP

UDP

By default, Flash Player and AIR clients make RTMFP
connections to Adobe Media Server over port 1935
over UDP.

RTMP/E, RTMTP, HTTP

TCP

By default, Flash Player and AIR clients that cannot
connect to Adobe Media Server over port 1935
attempt to tunnel over port 80 (RTMPT).
If Apache is installed and enabled, HTTP requests
made over port 80 are proxied to Apache over port
8134.
HTTP Streaming requests to port 80 can hang when
proxying to port 8134. Use port 8134 in the request
or configure Apache to listen directly on port 80
and configure Adobe Media Server not to listen on
port 80.

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Port number

Protocol

Transport

Description

19350-65535

RTMFP

UDP

By default, clients use port 1935 and ports 1935065535 to communicate with Adobe Media Server
over the RTMFP protocol. The RTMFP protocol
communicates over UDP. Clients connect to the
server over 1935 and the server redirects the client
to a port between 19350 and 65535.
Allow inbound UDP traffic on 1935 and outbound
traffic on ports 19350 - 65535.
Allowing UDP inbound traffic from unknown hosts
on ports 19350 - 65535 is optional. Adobe Media
Server sends a packet out to a new client to redirect
it to a port in the range 19350 - 65535. This packet
attempts to punch a hole to allow the client traffic
back in over the correct port.To use server-side
RTMFP NetConnections, allow outbound UDP
traffic on all ports.

8134

HTTP

TCP

Adobe Media Server proxies HTTP requests to
Apache HTTP Server over port 8134.
HTTP Streaming requests to port 80 can hang when
proxying to port 8134. Use port 8134 in the request
or configure Apache to listen directly on port 80
and configure Adobe Media Server not to listen on
port 80.

1111

HTTP, RTMP

TCP

By default, Flash Player, AIR, and HTML clients
connect to Adobe Media Administration Server
over port 1111. Clients must specify port 1111 in
connection URLs.
Clients cannot access Adobe Media Administration
Server over RTMPS. As a result, Adobe recommends
that you block all external access to port 1111 so
that access to the Administration Server is
restricted to clients that are inside your firewall.

443

RTMPS

TCP

The default port for RTMPS. RTMPS adheres to SSL
standards for secure network connections and
enables connections through a TCP socket on a
secure port.

Configure IP addresses and ports
Use the ams.ini file to configure the IP addresses and ports on which Adobe Media Server listens for requests.
1 Open rootinstall/conf/ams.ini in a text editor.
2 Edit the ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT parameter. The default ports are:
ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT = :1935,80

3 Save the file and restart the server.

The Adaptor.xml configuration file uses the ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT parameter in the Adaptor/HostPortList/HostPort
element:
${ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT}

See also
“Start and stop the server” on page 108

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“Add an adaptor” on page 15

Configure IP addresses and ports for RTMFP
RTMFP connection flow
1 An RTMFP client connects to a Adobe Media Server amsedge process over UDP port 1935.

Specify this port in the ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT parameter of the ams.ini file. To change this value, see “Configure IP
addresses and ports for RTMFP” on page 3.
Important: RTMFP and RTMP/E clients use the same port to connect to Adobe Media Server. However, RTMFP
clients use UDP and RTMP/E clients use TCP.
2 The amsedge process redirects the connection to an amscore process listening on a UDP port in the range 19350-

65535.
Each amscore process has its own RTMFP listener. Each RTMFP listener binds to one UDP port in the range. When
an amscore process starts, the listener binds to the next available UDP port in the range specified in the
Adaptor/RTMFP/Core/HostPortList/HostPort element of the Adaptor.xml configuration file. For example, if there
are three amscore processes, they listen on ports 19350, 19351, and 19352. These ports are called the RTMFP
redirect ports or the RTMFP migration ports.
The number of ports in use depends on the number of amscore processes in use. The number of amscore processes
in use depends on how application instances are distributed. See “Configure how applications are assigned to server
processes” on page 28.
When the server redirects the client, it sends the client an IP address and port number. If the server is behind a NAT,
specify the public IP address of the server in the public attribute of the HostPort element. The server passes this
address to the client and the client uses it to connect to the amscore process.

Configure RTMFP redirect ports
1 Open rootinstall/conf/_defaultRoot_/Adaptor.xml in a text editor.
2 Edit the value of the HostPort element. The default ports are as follows:

...

:19350-65535

3 If the RTMFP adaptor is behind a NAT, specify the in-front-of-NAT IP address that clients connect to in the
public attribute of the HostPort element. The following example uses 12.34.56.78 for the in-front-of-NAT IP

address:
:19350-65535

To redirect the client to an amscore process, the amsedge process sends the client an IP address and a port number.
The server knows the behind the NAT IP address, but the client can’t connect to that. The client needs to know the
in-front-of NAT IP address. To tell the server its in-front-of NAT IP address, specify it in the public attribute.

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4 Save the file and restart the server. See Start and stop the server

About the HostPort element
The value of the HostPort element has the following format:
:= [ [; [; ... ] ] ]
:= [][:[, ] ]
:= [ - ]

In this example of HostPortList, each core listens to two ports: one port from either host1:2000-2010 or
host2:3000-3010 and one port from either host2:5000 or host2:3010-4000 :

host1:2000-2010; host2:3000-3010
host2:5000; host2:3010-4000

Configure a public IP address if the server is behind a NAT
If an RTMFP adaptor is behind a NAT, specify the in-front-of-NAT IP address that clients connect to in the public
attribute of the HostPort element:
:19350-65535

If you don't specify the public attribute, the server doesn’t know its in-front-of-NAT-address. The amsedge process
can redirect the client to the correct port (for example, 19351) but it tells the client the behind-NAT address, which the
client can't contact.
Each HostPort element can specify a public address that corresponds to the specified port. This is the address that is
advertised to clients for the given HostPort. To advertise an address, specify a value for the public attribute of the
HostPort element. The public attribute has the same format as the HostPort element. The number of ports specified
by the public attribute must equal the number of ports specified by the HostPort element. If the core listens on the
n-th port of the HostPort value, the n-th port of the public attribute is advertised as its value.
In this example of HostPortList with a public attribute, if a core listens on host1:1005, its publicly advertised
address is host2:4005.

host1:1000-2000

More Help topics
“Add an adaptor” on page 15

NAT and firewall traversal
NAT (network address translation) and firewall filtering can block peer-to-peer connections. In an intranet
application, in which you have control over the entire network, do the following to ensure that clients can create peerto-peer connections:

• Allow UDP traffic through any firewalls
• Use a NAT or firewall that complies with the NAT implementation recommendations of the IETF BEHAVE
working group.

• Use the TURN proxy support in Flash Player to send traffic to a proxy in a DMZ that can comply with the previous
recommendations. See Best practices for real-time collaboration using Adobe Media Server.

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In an Internet application, the application developer must choose how to handle cases in which a firewall or NAT
blocks a direct peer-to-peer connection. To create an application that works for connections that aren’t peer-to-peer,
create a protocol fallback to client-server RTMP and/or RTMPT. To create an application that never relays media
through the server (even though some clients may not see the media), don’t create a protocol fallback.
Understanding types of NAT
It’s important to understand the different types of NAT behavior:
Cone Reuses the same address and port when talking to all peers.
Multiple IP address, symmetric Picks a new address and port when talking to a new peer.
Single IP address, symmetric Uses the same address but a new port when talking to a new peer.

It’s also important to understand the filtering behaviors of NATs and firewalls:
None A cone NAT with no filtering is called “full cone”.
Address-restricted The peer is restricted to talking only to addresses it has talked to already.
Address and port-restricted The peer is restricted to talking only to addresses and ports it has talked to already.

In addition, some NAT and firewall behaviors aren't easily defined. For example, a NAT could act as a symmetric NAT
that preserves port numbers. When it runs out of resources, it could switch and act as a cone NAT.
In another example, a NAT could act as one type of NAT for the first client that connected to a server. It could act as
a different type of NAT for the second client that tried to connect to the same server. In this case, a simple analysis can
fail to predict whether a client can make a peer-to-peer connection.
Note: A firewall can filter and not be a NAT. A NAT can act as a firewall and have filtering. A firewall may block UDP
completely.
RTMFP Connectivity checker
RTMFP inventor Matthew Kaufman hosts a website called RTMFP Connectivity Checker at http://cc.rtmfp.net/. Use
this site to try to determine whether a client on a particular network can create a peer-to-peer connection.
If the connection to cc.rtmfp.net has the same properties as the connection to and from the peer, use the results to
determine whether a peer-to-peer connection can be formed. The results are not always definitive because, in some
cases, the connection does not have the same properties. For example, two peers in the same organization behind the
same firewall can have different properties between each other than they each have to http://cc.rtmfp.net.
To test a connection, the client connection must have the same properties as the client you’re testing, and the NAT or
firewall must have predictable behavior. The following are the RTMFP Connectivity Checker tests:
Test

Description

Knows public IP address of self

Flash Player has a local address that matches the address that
cc.rtmfp.net saw when the connection came in. In this case, there is
no address translation.

Public UDP port number same as local UDP Flash Player's idea of which UDP port number it is using matches
port number
what http://cc.rtmfp.net saw when the connection came in. In this
case, there is no port translation. If this answer and the previous
answer are “Yes”, there probably isn’t a NAT (but there may be a
firewall).
Can receive from same IP address, same
UDP port number

This value is always “Yes”, because if a client couldn't complete this
test, it couldn't establish the initial connection.

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Test

Description

Can receive from same IP address,
different UDP port number

Indicates whether your firewall is “port restricted”. A port restricted
firewall requires an outbound connection to the same address and
port number before inbound traffic is permitted from that address
and port number. This requirement is true even when previous
traffic was sent to the same address but different port number.

Can receive from different IP address,
different UDP port number

Indicates whether your firewall is “address restricted”. An address
restricted firewall requires that an outbound connection is made to
a new IP address before inbound traffic is permitted from that IP
address.

Can send to different IP address after
server introduction

This value is always be “Yes” if the initial connection can be made.
This test is like opening a new RTMFP connection. If this test fails,
there's a problem with how Flash Player received or treated the
introduction request, or the firewall is unpredictable.

Source IP address is preserved from
original connection

This test means that you have one of the following: a cone NAT, a
symmetric NAT with only one IP address, or a symmetric NAT with
multiple IP addresses but the same address happened to be used
this time. If repeated tests cause the value to change, you have a
symmetric NAT with multiple IP addresses, and sometimes you
happen to use the same address.

Source UDP port number is preserved
from original connection

This test means that you have a cone NAT. If the value is "No", you
have a symmetric NAT.

Understanding the RTMFP Connectivity test
In some cases, symmetric NATs break peer-to-peer connectivity.
Flash Player can work with most cone NAT configurations and many firewall configurations. (There are some issues
with multiple layers of NAT and lack of “hairpinning” support.) However, symmetric NAT in combination with
certain firewall or NAT cases at the other end blocks the ability to establish a peer-to-peer connection. If one end is a
symmetric NAT with a single IP address, Flash Player cannot connect to peers behind other symmetric NATs or
behind port-restricted cone NATs (or port-restricted firewalls).
If one end of a connection is a symmetric NAT with multiple IP addresses, connections to peers behind other
symmetric NATs or behind address-restricted (and probably port-restricted) cone NATs (or address-restricted or
port-restricted firewalls) are impossible. No matter what Flash Player tries to do to “punch a hole” through the
restricted cone NAT or restricted firewall to let the other peer through, the other end moves to a new address and/or
port number that doesn't match. The hole that was created is no longer applicable.

Configure ports for HTTP streaming
By default, Adobe Media Server is configured to listen on port 80. Adobe Media Server proxies HTTP traffic to Apache
HTTP Server over port 8134. However, HTTP Dynamic Streaming and HTTP Live Streaming connections can hang
when proxying through the server.
Do not proxy HDS and HLS traffic through Adobe Media Server to Apache HTTP Server. Either specify the port
number in the request URL, or configure Apache to use port 80 and configure Adobe Media Server not to use port 80.
You do not need to use both techniques.
Specify the port number in request URLs
❖ Connect clients to Apache HTTP Server directly through its own port (the default is port 8134). For example, use

the following request URL:
http://ams.example.com:8134/hds-vod/somefile.f4v.f4m

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Configure Apache to use port 80 and configure Adobe Media Server not to use port 80
1 Configure Apache to use port 80.
a Open rootinstall/Apache2.2/conf in a text editor.
b Change the line Listen 8134 to Listen 80.
c Restart Apache. See Start and stop the server.
2 Configure Adobe Media Server not to use port 80.
a Open rootinstall/conf/ams.ini in a text editor.
b Remove 80 from the ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT parameter so the parameter looks like the following:
ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT = :1935

c Restart Adobe Media Server. See Start and stop the server.

Load balancing
Workflow for deploying servers in a cluster
You can deploy multiple servers behind a load balancer to distribute the client load over multiple servers. Deploying
multiple servers enables you to scale an application for more clients and creates redundancy, which eliminates single
points of failure. You can deploy any version of the server (Adobe Media Interactive Server, Adobe Media
Development Server, or Adobe Media Streaming Server) in a cluster.
1 Install Adobe® Flash® Media Server and verify the installation on each computer.

Ensure that you deploy all servers on computers that meet the minimum system requirements.
Note: For cross-platform compatibility, use lowercase names for all folders and applications.
2 Configure a load balancer to see the servers hosting Adobe Media Interactive Server or Adobe Media Streaming

Server.

Clustering multiple servers behind a load balancer
Add all the servers in the cluster to the pool (server farm) in the load balancer. The load balancer distributes traffic
among all the servers in the pool. Configure the load balancer to distribute the load in round-robin mode and to
monitor over TCP port 1935.
If the server does not have an externally visible IP address, then for HTTP tunnelling to work, you should enable
cookies when you deploy servers behind a load balancer. The load balancer checks the cookie and sends requests with
this cookie to the same server. Cookies can be enabled in the load balancer or in the Adaptor.xml configuration file in
the Adaptor/HTTPTunnel/SetCookie element.
Note: For tunnelling connections, cookies are currently supported only on Adobe® Flash® Player 9.0.28 or later in
Windows only.

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Load balancing peer-assisted networking applications
Use one of the following two techniques to load balance a peer-assisted networking applications:

• Distribute introductions across a server-only RTMFP NetGroup.
This technique is new in Adobe Media Server 5. Use a Server-Side ActionScript API to distribute peer lookup
requests across multiple servers. For more information, see Distributing introductions across multiple servers.

• Set up an edge-origin configuration.
In the Vhost.xml configuration file on each edge server, set remote. For more information, see
“Configure edge servers” on page 9.
On the client, the NetConnection URL changes from "rtmfp://ams-server/application" to "rtmfp://edgeams-server/?rtmfp://origin-ams-server/application". Alternately, you can configure the RouteTable
and RouteEntry in the Vhost.xml file on the edge server to point to the origin server. In this case, the client URL
is still "rtmfp://ams-server/application".
Set up DNS entries to distribute the load across the edge servers. For the server to function properly as an RTMFP
introducer, use one origin server per application. For peer lookup to work, clients must be connected to the same
server process, but not necessarily to the same application. Peer lookups do not work across origin servers.
However, peerIDs are cached on the edge server which reduces the load on the origin. When clients are connected
to the same edge, the introduction can happen at the edge and there is not a lookup call to the origin.

More Help topics
“Deploying edge servers” on page 8

Deploying edge servers
Workflow for deploying edge servers
Note: Adobe Media Server Standard cannot be configured as an edge server.
By default, the server runs as an origin server. To run the server as an edge server, you must configure an XML file.
Typically you would run Adobe Media Server Professional as an origin server on one computer and run Adobe Media
Server Professional as an edge server on another computer.
1. Install Adobe Media Server Professional and verify the installation on each computer.

Deploy all edge and origin servers on computers that meet the minimum system requirements. For information about
installing and verifying installation, see the Installation Guide.
Note: For cross-platform compatibility, use lowercase names for all folders and applications.
2. Configure an edge server and restart.

On the edge server, edit the Vhost.xml file of the virtual host you want to run as an edge server.
3. Verify that the edge server can communicate with the origin server.

The easiest way to verify is to create an explicit connection. Create a SWF file with an explicit connection to the edge
server and run the vod or live service.

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4. If you’re installing multiple edge servers, copy the Vhost.xml file to the same directory on each edge server.
5. Verify that each edge server can communicate with the origin server.
6. Place the origin server and those edge servers nearest to it on the same subnet.
7. If you’re deploying more than one edge server, configure a load balancer.

Place the load balancer between the clients and the edges. Configure the load balancer to access the pool of edge servers
in round-robin mode and to monitor over TCP port 1935. Use the virtual IP (VIP) address of the pool as the IP address
in the RouteEntry element of each edge server’s Vhost.xml file. For detailed information on how to configure the
RouteEntry element, see the comments in the RouteEntry element of the default Vhost.xml file, or see RouteEntry.

Configure edge servers
To configure the server to run as an edge server, edit the Vhost.xml configuration file of the virtual host you want to
run as an edge server. The Vhost.xml file defines how the edge server connects clients to the origin server.
Note: You can also configure some virtual hosts to run applications locally (as origins), while others run applications
remotely (as edges); this is called mixed mode or hybrid mode.
Configure a virtual host to run as an edge server
1 Open the Vhost.xml file of the virtual host you want to configure and locate the following code (comments have
been removed):

...

remote
false

false
true
1000

Note: The default VHost.xml file is located in the RootInstall/conf/_defaultRoot_/_defaultVHost_ directory.
2 Edit the following XML elements, as needed.

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Element

Required/optional

Description

Mode

Required

Enter local to configure the server to run as an origin server. Enter remote
to configure the server to run as an edge server.

Anonymous

Optional

A Boolean value specifying whether the edge server connection is implicit
(true) or explicit (false). The default value is false.

CacheDir

Optional

Enables or disables the caching of streams to disk, in addition to caching in
memory, on an edge server and allows you to specify the cache location.
There are two attributes: enabled and useAppName.
To enable caching, set the enabled attribute to "true". When enabled, the
server places streams in the RootInstall/cache/appName directory by default.
Use the useAppName attribute to specify whether to use the application
name as the name of the cache for the application.
Vod applications get significant performance gains when caching is enabled.

LocalAddress

Optional

Specifies the local IP address to which to bind a proxy's outgoing connection
(the proxy’s loopback address). This element allows the administrator to
control network traffic by isolating incoming and outgoing traffic to separate
network interfaces.

RouteTable

Optional; create a routing
table when it is not
necessary or desirable for
application developers to
see the origin server URL or
when you want to use
implicit connections.

Specifies, in each RouteEntry element, how to route connections from the
origin to the edge. There is one attribute, protocol, that indicates the
protocol of the outgoing connection. Set this attribute to either "rtmp" or
"rtmps".

Optional

Each RouteEntry element maps a host/port pair to a different host/port pair.
In the following example, connections to host1:port1 are routed to
host2:port2:

RouteEntry

To override the RouteTable protocol for a specific RouteEntry element,
add a protocol attribute to the RouteEntry element you want to change.

host1:port1;host2:port2

Typically, host1:port1 is your edge server and host2:port2 is your
origin server. The following example routes connections destined for host
"edge" on port 1935 to host "origin" on port 80:
edge:1935;origin:80

You can specify a wildcard character (*) for any host or port. The following
example routes connections destined for any host on any port to host "origin"
on port 1935:
*:*;origin:1935

You can also specify a wildcard for the host/port to which connections are
being routed. The following example routes connections destined for any
host on any port to the same host on port 80:
*:*;*:80

To reject connections, you can specify that a host/port combination be routed
to null:
edge:80;null

The RouteEntry element has a protocol attribute. This attribute overrides
the RouteTable protocol for a specific RouteEntry element. For example,
RouteTable may have one RouteEntry element that specifies an
encrypted outgoing RTMPS connection and another RouteEntry tag that
specifies the regular RTMP connection. If a protocol is not specified, the
outgoing connection uses the same protocol as the incoming connection.

3 Validate the XML and save the Vhost.xml file.

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4 Restart the server.

More Help topics
“Adaptors and virtual hosts” on page 14

Set up caching on edge servers
Streams that are played via an edge server can optionally be cached on that edge server’s hard drive to avoid extra
network traffic back to the origin. Edge servers manage their disk caches automatically using a least-recently-used
(LRU) scheme.
Edge servers group the cached files on disk into buckets; the files within each bucket are not ordered, but the buckets
themselves are ordered by LRU. When an edge server needs to free up disk space, it deletes the entire contents of the
least-recently-used buckets. When a file is added, it gets put in the "newest" bucket, and likewise when an existing file
is accessed, it is moved to the newest bucket. This maintains the LRU ordering.
A disk cache is divided up into N buckets, but since all newly accessed content goes into the newest bucket, only the
newest bucket actually grows in size. Once that bucket reaches K/N bytes, where K is the maximum size of the disk
cache, the server triggers a rollover. A rollover means the server deletes the oldest bucket, and creates a new bucket
where new content will go.
For example:
1 Start with an empty disk cache, configured to have 8 buckets and max size of 80 GB.
2 All content goes into bucket "00" until it grows to 10 GB.
3 New bucket "01" is created. All content now goes into this bucket. In addition, content accessed from bucket "00"

may be moved to bucket "01".
4 When bucket "01" reaches 10 GB, the server creates bucket "02", and so on.
5 Repeat until there are 8 buckets, "00" through "07".
6 When bucket "07" reaches 10 GB, the server creates bucket "08", and also deletes bucket "00" and all the content it

contains.
The deletion is only triggered by the size of the "new" bucket, not the total size of the disk. Because content can be
moved from one of the older buckets into the newest bucket, the older buckets do not remain at their maximum size
of N/K bytes, and thus the total size of the disk will be less than its max K when the server starts deleting old buckets.
You set up caching on an edge server in the CacheDir element of the Vhost.xml file. The following table describes the
subelements that you use to set up caching:

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Element

Description

MaxSize

Specifies the maximum allowed size of the disk cache, in gigabytes. The server
does LRU (least recently used) cleanup of the cache to keep it under the
maximum size. The default value is 32 gigabytes. A value of 0 disables the disk
cache. A value of -1 specifies no maximum.

NumBuckets

Specifies the number of buckets to divide the cache into. The aggregate cache
size is defined by MaxSize. Can be any value from 2 to 128; the default value is
8. More buckets mean that a smaller portion of the disk content will be deleted
at any one time, but also that files will need to be moved to new buckets more
often, which results in more disk activity and lower performance.You can define
the number of buckets that contain contents that can be moved with
NumBucketsAtRisk.

NumBucketsAtRisk

Specifies the number of buckets considered to be "at risk" of deletion. Can be
any value from 0 to NumBuckets - 1; the default is NumBuckets/2. To avoid
moving files too frequently at the expense of disk performance, only segments
that are in the oldest NumBucketsAtRisk buckets will be moved to the newest
bucket when accessed.
A value of 0 means that segments, once pulled from the origin, are never moved
to a newer bucket, effectively turning the cache into a LRU cache. The default
value of NumBuckets/2 means that only segments in the "older half" of content
will be moved. Segments in the "newer half" of content are more likely to be
accessed again before they are deleted, thus making it less important to move
them.

Connect to an edge server
There are two types of edge server connections: explicit and implicit (also called anonymous).
An explicit edge server prefixes its address to the origin server’s URL in the client NetConnection.connect() call.
For example, for applications running on ams.foo.com, instead of clients connecting to an application with a
connection string such as rtmp://ams.foo.com/app/inst, clients are directed through the edge, which prefixes its
protocol and hostname to the origin URL, as in the following:
rtmp://amsedge.foo.com/?rtmp://ams.foo.com/app/inst

An implicit edge server does not change or modify the origin server’s URL in the client NetConnection.connect()
call. The identity (the IP address and port number) of the implicit edge is hidden from the application developer.
Create an explicit connection
❖ Use the following syntax in a client-side NetConnection.connect() call to make an explicit connection to an edge
server:
rtmp://edge/?rtmp://origin/app

A question mark (?) separates the edge’s prefix from the main URL. The prefix contains only the protocol,
hostname, and optionally the port number. The prefix must always end with a trailing slash.
Create an implicit connection
1 In the Vhost.xml configuration file, set the Proxy/Anonymous element to true.
Note: Restart the server after changing the Vhost.xml file.
2 In the Vhost.xml file, create a routing table in the RouteTable element; for more information, see the comments

about RouteEntry tags in the Vhost.xml file installed with Adobe Media Server.

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3 Use the following syntax in a client-side NetConnection.connect() call to make an implicit connection to an

edge server:
rtmp://edge/app/appinstance

Connect edge servers in a chain
❖ You can chain together any number of edges when you make connections to the origin server. Use the following
syntax to chain two explicit edges to direct connection requests to the origin server:
rtmp://edge1/?rtmp://edge2/?rtmp://origin/app/inst

As the connection moves through each edge in the chain, the server consumes the first token in the string. For
example, after making the connection to edge1, the connection string changes to:
rtmp://edge2/?rtmp://origin/app/inst

Note: You can specify the RTMPT protocol only for the edges, not for the origin.
When you use URL decoration to chain edges, Flash Player 7 and earlier versions may have problems with shared
objects because of the embedded question mark (?) character in the URL. Call the following function to encode or
escape the question marks from the URL before passing the URL to the shared object:
function escapeURI(uri) {
index = uri.indexOf('?');
if (index == -1) return uri;
prefix = uri.substring(0, index);
uri = uri.substring(index);
return prefix += escape(uri);
}

Deploying 64-bit servers
Adobe Media Server installs on 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. The 64-bit server uses addressable memory space
greater than 4GB. This enables Adobe Media Server to use a larger file cache which in turn reduces disk IO.
To deploy 64-bit servers, know the following:

• You can use any combination of 64-bit and 32-bit edge and origin servers in a network topology.
• To serve on-demand media at the highest possible performance, increase the size of the recoded media cache.
• If you have created custom C++ plug-ins for a 32-bit system, they do not work with a 64-bit system. To use 32-bit
plug-ins on a 64-bit server, recompile the plug-in with the 64-bit libraries.

More Help topics
“Configure a 64-bit server” on page 21

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Chapter 2: Configuring the server
Configure the server for virtual hosting
Adaptors and virtual hosts
To host multiple tenants on a server, configure the server so that each customer has their own section. Administrators
can configure their own sections to serve their content most effectively. You can configure virtual hosting in several
ways, depending on your needs.
The server is divided into hierarchical levels: server, adaptor, virtual host (also called vhost), and application. The
server is at the top level and contains one or more adaptors. Each adaptor contains one or more virtual hosts. Each
virtual host hosts one or more applications. Each application has one or more instances. You can add adaptors and
virtual hosts to organize the server for hosting multiple applications and sites.
Note: For information about registering applications with the server and storing media, see “Configuring content storage”
on page 49.
If you’re hosting multiple websites on a server, use virtual hosts to give customers their own root folders. For example,
you could use two virtual hosts to host www.test.com and www.example.com on the same server.
You can assign an IP address or a port number to an adaptor, but not to a virtual host. For this reason, use adaptors to
organize virtual hosts by IP address or port number. For example, if a virtual host needs its own IP address to configure
SSL, assign it to its own adaptor.
You can also configure one virtual host to run as an edge server and one to run as an origin server. This is called
running the server in hybrid mode.

Configuration folder structure
Each of these levels—server, adaptor, virtual host, application, and application instances—has distinct configuration
settings stored in XML files in the rootinstall/conf directory: Server.xml, Adaptor.xml, Vhost.xml, and
Application.xml. There are also configuration files for information about administrators and logging: Users.xml and
Logger.xml. The most important configuration parameters have been pulled out to the ams.ini file, which enables you
to use one file to configure the server.
conf
Server.xml
Users.xml
Logger.xml
fms.ini
_defaultRoot_
Adaptor.xml
_defaultVHost_
Application.xml
Vhost.xml

Default structure of the server’s configuration (conf) directory

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Edit any of these XML files in a text or XML editor and restart the server for the changes to take effect. If you modify
Users.xml or ams.ini, you also must restart Adobe Media Administration Server. For more information, see “Working
with configuration files” on page 17.
The following rules define the conf directory structure:

• The root configuration folder is rootinstall/conf. You cannot remove or modify the name of this directory. The
server must have a Server.xml file, a Logger.xml file, and a Users.xml file in the conf directory.

• The server has one initialization file, ams.ini, in the rootinstall/conf directory. This file contains commonly used
settings.

• The default adaptor’s root directory is rootinstall/conf/_defaultRoot_. You cannot remove or modify the name of
this directory. Each adaptor must have an Adaptor.xml file in its root directory.

• The default virtual host’s root directory is rootinstall/conf/_defaultRoot_/_defaultVHost_. You cannot remove or
modify the name of this directory. Each virtual host must have a Vhost.xml file in its root directory. Each adaptor
must have a default virtual host.

• Virtual host directories may also contain an Application.xml file that serves as a default to all applications in that
virtual host and a Users.xml file that contains information about administrators of that virtual host.

• You may place an Application.xml file in an application’s registered directory to create an application-specific
configuration. For more information about registered application directories, see the Developer Guide.

Add an adaptor
1 Create a new directory with the name of the adaptor in the rootinstall/conf folder; for example,

rootinstall/conf/adaptor2.
2 In the adaptor2 directory, create or paste a copy of the _defaultVHost_ directory and an Adaptor.xml file.

Each adaptor directory must contain a _defaultVHost_ directory and an Adaptor.xml file.
3 In the _defaultVHost_ directory, create or paste a copy of an Application.xml file and a Vhost.xml file.
4 In the Adaptor.xml file in the adaptor directory, add a HostPort element to listen on a new port for this adaptor:
:1936

The name, ctl_channel, and rtmfp attribute values must be unique on the server. The rtmfp attribute and the
HostPort element specify the ports to which an IP address should bind. If an IP address is not specified, the adaptor
listens on all available interfaces. The server uses the control channel (ctl_channel) attribute internally to
communicate between server processes (adding a HostPort element creates a new AMSEdge process).
The server uses the HostPort value to listen for clients—no two adaptors can listen on the same port, either
internally or externally, unless they use different IP addresses. If a host has multiple IP addresses, multiple adaptors
can listen on port 1935. In addition, the control channels of two adaptors must be different, or they cannot interoperate. Ensure that the control channels on which separate adaptors listen are different from each other. The
following example is for a host with multiple IP addresses:
xx.xx.xx.xx:1935
yy.yy.yy.yy:1935

5 If you’re running peer-assisted networking applications, add an Adaptor/RTMFP/Core/HostPortList/HostPort

element. See “Configure IP addresses and ports for RTMFP” on page 3.
6 Restart the server.

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7 To log in to the Administration Console on the new adaptor, use the syntax adaptorname/username in the

Username box; for example, adaptor2/admin.
For information about logging in to the Administration Console, see “Connecting to the Administration Console”
on page 82.
Administrators are defined in the UserList section of the Users.xml file. Administrators are either server-level
users (similar to a root user) or virtual host-level users. If you log in to an adaptor other than the default adaptor,
you are considered a virtual host administrator and don’t have privileges to manage the server or users.
conf
Server.xml
Users.xml
Logger.xml
fms.ini
_defaultRoot_
Adaptor.xml
_defaultVHost_
Application.xml
Vhost.xml
Users.xml
adaptor2
Adaptor.xml
_defaultVHost_
Application.xml
Vhost.xml
Users.xml

The conf directory with an additional adaptor called adaptor2

Add a virtual host
1 Create a folder with the name of the virtual host in an adaptor folder, for example,

rootinstall/conf/_defaultRoot_/www.example.com.
2 Copy an Application.xml file, a Vhost.xml file, and a Users.xml file to the new virtual host folder. (The Users.xml

file is required only if you are defining administrators for this virtual host.)
3 In the Vhost.xml file, specify an application directory in the AppsDir element, for example:
C:\www.example.com<\AppsDir>

Note: It is possible to use the same applications directory for multiple virtual hosts, but it causes namespace conflicts
and is not recommended.
4 Validate the XML and save the Vhost.xml file.
5 Restart the server.

Note: You can call the startVHost() Administration API or log in to the Administration Console without restarting
the server.
6 Log in to the Administration Console.

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For information about logging in to the Administration Console, see “Connecting to the Administration Console”
on page 82.
7 Connect to the new virtual host by specifying the virtual host name, for example, www.example.com, in the Server

name field.
8 Connect a test application to the new virtual host to make sure it works.
conf
Server.xml
Users.xml
Logger.xml
fms.ini
_defaultRoot_
Adaptor.xml
_defaultVHost_
Application.xml
Vhost.xml
Users.xml

www.example.com
Application.xml
Vhost.xml
Users.xml

The conf directory with an additional virtual host called www.example.com

Configuring a single application
You can place an Application.xml file in an application’s folder. Values set in the application-level Application.xml file
override the values in the vhost-level Application.xml file.
To see an example, look at the vod and live applications included with Adobe Media Server. Navigate to
rootinstall\applications\vod and rootinstall\applications\live. Each folder contains an Application.xml file. The values
in these files override the values in the vhost-level file
rootinstall\conf\_defaultRoot_\_defaultVHost_\Application.xml.
To prevent settings in the vhost-level Application.xml settings from being overridden by the application-level
Application.xml file, add an override attribute to a tag and set it to "no", as in the following:
false

When override="no" for an element in a vhost-level Applcation.xml file, you cannot override that element, or any
elements contained within that element, in an application-level Application.xml file.

Working with configuration files
Edit a configuration file
Note: Configuration files are located in the rootinstall/conf folder. For information about configuration file names,
locations, and hierarchy, see “Configuration folder structure” on page 14.

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To edit a configuration file, including ams.ini, do the following:
1 Open the file in a text editor.
2 Edit the file.
3 Save the file.
4 Validate the XML.
5 Restart Adobe Media Server.

If you modify the Users.xml file, restart Adobe Media Administration Server, too.

Editing parameters in the ams.ini file
The file rootinstall/config/ams.ini is the Adobe Media Server INI file. An INI file is a default configuration file. This
file contains the most commonly edited configuration parameters. Edit the ams.ini file to change the server admin
username and password, the adaptor host port, the folder that holds applications, the folder that holds media files, and
so on.
The ams.ini file contains a list of parameters and their values, as in the following:
SERVER.ADMIN_USERNAME = admin

The XML configuration files use these parameters. The following is an excerpt from the User.xml file:

6cb340fd77d3297cb6d82f57bb085a13d
f45cd9513d042355a9a304c1d47ec433c97a8bdc2584424

When the server starts, it replaces the parameter in the XML configuration files with the value from the ams.ini file.
Edit the ams.ini file
1 Open rootinstall/conf/ams.ini in a text editor.
2 Save a copy to another location as a backup.
3 Enter a new value for a parameter.
4 Save the file.
5 Restart Adobe Media Server. When you edit a value in the User.xml file, restart Adobe Media Administration

Server.
6 Open the Administration Console and log in with your new password.

Using symbols in configuration files
To simplify configuration, you can use symbols as values for XML elements in configuration files. Create a file named
substitution.xml in the rootinstall/conf folder that maps the symbols to strings that the server substitutes when it reads
the configuration files. After you’ve set up a map file, future updates are faster: you can edit the map file instead of
editing each configuration file.
The installer defines a few mappings during the installation process and stores them in the ams.ini file. When the
server starts, it looks for the ams.ini file and the substitution.xml file in the rootinstall/conf directory. You can also
create additional map files and reference them from the substitution.xml file.

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The server has two predefined symbols, ROOT and CONF, that are always available. The ROOT symbol is mapped to the
location of the AMSMaster.exe file and the CONF symbol is mapped to the location of the Server.xml file.
The server builds the symbol map in the following order:
1 The predefined symbols ROOT and CONF are evaluated.
2 The ams.ini file is evaluated.
3 If the substitution.xml file exists, the server looks for the Symbols tag and processes the child tags in the order in

which they appear.
4 The server processes the additional map files in the order in which they appear (in KeyValueFile elements in the

substitution.xml file).
5 Symbols defined in external map files are processed in the order in which they appear in each file.

Create a substitution.xml file:
1 Create a new XML file and save it in the rootinstall/conf folder as substitution.xml.
2 Enter the following XML structure:

StringToMapTo

Add a SymbolName element for each symbol you want to create.
3 For example, this substitution.xml file maps the symbol TESTUSERNAME to the value janedoe:

janedoe

4 Open the rootinstall/conf/Users.xml file in a text editor.
5 Locate the line and replace the symbol SERVER.ADMIN_USERNAME

with the symbol TESTUSERNAME.
When the server reads the XML file, it substitutes the value from the substitution.xml file as follows:

Note: Because this symbol is used as an attribute, it is surrounded by quotation marks. If the symbol were used as a
regular value, it would not be surrounded by quotation marks.
6 Restart the Administration Server.

Note: If you change the Users.xml file, you must restart the Administration Server. If you change any other XML
configuration file, you must restart the server.
Creating additional map files
You can specify all of your text substitution mappings under the Symbols tag in substitution.xml. However, you can
also create additional map files. To do this, create one or more KeyValueFile elements in the substitution.xml file.
Each element can hold the location of one external file.
For example, the following references the file C:\testfiles\mySymbols.txt:

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C:\testfiles\mySymbols.txt

These external files are not in XML format. They simply contain a collection of symbol-value pairs, where each pair
appears on a separate line and takes the following form:
symbol=value

The following example shows three symbol-value pairs:
USER_NAME=foo
USER_PSWD = bar
HELLO= "world and worlds"

Place comments on separate lines that begin with a number sign (#). Do not place comments on the same line as a
symbol definition.
The first equal sign (=) in a line is considered the delimiter that separates the symbol and the value. The server trims
leading or trailing white space from both the symbol and the value, but no white space within double quotation marks.
Using environment variables
To refer to an environment variable in one of the XML configuration files, use the name of the environment variable
within percent (%) characters. The % characters indicate to the server that the symbol refers to an environment variable
and not to a user-defined string.
The syntax for specifying an environment variable as a symbol is ${%ENV_VAR_NAME%}.
For example, the server maps the following symbol to the COMPUTERNAME variable:
${%COMPUTERNAME%}

When you use an environment variable, you don’t have to define it in the substitution.xml file.

Configuring performance features
In addition to the performance tips in this section, you can also optimize the underlying Apache web server. For more
information, see Apache Performance Tuning.

Configure the server to deliver live media
The following three configuration settings impact scale and latency for live media delivery:

• “Configure the size of stream chunks” on page 22
• “Send aggregate messages” on page 23
• “Combine audio samples” on page 25
Note: You can’t send aggregate messages and combine audio samples in the same application.
To configure the server to deliver live media, choose your use case:
Large Scale Broadcast (scale is more important than latency) In this use case, you want to reach as many people as
possible and are willing to allow some latency. You may also want to keep costs down while still reaching as many
people as possible. Send large aggregate messages and configure large stream chunk sizes.

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Large Scale Broadcast (low latency is more important than scale) In this use case, you want to keep latency as low as
possible while reaching as many people as possible. You are willing to trade some scale for decreased latency. Send
smaller aggregate messages. Or, combine audio samples and do not send aggregate messages.
Interactive (lowest latency) Interactive applications require very low latency. Do not send aggregate messages. For the
lowest latency, do not combine audio samples.

If data latency is your concern, combine audio samples. Combining audio samples introduces audio latency but
doesn't affect the rest of the stream. Aggregating messages introduces latency to the whole stream.
Interactive applications are the most difficult to scale and require more hardware than the large scale broadcast use
cases.

Configure the server to deliver on-demand media
To configure the server to deliver on-demand (vod) media, complete the following tasks:
1 “Configure the recorded media cache” on page 21
2 “Configure the size of stream chunks” on page 22

Configure a 64-bit server
64-bit servers can address more physical memory than 32-bit servers. When delivering on-demand video on 64-bit
servers, increase the size of the recorded media cache size. Only the amount of RAM available on the computer limits
the recorded file cache size.
Note: The system warns that a process is close to the memory limit when the process memory is more than 90% of the
system memory.
❖ “Configure the recorded media cache” on page 21

Configuring the server to deliver audio-only media
To deliver media that contains only audio,
1 “Combine audio samples” on page 25
2 “Send aggregate messages” on page 23

Configure the recorded media cache
When a stream is requested from the server, segments of the stream are stored in a cache on the server. As long as the
cache has not reached capacity, the server places segments in the cache. Each time a stream attempts to access a
segment, the server checks the cache. If the segment is available, the server gives the stream a reference to the segment
for playback. If the segment is not available, the server retrieves the segment from its source, inserts it into the cache,
and returns a reference to that segment to the stream.
When the cache is full, the server removes unused segments, starting with the least recently used. After removing all
unused segments, if there still isn’t enough room for a new segment, the server notifies the client that the stream is not
available and makes an entry in the core log file.
If you have cache-full events in the core log file, increase the size of the cache or limit the number of streams playing.
For more information about the core log file, see “Monitoring and Managing Log Files” on page 97.
1 Open the rootinstall/conf/ams.ini file.

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2 Edit the SERVER.FLVCACHE_MAXSIZE parameter.

This is the maximum size of the cache, in megabytes. The default value is 500. The file cache shares process address
space with the core process. Each core process has a separate file cache. For 32-bit processes, it has a limit of 2 GB
in Windows and 3 GB in Linux. For 64-bit installations, the limit is greater. For more information, see “Configure
a 64-bit server” on page 21.
The size of the cache limits the number of unique streams the server can publish. To increase the probability that a
requested stream will be located in the recorded media cache, increase the value of SERVER.FLVCACHE_MAXSIZE.
To decrease the amount of memory the server process uses, decrease the value of SERVER.FLVCACHE_MAXSIZE.
While a large cache size is useful, Adobe recommends that you ensure that your total system memory usage does
not exceed the process limit of your OS. Consider memory limits and desired memory and stream performance
when utilizing the memory cache.
Note: Cache settings have no effect on live streams, as live streams do not need or utilize the cache.
3 Restart the server.

There is no exact way to calculate the value of the cache size because it varies depending on the amount of RAM
available and the number of other processes that are running. However, you can follow some general guidelines to
approximate the recommended size of the cache.
Out of the total system RAM, some amount will be used by the OS and other non-Adobe Media Server processes:
Amount of RAM available for AMS (R) = RAM size - RAM used by the OS and non-AMS processes

The RAM available for Adobe Media Server is divided among the number of cores started:
Amount of RAM per core (Rc) = Amount of RAM available for AMS (R) / Number of Cores

Out of this, some amount of RAM is used up by the core process, and is not available to the file cache:
Recommended File Cache Size = Amount of RAM per core (Rc) - RAM used by each core process

RAM used by each Adobe Media Server process varies based on load, and there is no exact figure. You can use 512 MB
as a ballpark figure.
The following example attempts to determine a reasonable file cache size:
RAM size = 8 GB
RAM used by OS and non-AMS processes = 1.2 GB (approximately)
Number of AMS core processes allowed = 3
Amount of RAM available for AMS (R) = 8 - 1.2 = 6.8
Amount of RAM per core (Rc) = 6.8 / 3 = 2.27 GB
Recommended file cache size = 2.27 - 0.5 = 1.76 GB

Configure the size of stream chunks
Streams break into chunks as they are written to the network. You can specify the size of a chunk. Large values reduce
CPU usage because there are fewer writes. However, large values can delay other content on lower bandwidth
connections. The larger the content size and the higher the bandwidth of the receiving connection, the more benefit is
gained from larger chunk sizes.
1 Open the Application.xml file.

Note: You can set these values in an Application.xml file at the VHost level or at the application level. To set the value
at the application level, copy an Application.xml file to the application’s folder.
2 In the Client element, set the OutChunkSize element to a value between 128 and 65536 bytes. The default value

is 4096 bytes.

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For more information, see “Application.xml file” on page 141.
3 Restart the server.

Send aggregate messages
Important: Do not send aggregate messages and combine audio samples in the same application.
An aggregate message is a single message that contains a list of submessages. Sending aggregate messages reduces CPU
usage and increases server capacity. You can configure applications to deliver aggregate messages to clients running
on Flash Player 9.0.60.0 and above. When this setting is disabled, the server breaks up aggregate messages into
individual messages before delivering them to clients.
Aggregate messages can be used with live and recorded streams.
An origin server can deliver aggregate messages to an edge server, and an edge server can deliver aggregate messages
from the FLV data that is has cached on the disk. An edge server can deliver aggregate messages even if the origin server
did not.
To ensure that aggregate messaging is enabled, be sure the following settings are enabled:

•

EnableAggMsgs in the Server.xml file

•

AggregateMessages in the Application.xml file

•

AggregateMessages in the Vhost.xml file (if applicable)

The following table describes these settings, plus other configuration settings that are related to using aggregate
messages:
Element

Configuration file

Description

Streams/EnableAggMsgs

Server.xml

Enables the creation of aggregate messages in the
FLV module. When this setting is “true”, the FLV
module returns aggregate messages when loading
segment data. When this setting is “false”, the FLV
module returns regular audio, video, and data
messages.
The default value is “true”.

Streams/MaxAggMsgSize

Server.xml

Determines the maximum size (in bytes) of
aggregate messages returned from the FLV
module (when they are enabled). The actual
message size returned by the module might be
slightly larger because the module will not
fragment individual messages, but instead
includes whole messages until this size is
exceeded.
The default value is 65536.

Client/AggregateMessages

Application.xml

Enables the delivery of aggregate messages to
clients that support them. When this setting is
disabled, the server breaks up aggregate messages
into individual messages before delivering them to
clients.
The default value is “true”.

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Element

Configuration file

Description

StreamManager/Live/Queue

Application.xml

Queues incoming messages that are published to
live streams. This is so that the server can create
aggregate messages before transmission to
subscribing clients. If queueing is not enabled,
aggregate messages are not created.
The default value is “true”.

StreamManager/Live/Queue/
MaxQueueSize

Application.xml

Defines the maximum size (in bytes) that the live
queue can grow to before the messages it contains
are transmitted.
Increasing the size of the queue allows for larger
aggregates to be created, which increases the
efficiency of the server, but introduces latency in
the transmission. Decreasing the queue size
reduces latency but is less efficient.

StreamManager/Live/Queue/
MaxQueueDelay

Application.xml

Defines the maximum time (in milliseconds) that
the live queue delays messages before the
messages are transmitted.
This setting can be used to ensure that
unacceptable amounts of latency are not
introduced into the publishing stream.
Increasing the delay allows for larger aggregates to
be created, which increases the efficiency of the
server. Decreasing the delay reduces latency but is
less efficient.

StreamManager/Live/Queue/
AggregateMessages

Application.xml

Determines whether or not aggregate messages
are generated when the queue is flushed.
When this setting is enabled, the messages in the
queue are grouped together as aggregates to
improve the efficiency of transmission.
It is possible to enable queing and disable the
generation of aggregate messages, but this does
not result in performance benefits.
The default value is “true”.

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Element

Configuration file

Description

StreamManager/Live/Queue/
AggregateMessages/MaxAggM
sgSize

Application.xml

Defines the maximum size of an aggregate
message that the server creates. The server can
create smaller aggregates, as necessary.
The server cannot create messages that are larger
than the MaxQueueSize, so this number is
generally set to something less than or equal to the
configured size of the queue.

Proxy/AggregateMessages

Vhost.xml

Determines whether aggregate messages are
delivered from the edge cache when a vhost is
configured as an edge proxy.
The default value is "false".
If the edge server receives aggregate messages
from the origin when this setting is disabled, the
messages are broken up before being cached.

Proxy/AggregateMessages/M
axAggMsgSize

Vhost.xml

Determines the size (in bytes) of aggregate
messages returned from the edge cache when
aggregate messages are enabled.
This setting only applies to messages retrieved
from the disk cache. Aggregate messages received
directy from the origin server are returned as-is,
and therefore their size is determined by the origin
server's settings for aggregate message size.

Even when you configure the server and application to use aggregate messages, the following circumstances will
prevent them from being delivered:

• The client’s Flash Player version is earlier than 9.0.60.0.
• The stream is set to filter audio, filter video, or control FPS.
• The stream requires transcoding.
If any of these conditions are present, Adobe Media Server breaks the aggregated message into its submessages, and
the messages are delivered individually.
After you confirm that aggregate messaging is enabled, you can use the settings in the Server.xml file to configure the
size of the messages. You can also enable or disable the messages based on the type of stream. For more information,
see “Streams” on page 232.
You can also configure message queuing in the Application.xml file. For more information, see “Queue” on page 175.

Combine audio samples
Important: Do not send aggregate messages and combine audio samples in the same application.
To handle more connections while broadcasting a live stream, combine audio samples.
1 Open the rootinstall/conf/_defaultRoot_/_defaultVHost_/Application.xml file.

Note: You can set these values in an Application.xml file at the VHost level or at the application level. To set the value
at the application level, copy an Application.xml file to the application’s folder.
2 Locate the StreamManager/Audio/CombineSamples section of the file and set values the following elements:

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Element

Description

Subscribers

If there are more than this number of subscribers to a stream, audio
samples are combined. The default value is 8. To increase live streaming
capacity, set this value to 1.

LoCPU

If the CPU is lower than this value, audio samples are not combined. The
default value is 60. To increase live streaming capacity, set this value to 1.

HiCPU

If the CPU is higher than this value, audio samples are not combined. The
default value is 80. To increase live streaming capacity, set this value to 1.

MaxSamples

Combine this many samples into one message. The default value is 4. To
increase live streaming capacity, set this value to 8.

3 Restart the server.

Limit connection requests
A high connection rate to the server can negatively impact the experience of users already connected to the server.
1 Locate the following code in the Server.xml configuration file:

...

100
Element

Description

Impact

MaxConnectionRate

The maximum number of incoming connections
per second the server accepts, per listener.
Listeners are defined in the HostPort element in
the Adaptor.xml file. Each port the server is
configured to listen on represents a listener. You
can set a fractional maximum connection rate,
such as 12.5. A value of 0 or -1 disables this feature.

Connections requested at a rate above this
value remain in the TCP/IP socket queue and
are silently discarded by the operating system
whenever the queue becomes too long.

The value of this element is a global setting for all
listeners. If the element is set to 10 connections per
second, each listener has a limit of 10 connections
per second. If there are three listeners and the
MaxConnectionRate is set to 10, the server
imposes a maximum total combined rate of 30
connections per second.

2 Validate the XML and save the XML file.
3 Restart the server.

Close idle connections
Sometimes clients have left an application without the server-end of the socket knowing. This behavior can happen
when a router is unplugged or crashes without sending TCP close messages for the sockets it is managing, when a
laptop is undocked from a docking station, and so on. To reclaim these resources for new and active clients, the server
can close the idle clients.

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Adobe Media Server sends a small ping message over sockets that have been quiet for awhile. If the client at the far end
has gone away, the server's TCP eventually stops retransmitting that data. When that happens, the socket is shut down
and the server can clean up any associated client object, and so on.
Elements in the Server.xml, Vhost.xml, and Application.xml configuration files specify how often the server should
check for idle clients. When a client has been idle longer than the maximum idle time (10 minutes, by default), the
server sends a status message to the NetConnection object (the client) with the code property set to
NetConnection.Connect.Idle followed by NetConnection.Connect.Closed. The server closes the client
connection to the server and writes an x-status code of 432 in the access log. The server also writes a message such
as “Client x has been idle for y seconds” in the core and event logs.
To close idle connections, enable the feature in the Server.xml file. Once you enable the feature in the Server.xml file,
you can disable the feature for individual virtual hosts or individual applications in the Vhost.xml files and
Application.xml files. The values defined in the Server.xml configuration file apply to all clients connected to the
server, unless the values are defined in the Vhost.xml file (the Vhost.xml values override the Server.xml values). The
values defined in the Application.xml file override the values defined in the Vhost.xml file.
Enable closing idle connections
1 Locate the following code in the Server.xml file:

60
600

2 Edit the following elements.
Element

Description

Impact

AutoCloseIdleClients

Set the enable attribute to true to close
idle clients. If the enable attribute is
omitted or not set to true, the feature is
disabled. The default value is false.

CheckInterval

Specifies the interval, in seconds, at which
the server checks for active client
connections. The default interval is 60
seconds.

A client is disconnected the first time the server
checks for idle connections if the client has
exceeded the MaxIdleTime value. A shorter
interval results in more reliable disconnection
times.

MaxIdleTime

Specifies the maximum idle time allowed, in
seconds, before a client is disconnected. If
this element is 0 or less, the default idle time
is used. The default idle time is 600 seconds
(10 minutes).

A low value may cause unneeded disconnections.
When you configure this element, consider
network latency. An idle time that is less than a
typical round trip between the server and the
client can result in a disconnection.

Configure settings for virtual hosts
You can disable this feature for a virtual host or specify a different maximum idle time for a virtual host in the
Vhost.xml file.
1 Locate the following code in the Vhost.xml file and remove the comments:

600

2 Edit the following elements.

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Element

Description

AutoCloseIdleClients

Disable this feature for an individual virtual host by setting the enable attribute to false. If this
element is disabled in Server.xml, the feature is disabled for all virtual hosts, even if you specify
true in the Vhost.xml file.

MaxIdleTime

Specifies the maximum idle time allowed, in seconds, before a client is disconnected. The default
idle time is 600 seconds (10 minutes). You can set a different value for each virtual host.
If no value is set for this element, the server uses the value set in the Server.xml. file.
The value of the MaxIdleTime element in the Vhost.xml file overrides the value of the
MaxIdleTime element in the Server.xml file.

3 Restart the server.

Configure settings for applications
You can disable this feature for an application or specify a different maximum idle time for an application in the
Application.xml file.
1 Locate the following code in the Application.xml file and remove the comments:

600

2 Edit the following elements.
Element

Description

AutoCloseIdleClients

Disable this feature for an individual application by setting the enable attribute to false. If this
element is disabled in Server.xml, the feature is disabled for all applications, even if you specify
true in the Application.xml file.

MaxIdleTime

Specifies the maximum idle time allowed, in seconds, before a client is disconnected. The default
idle time is 600 seconds (10 minutes). You can set a different value for each application.
If no value is set for this element, the server uses the value set in the Vhost.xml. file. If no value is
set for this element in the Vhost.xml file, the server uses the value in the Server.xml file.
The value of the MaxIdleTime element in the Vhost.xml file overrides the value of the
MaxIdleTime element in the Server.xml file.

3 Restart the server.

Configure how applications are assigned to server processes
Note: This section does not apply to Adobe Media Streaming Server because it doesn’t support multiple processes.
In some scenarios, you might want to change how applications are assigned to server processes. When you start the
server, you are starting a process called AMSMaster.exe (Windows) or amsmaster (Linux). Application instances run
in processes called AMSCore.exe (Windows) and amscore (Linux). The master process is a monitor that starts core
processes when necessary. There can be only one master process running at a time, but there can be many core
processes running at a time.
Note: The number of core processes you can run is limited by system memory. Do not run more than 100, and you
probably won’t need more than 20. If you are configuring the number of core processes and using the reloadApp()
Administration API or HTTP command, see Tech Note kb403044.

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You can configure how applications are assigned to server processes in the Process section of the Application.xml
configuration file. Settings in an Application.xml file in a virtual host folder (for example,
rootinstall/conf/_defaultRoot_/_defaultVHost_/Application.xml) apply to all the applications running in that virtual
host. Settings in an Application.xml file in an application’s folder (for example,
rootinstall/applications/myApp/Application.xml) apply only to that application. The following is the XML structure:

vhost

2
300

...

Configure a process scope
❖ The Scope tag specifies at which level application instances are assigned to core processes. An application instance
can run by itself in a process or it can run in a process with other instances. Enter one of the following values for
the Scope element.
Value

Description

adaptor

All application instances in an adaptor run together in a process.

vhost

All application instances in a virtual host run together in a process. This is the default value.

app

All instances of a single application run together in a process.

inst

Each application instance runs in its own process. This provides the best application isolation and uses the
most system resources.
Running every instance in its own process can create many processes. You can set the Distribute
numprocs attribute to a value greater than 1 to distribute instances across that number of processes.

Distribute a process scope among multiple core processes
The four process scopes don’t provide a good distribution for all scenarios. For example, if you have one application
and want to run 25 instances of that application, you could either distribute those instances to 1 core process
(app) or to 25 core processes (inst). In this scenario, you could set Scope to app
and Distribute numprocs to 3 to distribute the application instances among three core processes.
Note: There is no limit to the value of the numprocs attribute, but you should never need more than 40. Depending on
available RAM, a number between 3 and 11 is realistic for most cases. Adobe recommends using prime number values
because they result in a more even distribution of connections to processes.
Scopes have an enclosing relationship with a strict ordering: adaptors contain virtual hosts, which contain
applications, which contain instances, which contain clients. The value of the Distribute tag must be a scope that is
lower in order than the value in the Scope tag. In other words, if the value of Scope is adaptor, the value of
Distribute can be vhosts, apps, insts, or clients. If the value of Scope is app, the value of Distribute can be
insts or clients. By default, the server uses the value immediately lower than the one specified in the Scope tag.
1 Set the scope value.

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2 Set the numprocs value to a value higher than 1. The default value of numprocs is 3, which means that the default

behavior is to distribute application instances to three core processes.
3 Enter one of the following values for the Distribute element.
Value

Description

vhost or vhosts

All instances of applications in a virtual host run together in a process.

app or apps

All instances of an application run together in a process.

inst or insts

Each application instance runs in its own process. This is the default value. If you choose this value, you must also
set the Distribute numprocs attribute to a value greater than 1.

client or
clients

Each client connection runs in its own process.
Use this value for stateless applications only. Stateless applications don’t require clients to interact with other
clients and don’t have clients accessing live streams. Most vod (video on demand) applications are stateless
because each client plays content independently of all other clients. Chat and gaming applications are not
stateless because all clients share the application state. For example, if a shared chat application were set to
client, the messages wouldn't reach everyone in the chat because they’d be split into separate processes.

Configure the number of core processes and how long each process runs
❖ Specify the number of core processes in the MaxCores tag (the maximum number of core processes that can exist
concurrently) and the number of seconds that a core process can run in the RollOver tag. When a core process
reaches the limit, any new connections roll over to a new core process.
The following diagram depicts the way in which the server rolls over processes. In the XML, the rollover time is set
to 3600 seconds (1 hour), indicating that every hour a new process should start, and the maximum core processes
value is set to 3, indicating that the maximum number of processes at any given time is 3:

app

3600
3

...

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12:00 12:20

1:00

2:00

3:00

4:00

5:00

A. Client connections B. Process 1 starts C. Process 2 starts D. Process 3 starts E. Process 4 starts; Process 1 ends, because the maximum core
processes limit was reached

When each process starts, it accepts new connections until the next process starts: that is, when process 1 starts, it
accepts new client connections to the application until process 2 starts; process 2 then accepts new client
connections until process 3 starts; and so on.
Note that the duration of process 1 might or might not be the full duration specified by the rollover value, because
rollover values are calibrated to the real clock time. The duration of process 1 is partially determined by the current
time when process 1 starts. For example, as shown in the diagram, when process 1 starts, the current time is 12:20,
so the duration of process 1 is only 40 minutes (because it is 40 minutes until the beginning of the hour in real time).
The duration of the first process is determined by the clock time; subsequent processes have a duration equal to the
specified rollover time.
To disable this feature, set RollOver to 0. This feature is disabled by default.
Note: If you have multiple VHosts with Process/Scope set to adaptor, you must set an identical RollOver value
for each VHost.
In stateless applications, such as vod applications, old core processes continue to serve earlier connections. In this
case, you can specify a value in the MaxCores tag to limit the maximum number of core processes that can run
simultaneously. If the application is not stateless, the server ignores any value you assign to MaxCores and sets it to
1. This ensures that an application instance is not split across multiple processes, but clients are disconnected
periodically. To disable this feature, set MaxCores to 0. This feature is disabled by default.
Note: An application is considered stateless if you configure it to distribute clients over multiple processes. To do this,
set the Distribute numprocs attribute to a value greater than 1, then set the Distribute tag to clients or set the
Scope tag to inst.
Check for process failures
1 Enter a value in the MaxFailures tag to specify the maximum number of process failures allowed before a core
process is disabled. The default value is 2.
2 Once disabled, a master process will not launch a core process until a minimum recovery time elapses. Enter a value

in the RecoveryTime tag to specify the minimum recovery time for contained elements; set the tag to 0 to disable
checking for process failures.
Use this feature to guard against a behavior in which a faulty core process can use the entire CPU by being repeatedly
launched very quickly.
Note: Applications that are loaded using the Administration API (including applications loaded using the
Administration Console) are not checked for process failures.

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Configure the RAW adaptor
Flash Media Server 3.5.3
The RAW (Record and Watch) file format records live media into configurable chunks that stream to any version of
Flash Player. Use the RAW file format to serve long-length, multi-bitrate DVR streams without running into
performance issues. The RAW file format records and plays back all streams that Adobe Media Server supports,
including H.264 video, data-only, audio-only, and so on.
1 Open the rootinstall/conf/Server.xml file in a text editor.
2 To configure how the server uses the RAW adaptor, edit the following XML parameters:

warning

true
65536

...
Element

Default value

Description

StreamLogLevel

warning

Controls log levels for all stream adaptors (FLV, MP4, and RAW). The
default value is warning. Possible values are verbose, warning, and
error.

Raw

Container element.

Contains elements that control the RAW adaptor.

EnableAggMsgs

true

Specifies whether the RAW adaptor generates aggregate messages
(true) or not (false). The default value is true. Aggregating
messages improves server performance.

MaxAggMsgSize

65536

The maximum size of an aggregate message, in bytes. The default value
is 65536. You can use any positive integer.

3 Save and validate the XML file.
4 Restart the server.

Disable RTMPE
Important: By default, RTMPE is enabled in the server’s Adaptor.xml file. For maximum security, it’s best to leave
RTMPE enabled. For more information, see the Adobe Media Server Hardening Guide.
In some scenarios, however, you might want to disable RTMPE (encrypted Real-Time Messaging Protocol). Because
RTMPE uses encrypted channels, there is a minor impact on performance; RTMPE requires about 15% more
processing power than RTMP. If you don’t control the applications that connect to Adobe Media Server and you don’t
want them to use RTMPE, you can disable RTMPE at the adaptor level.
To request an encrypted or encrypted tunnelling channel, applications specify rtmpe or rtmpte, respectively, in the
NetConnection.connect() URL, for example,
nc.connect("rtmpe://www.example.com/myMediaApplication"). If an application specifies RTMPE without
explicitly specifying a port, Flash Player scans ports just like it does with RTMP, in the following order: 1935 (RTMPE),
443 (RTMPE), 80 (RTMPE), 80 (RTMPTE).
Note: RTMPE cannot currently be used between servers or from edge to origin. In these cases, RTMPS can be used instead.
1 Open the Adaptor.xml file for the adaptor you want to disable (located in rootinstall/conf).

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2 Locate the following XML:

in
the Application.xml configuration file. When verification is enabled, the server verifies that the client SWF file
requesting a connection to the server matches the verifying SWF file. The verifying SWF file is a copy of the client SWF
file that you place on the server or in an external content repository.
By default, the server looks in rootinstall/applications/application_name/SWFs folder for the verifying SWF file. You
can override this default in the SWFFolder tag of the Application.xml file, the Server.xml file, or in the File plug-in. If
you installed Apache with Adobe Media Server, you can add a path to the folder from which you serve SWF files. For
example, on Windows, adding the path C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server
4\webroot prevents you from needing to maintain two copies of each SWF file.
Note: If you’re deploying an Adobe AIR application, copy the SWF file you compiled into the AIR package to the server
or external content repository.
When the client SWF file connects to the server, the server verifies it. If the SWF file is verified, it is allowed to connect
to the application. If a client SWF file fails verification, the server disconnects the NetConnection object and logs an
event to the access log. The server does not send a NetStream status message to the client.
For client applications that comprise multiple SWF files or SWF files that dynamically load other SWF files, the SWF
file that contains the NetConnection object to connect to the server is the one that the server attempts to verify.
Note: SWF files connecting to Adobe Media Administration Server cannot be verified.
Locating SWF files for verification
The server looks for verifying SWF files in the following locations, in order:
1 The application-specific Application.xml file, if it exists. The Application.xml file defines the location of verifying

SWF files in the SWFFolder tag. If SWFFolder contains a file path, the server looks for verifying SWF files in that
file path. If SWFFolder is empty, the server looks in the default location: /applications/application_name/SWFs.
2 The Vhost-level Application.xml file. This Application.xml file defines the location of verifying SWF files for all

applications on the virtual host. The SWFFolder tag defines the location. If SWFFolder contains a file path, the
server looks for verifying SWF files in that file path. If SWFFolder is empty, the server looks in the default location:
/applications/application_name/SWFs.
3 The server checks the SWFFolder tag in the Server.xml file. This tag specifies a location for global SWF files, which

means SWF files that are common to all applications.
4 If a File plug-in is enabled for retrieval of SWF files, the server calls the File plug-in. The server passes any values

present in Application.xml or Server.xml to the plug-in. The plug-in developer overrides these values with paths to
the external content repository.
Configure SWF verification for applications
1 Locate the following section of the Application.xml file:

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...

1
5
5
60

2 Edit the following elements.
Element

Attribute

Description

SWFVerification

enabled

Set the enabled attribute to "true" or "false" to turn this feature on
or off. The default value is "false".

SWFFolder

None.

A single folder or a semicolon-delimited list of folders that contain copies
of client SWF files. These SWF files are used to verify connecting SWF files.
They are the verifying SWF files.
The default value is the application's folder appended with /SWFs. For
example, for an application called myApplication, if there isn’t a value set
for this element, verifying SWF files should be placed in the
applications/myApplication/SWFs folder.
If you are using the File plug-in to verify SWF files in an external content
repository, leave this field blank.
If you installed Apache with Adobe Media Server, enter the path to the
folder from which you are serving SWF files. For example, if you’re serving
SWF files from the webroot directory on Windows, enter the path
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 4\webroot.
Important: All SWF files in the specified folder are hashed and cached in
memory when the server starts and every time the cache TTL expires. A
large number of SWF files can result in start-up time delays and high
memory usage.

MinGoodVersion

None.

Specifies the minimum version of this feature to accept. The default value
is 0, which allows this and all future versions. This is a reserved field that
works with Flash Player; Adobe recommends keeping the default value.

DirLevelSWFScan

None.

Specifies the number of levels of subfolders within a parent folder to scan
for SWF files. The parent folder is specified in the SWFFolder element.
Specifying a positive value scans that number of subfolder levels.
Specifying zero scans the parent folder and no subfolders. Specifying a
negative value scans all subfolder levels. The default value is 1, which
means that the server scans only one subfolder level.

MaxInitDelay

None

The maximum amount of time to process SWF files, in seconds. The default
value is 5 seconds.

FirstHashTimeout

None

The maximum amount of time that a client can use to provide its first
verification to the server.

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Element

Attribute

Description

FinalHashTimeout

None

The maximum amount of time that a client can use to provide its final
verification to the server.

UserAgentExceptions

None.

Container.

Exception

from
to

A user agent to except from verification. Use the from and to attributes to
indicate the lowest and highest versions to except. This is a string
comparison, with editing to make all numeric fields equal in length. For
more information, see the comments in the Application.xml file and
“Create verification exceptions” later in this topic.

Cache

None.

Container.

TTL

None.

The time to live for the SWF file, in minutes. The default value is 1440
minutes (24 hours). If a SWF file is removed from the server, the verification
values stay in the cache for 24 hours; users can connect to the application
until the cache expires.

UpdateInterval

None.

The maximum time in minutes to wait for the server to scan the SWFs
folders for updates when there is a miss in the cache. The default value is
5 minutes, which means a SWF file copied to the SWFs folder is picked up
by the server within 5 minutes.

Create verification exceptions
❖ Add Exception elements to the UserAgentExceptions section of the Application.xml file.
Certain applications—for example, Adobe® Flash® Media Live Encoder—do not support the form of SWF
verification used by the server. You can add one or more exceptions to the SWF verification rules that allow
specified user agents, such as Adobe Media Live Encoder, to bypass SWF verification, as in the following:

...

Configure SWF verification globally
You can configure verification for a group of SWF files on the server that are common to all applications.
❖ In the Server.xml file Root/Server/SWFVerification/SWFFolder tag, specify folders that hold the verifying

SWF files. You can also configure other values for these SWF files.
Note: In addition to configuring the SWFFolder tag in the Server.xml file, enable verification in the Vhost-level or
application-specific Application.xml file. See “Configure SWF Verification for Applications” in this topic.
Create folders for the verifying SWF files
1 If the SWFFolder value is the default, create a folder called SWFs in the application’s folder on the server.
For example, for an application called myMediaApp, create the folder applications/myMediaApp/SWFs. SWF files
in the SWFs folder verify connections to any instance of the myMediaApp application.
2 To verify SWF files for application instances, create instance folders in the SWFs directory, for example,

applications/myMediaApp/SWFs/chat01, applications/myMediaApp/SWFs/chat02, and so on.
SWF files in the SWFs directory can verify all instances of the application; SWF files within an instance folder can
verify only that instance.

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Note: Multiple SWF files may exist in either directory. A SWF file can be renamed and still used for verification as long
as it’s a copy of the client SWF file.

Restrict access to the server with a cross-domain file
You can restrict access to an edge server or the Administration Server with a cross-domain XML file. The crossdomain XML file lets you specify a list of domains from which clients can access the edge server or Administration
Server.
1 Open rootinstall/conf/Server.xml and locate the CrossDomainPath element in the Server element (or the
AdminServer element, for the Administration Server):

...

2 Specify the location of the cross-domain file in the CrossDomainPathElement, for example:
C:/Security/config/files/ams/crossdomain.xml

3 Validate the Server.xml file, save it, and restart the server.

Limit access to Adobe Media Administration Server
The Administration Console connects to Adobe Media Administration Server, which connects to Adobe Media
Server. By default, the Administration Server in installed on port 1111. Adobe recommends that you block all external
access to port 1111 so that access to the admin server is restricted only to clients that are within your firewall.
Additionally, you can restrict access to the admin server by using domain based restrictions.
By default, a client can connect to Adobe Media Administration Server from any domain or IP address, which can be
a security risk. If desired, you can change this in the AdminServer section of the Server.xml file.
1 Open rootinstall/conf/Server.xml and locate the following code:

...
all
...

2 Edit the Allow element to specify which connections to Adobe Media Administration Server the server responds

to. This is specified as a comma-delimited list of host names, domain names, and full or partial IP addresses, as well
as the keyword all. For example: x.foo.com, foo.com, 10.60.1.133, 10.60.
3 Validate the XML, save the Server.xml file, and restart the server.

Set limits on unsuccessful login attempts
You can use the LogInLimits settings in the rootinstall/conf/Server.xml file to set the number of unsuccessful
attempts a client is allowed when trying to log in to the admin server. With these settings, you define how many failed
attempts are allowed before the client must wait to attempt to log in again. You also define the amount of time they
must wait. In addition, you can lock the user out of the server entirely after a certain number of attempts.
To set the number of login attempts the client can have before waiting, use the MaxFailures sub-element. After that
number of failures, the client must wait the number of seconds defined by the RecoveryTime sub-element. If the client
tries unsuccessfully to log in a number of times equal to LockOutLimit, they are locked out of the server until the
server is restarted.

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In the following example, a user can try to log in 10 times. If they fail to log in successfully on the 10th attempt, they
must wait 5 minutes (300 seconds) before attempting to log in again. If they fail 20 times total, they are barred from
logging in until the server is restarted:

300

For more information, see “LogInLimits” on page 209.

Configure SSL
Note: Adobe Media Server uses OpenSSL libraries internally. To upgrade OpenSSL libraries, see TechNote 90293.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol for enabling secure communications over TCP/IP. Adobe Media Server
provides native support for both incoming and outgoing SSL connections. An incoming connection is a connection
between Flash Player and the server. An outgoing connection is a connection between two servers.
RTMPS adheres to SSL standards for secure network connections and enables connections through a TCP socket on
a secure port. Data passed over the secure connection is encrypted to avoid eavesdropping by unauthorized third
parties. Because secure connections require extra processing power and may affect the server’s performance, use
RTMPS only for applications that require a higher level of security or that handle sensitive or critical data.
By default, when Flash Player connects to Adobe Media Server, it scans the following ports in order: 1935, 443, 80, 80
(RTMP tunneling). To configure SSL, specify that a port is secure. To specify that a port is secure, place a minus (“-”)
sign in front of the port number. The default secure port for RTMPS is 443. To configure the default secure port, enter
-443 in the ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT parameter in the rootinstall/conf/ams.ini file, as follows:
ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT = :1935,-443

When Flash Player encounters an “rtmps://amsdomain/application” string, it communicates with Adobe Media
Server over port 443. Adobe Media Server returns data to the client over port 443. Traffic with an “rtmp://” string uses
port 1935.
To connect to Adobe Media Server over an SSL connection, clients must do the following:
1 Set the NetConnection.proxyType property to "best" before connecting.
2 Specify the RTMPS protocol in the call to the NetConnection.connect() method.

If SSL is configured, the following client code connects securely:
var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
nc.proxyType = "best";
nc.connect("rtmps://amsexamples.adobe.com/vod/instance1");

If you configure any port other than 443 as secure, for example, -1935, the client must specify the port in the URI, for
example, “rtmps://host:1935/app”.
Note: All server editions support a version of RTMP called RTMPE, which is an 128-bit encrypted protocol. RTMPE is
more lightweight than SSL and is enabled by default. For more information, see the NetConnection.connect() entry
in the ActionScript® 3.0 Language Reference or in the ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference.

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Certificates
You can get an SSL certificate from a certificate authority or create a certificate yourself. If a certificate is signed by an
intermediate Certificate Authority (CA), it must include the intermediate certificate as part of the certificate that the
server returns to the client. Your certificate file (if signed by an intermediate CA) should look something like the
following:
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----...
-----END CERTIFICATE---------BEGIN CERTIFICATE----...
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

The first BEGIN CERTIFICATE/END CERTIFICATE pair is your certificate. The next BEGIN CERTIFICATE/END
CERTIFICATE pair is the intermediate CA that signed your certificate. You can add additional sections as needed.

Secure incoming connections
Specify the location of the SSL certificate and the certificate’s private key, and configure the adaptor to listen on a
secure port.
1 Open the Adaptor.xml file for the adaptor you want to configure and locate the following code:

...

ALL:!ADH:!LOW:!EXP:!MD5:@STRENGTH
5

...

2 Edit the following elements.
Element

Description

SSLCertificateFile

The location of the certificate file to send to the client. Specify an absolute path or
a path relative to the adaptor folder.

SSLCertificateKeyFile type="PEM"

The location of the private key file for the certificate. Specify an absolute path or a
path relative to the adaptor folder. The type attribute specifies the type of
encoding used for the certificate key file. This can be either "PEM" or "ASN1". The
default value is "PEM". The private key and the certificate can be combined into
one file.
If the key file is encrypted, the pass phrase must be specified in the
SSLPassPhrase tag.

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Element

Description

SSLPassPhrase

The pass phrase to use for decrypting the private key file. If the private key file is
not encrypted, leave this tag empty.

SSLCipherSuite

The SSL ciphers: a colon-delimited list of components. A component can be a key
exchange algorithm, authentication method, encryption method, digest type, or
one of a selected number of aliases for common groupings. Do not change the
default settings unless you are very familiar with SSL ciphers. The possible values
are listed here: “SSLCipherSuite” on page 139.

SessionTimeout

The amount of time in minutes a session remains valid. Any value less than 1 is read
as 1. The default value is 5. If a client reconnects to a session before
SessionTimeout is reached, the cipher suite list isn’t sent during the SSL
handshake.

3 To configure a secure port for an adaptor, specify a minus sign before the port number in the ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT

parameter in the rootinstall/conf/ams.ini file, as follows:
ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT = :1935,-443

This configuration tells the server to listen on ports 1935 and 443, and that 443 is a secure port that receives only
RTMPS connections. An RTMPS connection to port 1935 fails: the client attempts to perform a SSL handshake that
the server fails to complete. An RTMPS connection to port 443 succeeds: the client performs a SSL handshake that
the server completes. An RTMP connection to port 443 also fails: the server tries to perform a SSL handshake that
the client fails to complete.
4 Restart the server.
5 Check the rootinstall/logs/edge.00.log file to verify that no errors have been reported.

Configure incoming connections when multiple virtual hosts are assigned to one adaptor
You can configure the server to return a certificate based on which port a client connects to. This lets you assign
multiple virtual hosts to one adaptor and return a different certificate for each virtual host.
Note: Generally, if you’re hosting multiple customers, each virtual host has its own domain name. Each domain name
must have its own certificate.
1 Locate the following code in the Adaptor.xml file:

...

${ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT}

...

2 Create new HostPort elements with unique name and ctl_channel attributes and unique port values for RTMP

and SSL.
For example, add the following HostPort tag in addition to the default HostPort tag:
:1936,-444

3 For each HostPort element, enter an Edge element under the SSL element with an identical name attribute. If you

don’t specify an Edge element, the edge uses the default SSL configuration.

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This sample code demonstrates how to configure edge1 to return cert2.pem when a client connects to it on port
443. Since there is no Edge tag for edge2, edge2 will use the default configuration specified in the SSLServerCtx
section that is directly under the SSL container tag. The edge2 server returns cert.pem when a client connects to
it on port 444.

cert.pem
private.pem

ALL:!ADH:!LOW:!EXP:!MD5:@STRENGTH
5

cert2.pem
private2.pem

ALL:!ADH:!LOW:!EXP:!MD5:@STRENGTH
5

4 Validate the XML and save the file.
5 Restart the server.

Secure outgoing connections
1 Open the Server.xml file and locate the following code:

true

9
ALL:!ADH:!LOW:!EXP:!MD5:@STRENGTH

2 Edit the following elements.

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Element

Description

SSLRandomSeed

The number of bytes of entropy to use for seeding the pseudo-random number generator
(PRNG). You cannot specify anything less than 8 bytes, and the default value is 16. Entropy is a
measure of randomness. The more entropy, the more random numbers the PRNG will contain.
The server may take longer to start up if you specify a large number.

SSLSessionCacheGC

How often to flush expired sessions from the server-side session cache, in minutes.

SSLVerifyCertificate

A Boolean value specifying whether to verify the certificate returned by the server being
connected to (true) or not (false). The default value is true. Disabling certificate verification
can result in a security hazard. Do not disable verification unless you are certain you understand
the ramifications.

SSLCACertificatePath

A folder containing certificates. Each file in the folder must contain only a single certificate, and
the file name must be hash and the extension ".0", for example, e98140a6.0.
On a Windows 32-bit operating system, if this tag is empty, the server looks for certificates in the
rootinstall\certs directory. You can import the Windows certificate store to the certs directory by
running AMSMaster -console -initialize from a command line.
In Linux, you must specify the location of the certificates.

SSLCACertificateFile

Specifies the name of a file containing one or more certificates in PEM format.

SSLVerifyDepth

Specifies the maximum depth of an acceptable certificate. If a self-signed root certificate cannot
be found within this depth, certificate verification fails. The default value is 9.

SSLCipherSuite

The SSL ciphers: a colon-delimited list of components. A component can be a key exchange
algorithm, authentication method, encryption method, digest type, or one of a selected
number of aliases for common groupings. Do not change the default settings unless you are
very familiar with SSL ciphers. The possible values are listed here: “SSLCipherSuite” on page 227.

Configure adaptors to manage outgoing SSL connections independently
The SSL section in the Server.xml file configures all adaptors to use the same settings. However, you might want to use
a different certificate for each virtual host. In this case, assign one virtual host to each adaptor and configure your
adaptors individually to override the settings in the Server.xml file.
❖ Copy the SSL section in the Server.xml file to the Adaptor.xml files and enter the new values. You don’t need to

copy the SSLRandomSeed tag, as this tag is a server-level setting that cannot be overridden in Adaptor.xml.
Configure virtual hosts to manage outgoing SSL connections independently
For example, you can disable certificate checking in one virtual host, use a certificate in a different folder for one virtual
host, and implement a different set of ciphers in a third virtual host.
1 Uncomment the SSL section under the Proxy tag in the appropriate Vhost.xml file:

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...

When the SSL tag is present, the entire SSL section is used to configure the virtual host. If an SSL tag is omitted
from this section, the server uses the default settings.
2 Restart the server.

Configure Adobe Media Server to work with a hardware SSL proxy
When you use a hardware SSL proxy, you don't need to configure Adobe Media Server for SSL. The hardware sits
between Adobe Media Server and the Internet. Data sent between Adobe Media Server and the hardware is
unencrypted. The hardware encrypts the data and forwards it to the Internet.
Configure the hardware to listen externally on port 443 to receive encrypted data sent over Internet from clients.
Configure the hardware to forward data to Adobe Media Server on port 1935. Adobe Media Server listens on port 1935
by default. If you’ve changed the default port, configure the hardware to forward data on that port.

Configure RPCs (Remote Procedure Calls)
Adobe Media Server provides settings in the Application.xml file for configuring which RPC methods can be called.
The default is to block all RPC calls.
You can enable RPCs by setting the element’s enable attribute to true; for example:

After enabling RPCs, you must then list individual methods that are allowed. Each type of class—Client,
NetConnection, Stream, and SharedObject—has its own whitelist of methods that can be called. If a method or object
is not explicitly listed in the whitelist, then it is considered blocked.
The settings for RPCs are in the element of the Application.xml file. This element contains the
following sub-elements:

•

— All methods blocked by default.

•

— Only the onStatus() method is allowed by default, if RPCs are enabled.

•

— All methods blocked by default.

•

— Only the onStatus() method is allowed by default, if RPCs are enabled.

Each of these sub-elements takes a sub-element. Each sub-element takes an subelement. The sub-element is a comma-delimited list of allowed methods.
To add a method to a class’s whitelist:
1 Enable RPCs by setting the element’s enabled attribute to true; for example:

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2 Add the method you want to allow to the class’s element. The following example allows the getLocal()

and setFps() methods to be called on the SharedObject class:

getLocal,setFps

3 Ensure that the defaults for the other classes meet your security standards. After enabling RPCs for all classes, you

should review the default allowed methods.
The method names are case-sensitive and should be in one of the following formats:[objectPath.]method
[objectPath.]object
If you allow an object but do not list its methods, then all methods of that object are allowed. For example,
a.b matches methods a.b.c() and a.b.d().

Enable virtual directory mappings for server-side File objects
You can specify virtual directory mappings for server-side File objects in the Application.xml configuration file.
However, the feature must be enabled at the server level in the Server.xml configuration file.
To enable virtual directories for server-side File objects, set the element’s enable
attribute to true in the Server.xml file. In the Application.xml file, add a sub-element to the
element.
Only enable VirtualDirectoryForFile when you must provide virtual directories for server-side scripting; it is not
required for adding virtual directories for streams. When virtual directories for File objects are enabled, anyone who
has access to a server-side script can write files anywhere on the server disk. As a result, it is disabled by default.
Activating it requires a configuration from the Server.xml file administrator.
If you map File objects in the Application.xml file and don’t have the feature enabled in the Server.xml file, the
following message appears in the log:
"Virtual directories for file objects is not supported due to the Server level security
setting."

The following example enables virtual directory mappings for server side File objects in the Server.xml file:

...
...
...
...

The following example from the Application.xml file creates a new virtual directory mapping for server-side File
objects:

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/flashapps;C:\dev\Code\Flash\tincan\flashapps\

...
...
...

Performing general configuration tasks
Enable checkpoint logging events
Many companies use statistics from the access log to bill customers. If your programming includes live events or 24/7
programming, the events you use to calculate billing might not occur within a billing cycle. To solve this problem, you
can enable checkpoint events. Checkpoint events log bytes periodically during an event. The following are available as
checkpoint events: connect-continue, play-continue, and publish-continue.
You must enable checkpoint events at the server level in the Server.xml file. You can disable checkpoints at the vhost
and application level in the Vhost.xml and Application.xml files. You can also override the logging interval at the vhost
and application levels. For more information, see the comments in the XML files located in the rootinstall/conf folder.
1 Open the rootinstall/conf/Server.xml file in a text editor.
2 Locate the Root/Server/Logging/Checkpoints element:

60
3600

3 Set the Checkpoints enable attribute to true, like this: .
4 You can optionally set values for the CheckInterval and LogInterval elements to indicate how often the server

should check for and log events.
5 Save and validate the file.
6 Restart the server.

Allow Administration API methods to be called over HTTP
You must specify each Administration API method that may be called over HTTP.
1 Open the rootinstall/conf/ams.ini file.
2 Set the USERS.HTTPCOMMAND_ALLOW parameter to a comma-delimited list of APIs, and restart the server. The

default value is ping. For more information, see “Allow (HTTPCommands)” on page 235.

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Allow application debugging connections
To play back streams and obtain data from shared objects, the Administration Console must make a special debugging
connection to the server. By default, the server does not allow this connection.
1 Open the Application.xml file.

50
false

3 Set the AllowDebugDefault element to true.

Note: Debug connections count against license limits.
4 Save and validate the file.
5 Restart the server.

Configuring IPv6
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is a new version of Internet Protocol that supports 128-bit addresses. The current
version of Internet Protocol, IPv4, supports 32-bit addresses. IPv6 alleviates the address shortage problem on the
Internet. A system that only runs IPv6 can't communicate with a system that only runs IPv4.
By default, Adobe Media Server runs in IPv4 mode, even if the operating system is configured for IPv6. When Adobe
Media Server runs in IPv6 mode, hostnames specified in Adaptor.xml are resolved to IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
Important: In Red Hat® Linux systems, you must update the NETWORKING_IPV6 value in /etc/sysconfig/network when
installing or uninstalling IPv6.
Activate IPv6 on the network interface card.
IPv6 is embedded in all operating systems that the server supports. You may need to activate IPv6 on the interfaces.
For more information, see the operating system’s Help.
Allow the server to listen on IPv6 sockets.
1 Open the rootinstall/conf/Server.xml file in a text editor.
2 Locate the NetworkingIPv6 tag and set enable to "true":

3 Save the file and restart the server.

Enclose numeric IPv6 addresses in URLs in brackets.
Wherever a numeric IPv6 address is used in a client-side script, server-side script, or in the server configuration files,
enclose it in brackets:
rtmp://[fd5e:624b:4c18:ffff:0:5efe:10.133.128.108]:1935/streamtest

You must specify the interface zone index for a link-local address:
rtmp://[fe80::204:23ff:fe14:da1c%4]:1935/streamtest

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It’s a good idea to register the RTMP, RTMPS, and RTMPE protocols with a network services database and use a
service name (or decimal port number, if necessary) in the server configuration files.
Check the logs
When the server starts, it logs available stack configuration, host name, and all available IP addresses for the host in
the master.xx.log, edge.xx.log, and admin.xx.log files (located in the rootinstall/logs/ directory). The following xcomment fields from a sample edge log file indicate that the IPv6 stack and the IPv4 stack are available, and that the
server host has dual addresses and is listening on both interfaces:
AMS detected IPv6 protocol stack!
AMS config
AMS running in IPv6 protocol stack mode!
Host: amsqewin2k3-02 IPv4: 10.133.192.42 IPv6: fe80::204:23ff:fe14:da1c%4
Listener started ( _defaultRoot__? ) : 19350/v6
Listener started ( _defaultRoot__? ) : 19350/v4
Listener started ( _defaultRoot__? ) : 1935/v6
Listener started ( _defaultRoot__? ) : 1935/v4

On Red Hat Linux, the edge logs display only the highest IP version the socket listeners are using, even if the socket
listeners accept connections over both IPv4 and IPv6. In the previous example, only the v6 entries would be displayed.
On IPv6-enabled Linux, if you are using an host name that resolves to IPv4 host name with an RTMPT or RTMPTE
connection, configure the Adaptor.xml appropriately to resolve connections quickly. See “HTTPIdent2” on page 131.

Defining Application object properties
You can define properties for the server-side Application object in the server’s Application.xml configuration files. If
you define properties in the default Application.xml file, the properties are available for all applications on a virtual
host. If you define properties in an Application.xml file in an application folder, the properties are available only for
that application.
To define a property, create an XML tag in the ScriptEngine section of the Application.xml file. The property name
corresponds to the tag’s name, and the property value corresponds to the tag’s contents.
For example, the following XML fragment defines the properties user_name and dept_name, with the values jdoe and
engineering, respectively:

jdoe
engineering

To access the property in server-side code, use the syntax in either of these examples:
application.config.prop_name
application.config["prop_name"]

Note: The properties you define are accessible from application.config.property, not from
application.property.
For example, given the previous XML fragment, the following trace() statements are valid:

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trace("I am " + application.config.user_name + " and I work in the " +
application.config.dept_name + " department.");
trace("I am " + application.config["user_name"] + " and I work in the " +
application.config["dept_name"] + " department.");

The output from either statement would be as follows:
I am jdoe and I work in the engineering department.

You can also use environment variables and symbols you define in the substitution.xml file. For example, assume that
the environment variable COMPUTERNAME is equal to jsmith01, and you have defined a symbol named DEPT in the
substitution.xml file:

Engineering

In addition, the following XML appears in the Application.xml file:

${%COMPUTERNAME%}
${DEPT}

In a server-side script, the following trace statements are valid:
trace("My computer's name is: " + application.config.compName);
trace("My department is: " + application.config.dept);

The output is as follows:
My computer's name is: jsmith01
My department is: Engineering

Note: Server-side ActionScript trace()statements display in the Live Log panel of the Administration Console.

More Help topics
“Using symbols in configuration files” on page 18

Configure or disable native bandwidth detection
The server can detect a client’s bandwidth in the core server code (called native bandwidth detection), or in a serverside script (called script-based bandwidth detection). Native bandwidth detection is faster than script-based because the
core server code is written in C and C++. Also, with native bandwidth detection, if a client connects through edge
servers, the outermost edge server detects the bandwidth, which results in more accurate data. Native bandwidth
detection is enabled and configured by default.
The server detects bandwidth by sending a series of data chunks to the client, each larger than the last. If desired, you
can configure the size of the data chunks, the rate at which they’re sent, and the amount of time the server sends data
to the client. For more information about detecting bandwidth in an application, see the Developer Guide.
1 Open the Application.xml file.

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-1
16384
2

...
...

Note: To disable native bandwidth detection, set the enabled attribute to false and restart the server.
3 Edit the following elements.
Element

Description

BandwidthDetection

Set the enabled attribute to "true" or "false" to turn this feature on or off.

MaxRate

The maximum rate in Kbps that the server sends data to the client. The default value is -1,
which sends the data at whatever rate is necessary to measure bandwidth.

DataSize

The amount of data in bytes that the server sends to the client. To detect the client’s
bandwidth, the server attempts to send a series of random blocks of data to the client, each
time sending this much more data. For example, x bytes are sent, followed by 2x bytes,
followed by 3x bytes, and so on until MaxWait time has elapsed.

MaxWait

The number of seconds the server sends data to the client. Increasing this number provides
a more accurate bandwidth figure, but it also forces the client to wait longer.

4 Save and validate the Application.xml file.
5 Restart the server.

Configuring content storage
Setting the location of application files
The presence of an application folder within the applications folder tells the server that the application exists. By
default, the applications folder is located at rootinstall/applications.
Within the applications folder, create subfolders for your applications. Within each individual application folder,
create subfolders to create instances of applications. For example, the following path is to an instance of an application
called “my_application”:
rootinstall/applications/my_application/first_instance
To change the location of the applications folder and the live and vod applications, edit the locations in the following
parameters in the ams.ini file:

• Registered applications folder: VHOST.APPSDIR
• Live application: LIVE_DIR

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• Vod application: VOD_DIR

Mapping directories to network drives
By default, the server runs as System Account with no access to network drives. You can change the service user to a
user with network access privileges with a UNC path.
A Windows network-mapped drive is not valid when a user is logged out. If the server is running as a service and the
user is logged out, the mapped drive is removed as well. To run with the mapped drive, lock the server instead of
logging out. Using the UNC path is preferred when the server is running as a service.
1 Stop Adobe Media Server and Adobe Media Administration Server.
2 Make the changes to the configuration.
3 Check that the server user has appropriate access rights to map to the network drive (system account rights are

usually not sufficient.)
4 Restart AdobeMedia Server and Adobe Media Administration Server.

Setting the location of recorded streams and shared objects
By default, all recorded streams for an application are stored in a streams folder in the application directory. Shared
objects are stored in a shared objects folder in the application directory.
Note: Adobe strongly recommends that folders that store streams always contain only streams and no other application
files.
Use the StorageDir tag in the Application.xml file to specify a different location to store streams or shared objects.
You could do this for vod applications. For example, if you already have a collection of video files in a directory other
than the application directory, you can set the storage directory to that other directory instead of copying content to
the application directory.
When you specify a value for the element in the application-specific XML, that value is specific to the
application. Otherwise, when you specify a value in the virtual host-level Application.xml, the scope is extended to all
the applications on that virtual host.
Within the directory that you specify as the storage directory, you must create physical subdirectories for different
application instances. Adobe Media Server sandboxes the content for each instance of an application.
Let’s say, for example, you set the storage directory to C:\Content for the chatApp application:
C:\Content

When a user connects to the firstRoom instance of the chatApp application and tries to play a stream, the server looks
for the stream in a subfolder C:\Content\firstRoom. Content for each instance is sandboxed from other instance of
the same application; a user who connects to the secondRoom instance would not be able to access the content in
C:\Content\firstRoom.
If you do not want resources to be sandboxed by application and application instance, use virtual directories.

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Mapping virtual directories to physical directories
Adobe Media Server stores recorded streams and video and audio files in default locations in the application directory.
In some scenarios, you might want to specify particular locations for these resources, but without restricting access by
application or application instance. By mapping a virtual directory to a physical directory, you do not need to copy
resources to Adobe Media Server’s application directory, and you can retain your existing classification and
categorization of resources.
To map a virtual directory for an application, you can use the element in the Vhost.xml or the
Application.xml file. This element provides various options:

• You can specify a virtual directory name or not. When a name is specified, the server maps the name to the specified
directory and first looks for the stream in the specified directory.

• You can specify multiple physical directories for a single virtual directory. Use multiple tags.
• When specified in an application-specific Application.xml file, controls only the storage
location of resources for that application. Any instance of the application can access video files in that location
(unlike with ), but other applications cannot.

• When specified in the virtual-host Application.xml file or the Vhost.xml file, controls the
storage location of all applications on that virtual host. All applications on the virtual host can access video files in
the specified location, although Adobe recommends that if you want control at the virtual host level, you configure
the tag in Vhost.xml file instead of the virtual-host Application.xml file.
If you are creating a new virtual directory for a File object (as opposed to a stream), you must also enable the
VirtualDirectoryForFile option in the Server.xml file. For more information, see “Enable virtual directory
mappings for server-side File objects” on page 44.
The order in which the server determines the correct directory to use for streams is as follows:
1 Virtual directory (as specified in )
2 Storage directory (as specified in )
3 Default location (the streams folder in the application directory)

Note: Adobe strongly recommends that folders that store streams always contain only streams and no other application
files.

Virtual directory example: vod
One usage scenario for this element is to specify a directory to use for a specific vod application and put video files in
this directory to stream them instantly. You would use the element in the application-specific
Application.xml file. To map a directory in this way, edit the application-specific Application.xml file to include the
virtual directory, as shown in the following example:

/;C:\my_videos

This code overrides the VHost.xml file’s mapping of '/' (if it exists) for this application only. To play a file in the virtual
directory, such as C:\my_videos\sample.flv, a client connects to the vod application and calls NetStream.play():

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ns.play("sample");

The element in the application-specific Application.xml file affects only that application,
protecting your streams from being accessed by other applications on the same virtual host. It overrides settings in the
Vhost.xml file.
Playing streams nested in subfolders
To play a stream, specify the codec before you specify the path to the stream. FLV streams don’t require a codec prefix,
but F4V/MP4 files, MP3 files, and RAW files do.
Suppose the virtual directory mapping is foo;C:\my_videos. The following examples are for
the client-side NetStream.play()method:
ns.play("mp4:foo/sample.f4v",0,-1) // F4V/MP4 files
ns.play("raw:foo/sample",0,-1) // RAW files
ns.play("mp3:foo/sample",0,-1) //MP3 files
ns.play("foo/sample",0,-1). // FLV files

The following are examples for the Server-Side ActionScript Stream.play() method:
myStream.play("mp4:foo/sample.f4v",0,-1) // F4V/MP4 files
myStream.play("mp4:foo/sample",0,-1) // RAW files
myStream.play("mp3:foo/sample",0,-1) // MP3 files
myStream.play("foo/sample",0,-1) // FLV files

Virtual directory example: Separating high- and low-bandwidth video
One way you can use directory mapping is to separate storage of different kinds of resources. For example, your
application could allow users to view either high-bandwidth video or low-bandwidth video, and you might want to
store high-bandwidth and low-bandwidth video in separate folders. You can create a mapping wherein all streams that
start with low are stored in specific directories, C:\low_bandwidth and C:\low_bandwidth2, and all streams that start
with high are stored in a different directory:

low;c:\low_bandwidth
low;c:\low_bandwidth2
high;c:\high_bandwidth

When the client wants to access low-bandwidth video, the client calls ns.play("low/sample"). This call tells the
server to look for the sample.flv file in the C:\low_bandwidth and C:\low_bandwidth2 folders.

ns.play(”low/sample”);

C:\low_bandwidth\sample.flv

A client connects to the sample.flv file in the low-bandwidth storage area on the server, which is mapped in Application.xml.

Similarly, a call to ns.play("high/sample") tells the server to look for the sample.flv file in the c:\high_bandwidth
folder.
Important: To play an F4V/MP4, MP3, or RAW file, specify the codec before the path, for example
ns.play("mp4:high/sample"). The mp3 prefix is mp3:. The RAW prefix is raw:.

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Note that if the client calls ns.play("sample"), the stream name does not match any virtual directory specified, so
the server will then look for sample.flv inside the directory specified by the storage directory element ().
If no storage directory is specified by , then the server looks in the default location (the streams folder)
for the file; that is, the order in which the server looks for files is:
1 Virtual directory (as specified in )
2 Storage directory (as specified in )
3 Default location (the streams folder in the application directory)

Virtual directory example: Local and network file paths
The following table shows three examples of different virtual directory configurations, including mapping to a
network drive, and how the configurations determine the directory to which a recorded stream is published. In the
first case, because the URI specified ("myStream") does not match the virtual directory name that is specified ("low"),
the server publishes the stream to the default streams directory.
Mapping in Vhost.xml

URI in NetStream call Location of published stream

tag
low;e:\amsstreams

"myStream"

c:\...\rootinstall\applications\yourApp\streams\_definst_\myStream.flv

low;e:\amsstreams

"low/myStream"

e:\amsstreams\myStream.flv

low;\\mynetworkDrive\share\amsstreams

"low/myStream"

\\mynetworkDrive\share\amsstreams\myStream.flv

Important: To play an F4V/MP4, MP3, or RAW file, specify the codec before the path, for example
ns.play("mp4:low/myStream"). The mp3 prefix is mp3:. The RAW prefix is raw:.

Configuring Apache HTTP Server
About Apache HTTP Server
Adobe Media Server includes Apache HTTP Server. If you install and enable the web server, you can deliver client SWF
files, container HTML pages, and media assets from Adobe Media Server. You can serve content over HTTP, as well
as RTMP. In addition, you can serve video over HTTP progressive download as a fallback solution for web proxies that
break RTMP or RTMPT.
The Adobe Media Server installation of Apache is like the standard installation. You can use Apache documentation
for most configuration tasks. The Apache root installation folder is rootinstall/Apache2.2. The web root is
rootinstall/webroot.
Note: The Adobe Media Server documentation uses “rootinstall” to indicate the Adobe Media Server root installation
folder (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 4 by default on Windows). The Apache documentation and
configuration files use “ServerRoot” to indicate the Apache root installation folder.
Installation locations
The Apache server that installs with Adobe Media Server differs from a standard Apache installation in the following ways:

• The apachectl files are in the rootinstall/Apache2.2/manual/programs folder.
• The httpd.conf file and the standard secondary configuration files are in the rootinstall/Apache2.2/conf folder.

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• The log files are in the rootinstall/Apache2.2/logs folder. For more information, see “Monitoring and Managing Log
Files” on page 97.
Alternate configurations
To do any of the following, edit the rootinstall/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf file:

• Handle multiple adaptors or virtual hosts
• Block sensitive file types, such as ASC
• Handle any non-standard MIME types required for progressive download
• Serve the default server-status and server-info pages
• Modify source directories

Specify the maximum HTTP header line length
In the Adobe Media Server Adaptor.xml file, the MaxHeaderLineLength element determines the size of the HTTP
header the server can handle. The default value for MaxHeaderLineLength is 1024 bytes. Some browsers send a header
larger than 1024 bytes. In this scenario, Apache sends back an empty response. To fix this issue, configure
MaxHeaderLineLength to 8192.
Note: By default, the Apache HTTP header size limit is 8 KB (8190 bytes plus a carriage return).
1 Open rootinstall/conf/Adaptor.xml in a text editor.
2 Edit the following line:
8192

3 Save the file.
4 Restart the server.

Enable and disable Apache and HTTP proxying
When you install Adobe Media Server and choose to install Apache, it is enabled by default. Adobe Media Server
listens on port 80 and proxies HTTP requests to Apache over port 8134.
Setting the parameter to no value disables HTTP proxying:
HTTPPROXY.HOST =

To proxy to a remote server, set the parameter to the remote server you want to use:
HTTPPROXY.HOST = webfarm.example.com:80

Enable Apache and HTTP proxying
1 Open the ams.ini file in a text editor.
2 Add port 80 to the ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT tag.
ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT = :1935, 80

3 To start and stop Apache when Adobe Media Server starts and stops, set the SERVER.HTTPD_ENABLED parameter

to true:
SERVER.HTTPD_ENABLED = true

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4 Do one of the following:

• Open rootinstall/conf/ams.ini and set the value of the HTTPPROXY.HOST variable to 8134:
HTTPPROXY.HOST = :8134

• Open the Adaptor.xml configuration file in a text editor.
If you have multiple adaptors, open the file for the adaptor you want to configure. The default Adaptor.xml file
is located in the rootinstall\conf\_defaultRoot_ folder.
Set the enable attribute of the HttpProxy tag to "true", as in the following:

${HTTPPROXY.HOST}

Save and validate the Adaptor.xml file.
5 Restart the server.

Disable Apache and HTTP proxying
1 Open the ams.ini file in a text editor.
2 Remove port 80 from the ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT tag.
ADAPTOR.HOSTPORT = :1935

3 Do one of the following:

• Open rootinstall/conf/ams.ini and set the value of the HTTPPROXY.HOST variable to no value:
HTTPPROXY.HOST =

${HTTPPROXY.HOST}

Save and validate the Adaptor.xml file.
4 Restart the server.

Deliver SWF files and HTML files over HTTP
Apache can deliver SWF files, HTML files, JPG files, and many other standard file types over HTTP. Place files that
you want to deliver over HTTP in the correct folders. By default, Apache is configured to use following paths:
Path

Location

Example URL

rootinstall/Apache2.2/webroot

http://myAMSServer.com/app.swf

/cgi-bin

rootinstall/Apache2.2/cgi-bin

http://myAMSServer.com/cgi-bin/someScript.pl

These folders are global, not application-specific. Any SWF files and HTML files you want to serve over HTTP must
be in these folders or in application-specific folders. To create aliases for application-specific folders, edit the
httpd.conf file.

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Create web directories for applications
To have Apache serve content over HTTP, either use one of the predefined web directories or create a web directory
for that application. To create a web directory for an application, add an alias to the
rootinstall/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf file. For example, the following lines create an alias that points to the streams
directory of an application called “hd”:
Alias /hd/ "applications/hd/streams/_definst_/"

Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

Copy media files to the rootinstall/applications/hd/streams/_definst_/ folder to serve them over HTTP. For example,
if a client requests http://ams.example.com/hd/someVideo.flv, Apache serves it the someVideo.flv file from the
rootinstall/applications/hd/streams/_definst_/ folder.
For more information about editing the configuration file, see the Apache documentation at www.apache.org.

Using Apache as a WebDAV host
You can configure the web server to act as a WebDAV host. For information, see the Apache HTTP Server version
2.2.15 documentation at www.apache.org.
The following keywords are reserved words: open, close, send, idle, fcs, ams, crossdomain.xml, fpad. Reserved words
cannot be used for directory names under the webroot directory or for anything else. If you have applications with
these names, use custom aliases to give the HTTP virtual directories slightly different names from the RTMP
applications, such as “open_”.

Running Apache for Windows as a service
To install Apache to run as a service on Windows:
1 Open a Command prompt.
2 Change directories to the rootinstall/Apache2.2/bin folder. For example, at the command prompt, enter the

following:
cd ../../Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Media Server 4/Apache2.2/bin

3 To install Apache to run as a service, enter the following:
httpd.exe -f conf/httpd.conf -n AMSHttpd -k install

Note: To uninstall Apache, enter the following: httpd.exe -n AMSHttpd -k uninstall.
4 To verify that Apache is running, open the Windows Services panel and locate the AMSHttpd service.

To start and stop the Windows services on Windows XP:
1 Right click My Computer and select Manage. The Computer Management dialog box displays.
2 Select Services and Applications.
3 Double-click Services. The list of available services displays.
4 To start a service, select the service from the list and click the Start Service button. To stop a service, select the

service from the list and click the Stop Service button.

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Upgrading Apache HTTP server
At some time after installing Adobe Media Server, you might be required to update the included Apache web server.
Most commonly, this would be due to Apache HTTP server security patches or functionality upgrades.
The version of the Apache HTTP server that ships with Flash Media Server 4.5 is 2.2.17. For the latest information
about the Apache web server, see httpd.apache.org.
The recommended approach to upgrading the Apache web server is to install or build the Apache server in a directory
that is separate from the existing server. Then copy the contents of newly-installed directories to the existing server.
In most cases, you do not replace the existing Apache configuration files with the newer versions of these files. This is
because the Apache web server installation for Adobe Media Server is pre-configured with specific modules and
settings. If there are changes to the configuration files, it is usually easier to update the existing files with changes.
Before upgrading:
1 Review any installation notes on apache.org about the differences between the current version and the new version.

For example, look for renamed directives or renamed modules that would require you to merge configuration files.
2 Make sure the currently-installed version of Apache is working correctly:
1 Check the master log file for errors. The master.00.log file should have a line that launches the httpd process and

returns 0; for example:
- C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 5\Apache2.2\bin\httpd
-f ./conf/httpd.conf -d "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 5\Apache2.2"
-n AMSHttpd -k start returned 0:

2 Try playing videos using the “http” protocol.
3 Check the current version of Apache and make a note of it. From a command prompt, go to

AMS_Install_Dir/Apache2.2/bin and issue the following command:
httpd -v

4 Back up following directories:
AMS_Install_Dir/Apache2.2/bin
AMS_Install_Dir/Apache2.2/lib
AMS_Install_Dir/Apache2.2/include
AMS_Install_Dir/Apache2.2/modules
AMS_Install_Dir/Apache2.2/manual
AMS_Install_Dir/Apache2.2/icons

To upgrade:
1 Stop Adobe Media Server.
2 Follow the directions on apache.org to download and run the Apache installer. If you are using Linux, you may be

required to build the Apache server on your system.
3 Copy the following directories from the newly-installed version to the current version that was installed with Adobe

Media Server:
Apache_Install_Dir/bin
Apache_Install_Dir/modules
Apache_Install_Dir/manual
Apache_Install_Dir/icons

Note that the /conf directory, which contains the Apache configuration files, is not included in this list. You should
not replace the existing configuration files with the new configuration files.

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4 Merge the configuration files, if necessary. In most cases, you will not need to merge the files. However, if the newer

version of Apache includes new or renamed modules or directives, you might need to edit the configuration files
to meet the new requirements.
5 Start Adobe Media Server.

After upgrading:
1 Ensure that the newer version of Apache is now available. From a command prompt, go to

AMS_Install_Dir/Apache2.2/bin and issue the following command:
httpd -v

2 Recompile third-party modules, if necessary.
3 Make sure the newly-updated version of Apache is working correctly:
1 Check the master log file for errors or warnings. The master.00.log file should have a line that launches the httpd

process and returns 0; for example:
- C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 4\Apache2.2\bin\httpd -f
./conf/httpd.conf -d "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Media Server 4\Apache2.2" -n
AMSHttpd -k start returned 0:

2 Try playing videos using the “http” protocol.

Updating the OpenSSL version in the bundled Apache server
On a Window Machine, OpenSSL version 0.9.8r is available with bundled Apache. To update the OpenSSL version,
follow these steps:
1 Access the bin directory of your Apache installation.
2 Copy libeay32.dll, ssleay32.dll, and openssl.exe files from a separate, patched security release of OpenSSL

from the same major release.
3 Replace the existing files with the new files in the bin directory.

On Linux machines, the bundled Apache does not include the OpenSSL libraries libcrypto and libssl. Adobe
recommends the administrators keep the system updated with the appropriate version of OpenSSL binaries.

Troubleshooting Apache HTTP server
In some cases, the Apache server could be at fault for the Adobe Media Server not running properly. This is sometimes
caused by syntax errors in the Apache configuration files.
Check the master.log file in the rootinstall/logs directory. If Apache could not start for some reason, it typically returns
an error code of “1” and writes a line similar to the following in the master.log file:
2010-06-22 15:45:09 4276 (w)2581414 C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 4
\Apache2.2\bin\httpd -f ./conf/httpd.conf -d "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 4
\Apache2.2" -n AMSHttpd -k start returned 1:

The status of (w) or (e) indicates a warning or error. For more information about status codes in the master.log file,
see “Diagnostic logs” on page 106.
If you are running Adobe Media Server as a service, you can check the Windows Event Viewer for errors messages. On
Linux, check syslog’s log file for error messages.

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You can also check the Apache log files for error messages. The default location of the Apache log files is
rootinstall/Apache2.2/logs. The logs are in the default Apache error and combined access log formats. For information
about these log file formats, see Log Files.
To change the location of the log files, edit the rootinstall/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf file.

Configure Apache for Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming
and Apple HTTP Live Streaming
Configure the HTTP modules
Apache HTTP Server that installs with Adobe Media Server is configured by default for Adobe HTTP Dynamic
Streaming (to Flash Player and AIR) and Apple HTTP Live Streaming (to iOS and Mac OS). The Adobe Media Server
Apache installation includes three custom modules that handle HTTP streaming:

• jithttp_module—just-in-time on-demand Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS).
• f4fhttp_module—live HDS; on-demand HDS packaged offline
• hlshttp_module—live and on-demand Apple HTTP Live Streaming
The configuration of the modules determines the format of the URL that the player requests from the server, the
location of the content, the content fragmentation settings, and other settings. Configure the settings at the server-level
in the Apache httpd.conf file located at rootinstall/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf. You can also configure some settings
at the application level, event level, and stream level. For complete details, see Configuring HTTP Dynamic Streaming
and HTTP Live Streaming in the Adobe Media Server Developer’s Guide.
For information about configuring ports for HTTP Streaming, see “Configure ports for HTTP streaming” on page 6.

Logging for HTTP streaming
All HTTP access requests are logged in the Apache access_log file in the \logs directory. The HTTP Origin Module
doesn’t add any logging directives. All access requests are logged through the standard Apache HTTP Server log
module.
All errors are logged in the Apache error_log file in the \logs directory. The following table shows the response codes
that the HTTP Origin Module returns.
Response
code

Error message

Description

200

None

No error occurs, and a response has been returned
successfully.

304

None

The HTTP Origin Module supports "If-Modified-Since" in
the request header and returns 304 if the file has not been
modified."If-Modified-Since" is not support in requests for
manifest files of live events.

400

mod_f4fhttp [400]: Syntax error in
%s

Error occurs while parsing the URI request. The variable %s
is the URI string. For example, the request URI
http://servername/media/sample- is missing a fragment
mod_hlshttp [400]:Syntax error in %s number. For example, in the request
http://example.com/hls-vod/sample.f4vNumX.ts, the ts
fragment name format is not correct.

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Response
code

Error message

Description

400

mod_hlshttp [400]: %1 is a invalid
file

Error occurs while reading the information in a file, where
%1 is the URI string. For example, the manifest file is wrong
or the bootstrap is invalid or the .stream file is not valid.

403

mod_f4fhttp [403]: No access to %s

An error occurs when accessing the file. The variable %s is
the file path. For example, the request URI is
http://servername/media/sample.fmf and the module
doesn’t have permission to read the file sample.f4m.

mod_hlshttp[403]: No access to %s
mod_f4fhttp [403]: Internal error %1
(%2) when processing %3
mod_hlshttp[403]: Internal error %1
(%2) when processing %3

An error occurs when the library fails to access a file. The
variable %1 is the error code from the library, %2 is error
description, and %3 is the url string.

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Response
code

Error message

404

mod_f4fhttp [404]: %s does not exist An error occurs when the request file is not found. The
variable %s is the file path. For example, the request URI is
mod_hlshttp[404]: %1 does not exist http://servername/media/sample.fmf but the file
mod_f4fhttp [404]: Internal error %1 sample.f4m does not exist.
(%2) when processing %3
mod_hlshttp[404]: Internal error %1
(%2) when processing %3

500

mod_f4fhttp [500]: Unknown
exception when processing %1
mod_hlshttp [500]: Unknown error
when processing %1

Description

Error occurs when the library fails to find a file. The variable
%1 is the error code from the library, %2 is the error
description, and %3 is the url string.
An unknown error occurs when processing a request,
where %1 is the URL string. For example,
http://servername/media/sampleSeg1-Frag1,
sampleSeg1.f4f is not a corrupted file.

An unknown error occurs when processing a request,
where %1 is the URI string. The module fails, where %1 is
the error code, %2 is error description, and %3 is the URI
mod_hlshttp [500]: Internal error %1 string.
(%2) when processing %3
Error occurs while packaging a ts segment, where %1 is the
mod_f4fhttp [500]: Internal error %1
(%2) when processing %3

mod_hlshttp[500]: Packaging error
%1 (%2) when processing %3

error code for diagnostic purposes, %2 is the error
description and %3 is the URI being processed. An example
of an error description is, "Audio format is not supported".
A packaging error indicates that something went wrong
while packaging the stream data into a ts segment. An
internal error indicates that something went wrong while
reading stream data from the recorded f4f fragments. An
internal error is more likely to occur due to a recording
failure than to a play back failure.

503

None

The HTTP Origin Module returns a 503 code so the client
and the proxy servers don’t cache the response.
In a live event, the file can be growing and a fragment could
be missing in one origin server but not missing on another
origin server. The HTTP response header includes an "Xmod_f4fhttp" field to provide more details. The following is
a sample response header:
Date Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:20:20 GMT Server Apache/2.2.9
(Win32) Content-Length 432 Last-Modified Wed, 27 Jan
2010 11:43:25 GMT Keep-Alive timeout=5, max=100
Connection Keep-Alive Content-Type video/f4f Xmod_f4fhttp 1, error 71
There are two parameters in the X-mod_f4fhttp field
delimited by a comma. The first parameter is a status code
and the second parameter is the error code from the
library.
There are two status codes: 1 - The requested fragment
number is larger than the last fragment in the file (the
corresponding error is 71). 2 - The requested fragment
number is a missing fragment (the corresponding error is
34).

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Use an external Apache HTTP Server for HTTP Dynamic Streaming and HTTP
Live Streaming
To use an installation of Apache HTTP Server other than the one that installs with Adobe Media Server, do the
following:
1 Install Adobe Media Server so you can extract the Apache modules.
2 Copy the following files from Adobe Media Server to your Apache modules folder:

• rootinstall/Apache2.2/modules/adbe_dme.dll
• rootinstall/Apache2.2/modules/adbe_license.dll
• rootinstall/Apache2.2/modules/asneu.dll
• rootinstall/Apache2.2/modules/hds.dll
• rootinstall/Apache2.2/modules/libeay32.dll
• rootinstall/Apache2.2/modules/libexpat.dll
• rootinstall/Apache2.2/modules/mod_f4fhttp.so
• rootinstall/Apache2.2/modules/mod_hlshttp.so
• rootinstall/Apache2.2/modules/mod_jithttp.so
3 Edit your httpd.conf file to load the following modules:

• For live Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming, add the following:
LoadModule f4fhttp_module modules/mod_f4fhttp.so

HttpStreamingEnabled true
HttpStreamingLiveEventPath "../applications"
HttpStreamingContentPath "../applications"
HttpStreamingF4MMaxAge 2
HttpStreamingBootstrapMaxAge 2
HttpStreamingFragMaxAge -1
HttpStreamingDrmmetaMaxAge 3600
Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks

• For live Apple HTTP Live Streaming, add the following:
LoadModule hlshttp_module modules/mod_hlshttp.so

HLSHttpStreamingEnabled true
HttpStreamingLiveEventPath "../applications"
HttpStreamingContentPath "../applications"
HLSMediaFileDuration 8000
HLSSlidingWindowLength 6
HLSAmsDirPath ".."
HLSM3U8MaxAge 2
HLSTSSegmentMaxAge -1
Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks

• For on-demand Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming, packaged in just-in-time, add the following:

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LoadModule jithttp_module modules/mod_jithttp.so

HttpStreamingJITPEnabled true
HttpStreamingContentPath "../webroot/vod"
JitAmsDirPath ".."
Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks

• For on-demand Apple HTTP Live Streaming, add the following:
LoadModule hlshttp_module modules/mod_hlshttp.so

HLSHttpStreamingEnabled true
HLSMediaFileDuration 8000
HttpStreamingContentPath "../webroot/vod"
HLSAmsDirPath ".."
Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks

4 In the directives that you entered in your httpd.conf file, edit the following:

•

HttpStreamingLiveEventPath and HttpStreamingContentPath—set to the Adobe Media Server

applications folder, for example:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 5\applications

•

JitAmsDirPath and HLSAmsDirPath—set to the location of your Adobe Media Server installation, for example:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 5

5 For information about ports, see “Using a third-party web server” on page 76.

Configure HTTP Streaming failover
In a real-world clustered HTTP Streaming scenario, you want your site to offer robust playback, even in the face of
server-side streaming problems. HTTP Streaming failover, new in FMS 4.5.2, lets you control how AMS handles
certain streaming problems.

Overview of HTTP Streaming failover
HTTP Streaming failover features primarily address the issues of liveness and dropout.
The following figure illustrates a simple two-server cluster of packagers with a Reverse Proxy controlling access. The
explanations that follow use this figure as a reference.

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Packagers in a two-server cluster

• Liveness is a server-side situation in which a packager advertises a stale bootstrap (that is, a stale view of a live
stream). Although there are other potential scenarios, the following describes one liveness situation:
1 The stream has been running normally for some time on the server side.
2 Packager 2's connection to the encoder fails. The connection between Packager 2 and the proxy continues

running. Suppose that at the time of this failure, the last successfully written fragment on Packager 2 was still
#700 with current media time as X.
3 A short amount of time elapses, in this case, 10 fragment intervals.
4 The server-side now suffers from liveness. Packager 2 is serving stale bootstrap information. Packager 2

indicates that there has been no update in the bootstrap after time X, even though more recent fragments are
available on Packager 1 (that is, the current media time is greater than X.)
5 Playback stalls at the player end.

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• Dropout - is a server-side situation in which a packager has gaps in its bootstrap (that is, gaps in its fragment list).
The following scenario describes a dropout situation:
1 The stream has been running normally for some time on the server side.
2 Packager 2's connection to the encoder fails. The connection between Packager 2 and the proxy continues running.

Suppose that at the time of this failure, the last successfully written fragment on Packager 2 was still #700.
3 A short amount of time elapses, in this case, 10 fragment intervals.
4 Packager 2's encoder connection is restored and remains restored for a long time.
5 The server-side now suffers from dropout. Packager 2's bootstrap is missing entries for #701-710, even though

those fragments are still available on Packager 1.
6 Playback stalls at the player end.

HTTP Streaming failover provides a multi-faceted solution:

• Best-effort fetch
• Server-side configuration
• Control plane management

Enable best-effort fetch
Best-effort fetch enables the OSMF and iOS video players to continue playback as normally as possible in the presence
of short-term liveness and dropout problems on the server-side.
OSMF
The OSMF 2.0 player includes HDS functionality that integrates with server-side configuration and run-time settings.
For more information on OSMF 2.0 client side functionality, see the OSMF documentation on SourceForge.
HLS
FMS 4.5.2 includes server-side settings and functionality that enable best-effort fetch.

Configure HTTP Streaming failover server settings
You configure server settings for HTTP Streaming failover in the httpd.conf and manifest.xml files.
Configure HDS and HLS settings in httpd.conf. For more information on server-side configuration in the httpd.conf
file, see Configure live and on-demand HTTP Streaming at the server level (httpd.conf). Configure the
bestEffortFetchInfo element in the manifest.xml file, as described in Manifest.xml.
Note: Best-effort fetch relies on configuring the back-end reverse-proxy with HTTP 503 failover, meaning that when the
reverse proxy receives a 503 response from a packager, it retries the request with the next packager in the pool. If all
packagers generate a 503, the proxy generates an error that it caches for less than a fragment interval. You can configure
the HTTP error code, as described in Configure live and on-demand HTTP Streaming at the server level (httpd.conf).

Code the control plane application
To implement HTTP Streaming failover, you write a client application that manages the state of events and streams
by using a set of REST-based control plane APIs. Control plane is a router term and in effect, that is what your client
application does through these APIs.

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The basic workflow is as follows:

• Begin repeatedly checking stream status at a set interval. The exact interval depends on your configuration.
• Disable any stream with a bad status code.
• You could also compare the age of the bootstrap file and disable the stream for which the bootstrap is older than
some predetermined interval.
AMS control plane REST interface request path
The AMS control plane REST interface request path differs, depending on whether you are using HDS, HLS with
adaptive bit-rate (ABR), or HLS with a single bit-rate stream:

• HDS: http://server/ctrlplane/application-name/instance-name/event-name.f4m/
• HLS with ABR: http://server/ctrlplane/application-name/instance-name/event-name.m3u8/
• HLS with single bit-rate: http://server/ctrlplane/application-name/instance-name/eventname/stream-name.m3u8/

For example:

• HDS: http://www.example-server.com/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/liveevent.f4m/
• HLS with ABR: http://www.example-server.com/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/liveevent.m3u8/
• HLS with single bit-rate: http://www.exampleserver.com/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/liveevent/livestream.m3u8/

You use HTTP GET or POST, depending on the endpoint and parameters passed.

Query stream status
Description
Returns stream status.
Endpoint
status

Result
If the .disabled file exists in the streams directory for the respective associated stream, the control plane module returns
"disabled" in the status element for the particular stream. This endpoint returns stream age for each stream (multiple
streams in case of MBR) calculated as current time in minutes - last modified time for the bootstrap file.The
up element indicates whether the stream is up. It is set to false if the bootstrap has not been updated in specified
number of seconds (configurable as MaxBootstrapAge). The global up element is set to true if all bootstrap up
elements are true, otherwise it is set to false. The endpoint sets the upper level status to disabled if all streams are
disabled, otherwise it is set to enabled.
The done element indicates whether the stream is finished.
Sample request
[GET] http://www.example-server.com:8134/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m/status

Sample response
This is an example response for an MBR stream in which all streams are disabled:

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200 OK

/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m

disabled

false

disabled

false

disabled

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false

< age>
75

disabled

false

Disable an event
Description
Disables all streams for an event (works for both HDS and HLS streams). You send this as an HTTP POST request with
no body.
Endpoint
disable

Result
Upon receiving this request, the control plane module creates a .disabled file in all streams directories (multiple
streams directories for an MBR stream) and returns an XML formatted response indicating success or failure for each
stream.
If a client subsequently requests streams for the event, the Apache module (mod_f4fhttp or mod_hlshttp) checks for
the existence of a .disabled file before processing the request. If a .disabled file exists, the module returns a 503
error (configurable in httpd.conf).
Sample request
[POST] http://www.exampleserver.com:8134/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m/disable

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Sample response

/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m

Command executed successfully.

Disable a stream
Description
Disables a stream (works for both HDS and HLS streams). You send this as an HTTP POST request with the stream
name specified in the body.
Disable a stream if you detect a liveness problems or to take a faulty packager out of production for some other reason.
As mentioned below, the Apache module returns a 503 error, making the faulty packager a non-entity.
Endpoint
disable

Result
Upon receiving this request, the control plane module creates a .disabled file in the streams directory and returns
an XML formatted response indicating success or failure.
If a client subsequently requests the stream, the Apache module (mod_f4fhttp or mod_hlshttp) checks for the
existence of a .disabled file before processing the request. If a .disabled file exists, the module returns a 503 error
(configurable in httpd.conf).

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Sample request
[POST] http://www.exampleserver.com:8134/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m/disable

livestream2

Sample response

/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m

Command executed successfully.

Enable an event
Description
Enables all streams for an event (works for both HDS and HLS streams). You send this as an HTTP POST request with
no body.
Endpoint
enable

Result
Upon receiving this request, the control plane module deletes any existing .disabled files in all streams directories
(multiple streams directories for an MBR stream) and returns an XML formatted response indicating success or failure
for each stream.
If a client subsequently requests streams for the event, the Apache module (mod_f4fhttp or mod_hlshttp) processes
the request.
Sample request
[POST] http://www.example-server.com:8134/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m/enable

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Sample response

/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m

Command executed successfully.

Enable a stream
Description
Enables a stream (works for both HDS and HLS streams). You send this as an HTTP POST request with the stream
name specified in the body. This request enables a stream and removes the .disabled file.
Note: Streams are enabled by default.
Endpoint
enable

Result
Upon receiving this request, the control plane module deletes any existing .disabled file in the streams directories
and returns an XML formatted response indicating success or failure.
If a client subsequently requests the stream, the Apache module (mod_f4fhttp or mod_hlshttp) processes the request.
Sample request
[POST] http://www.example-server.com:8134/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m/enable

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livestream2

Sample response

/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m

Command executed successfully.

Mark an event as done
Description
Signals that an event is complete. You send this as an HTTP POST request with no body.
You signal an event as done so that the client is notified when content ends. This achieves two things: the control plane
does not activate failover, and client applications can take appropriate action to signal the end of content to the user.
Endpoint
done

Result
Upon receiving this request, the control plane module creates a .done file in all streams directories (multiple streams
directories for an MBR stream) and returns an XML formatted response indicating success or failure for each stream.
Sample request
[POST] http://www.example-server.com:8134/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m/done

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Sample response

/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m

Command executed successfully.

Mark a stream as done
Description
Signals that a stream complete. You send this as an HTTP POST request with the stream name specified in the body.
You signal a stream as done so that the client is notified when content ends. This achieves two things: the control plane
does not activate failover, and client applications can take appropriate action to signal the end of content to the user.
Endpoint
done

Result
Upon receiving this request, the control plane module creates a .done file in the associated streams directory and
returns an XML formatted response indicating success or failure.
Sample request
[POST] http://www.example-server.com:8134/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m/done

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Sample response

/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m

Command executed successfully.

Mark an event as in-progress
Description
Signals that an event is still in progress. You send this as an HTTP POST request with no body. This request undoes a
/done request.
Endpoint
inProgress
Result
Upon receiving this request, the control plane module deletes any existing .done files in all streams directories
(multiple streams directories for an MBR stream) and returns an XML formatted response indicating success or failure
for each stream.
Sample request
[POST] http://www.exampleserver.com:8134/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m/inProgress

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Sample response

/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m

Command executed successfully.

Mark a stream as in-progress
Description
Signals that a stream is still in progress. You send this as an HTTP POST request with the stream name specified in the
body. This request undoes a /done request.
Endpoint
inProgress

Result
Upon receiving this request, the control plane module deletes any existing .done file in the associated streams
directory and returns an XML formatted response indicating success or failure for each stream.
Sample request
[POST] http://www.exampleserver.com:8134/ctrlplane/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m/inProgress

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Sample response

/livepkgr/_definst_/livestream.f4m

Command executed successfully.

Using a third-party web server
You can use web servers other than the included version of Apache to serve Adobe Media Server files. Note, however,
that the HTTP Module for HTTPDynamic streaming is currently supported only on Apache web servers. To use a
third-party web server, use the following guidelines:

• Configure Adobe Media Server and the web server so that they do not share a port. (You must decide which server
can use ports 80 and 443, or you must multi-home the servers (by using separate IP addresses/physical NICs).

• If you want Adobe Media Server and your web server to share a port, set up Adobe Media Server as the proxy, put
your web server on an unused port, and change the ams.ini HTTPPROXY_HOST setting to point to that port.

• If you want your web server to serve the Adobe Media Server standard files, either put the files in your web server's
document root, or add the Adobe Media Server document root (rootinstall/webroot) as a virtual directory for your
web server.

• If you want your web server to serve Progressive Download (PD) files from the same location as Adobe Media
Server, add an alias or secondary document root to point to rootinstall/webroot/vod. You can also add a virtual
directory to the vod application that points to your web server's document root.

• If you want your web server to use the exact same settings as the Adobe Media Server pre-installed web server (or
you want to start with that and then customize it), start with the default Apache httpd.conf file that was included
with Adobe Media Server.

• Configure your web server so that it handles the correct MIME types. For example, add the video/x-flv MIME
type for *.flv files. For other MIME types, view the configuration file for the mod_mime_magic Apache module and
the installroot/Apache2.2/conf/mime.types file.

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Configuring Differentiated Services (DiffServ)
Flash Media Server 3.5.2

Understanding DiffServ
Use Differentiated Services to handle different types of traffic differently within a network. For example, you could give
RTMP traffic a higher priority than FTP traffic. Or, you could give higher bandwidth and latency to RTMP than to
HTTP. A publisher could choose to give paying customers' streams higher priority. A CDN or other hosting company
could choose to give higher-paying publishers' streams higher priority.Historically, IP contained a feature called Type
of Service (TOS) (see RFC 1349). Each packet's header contained a 3-bit Precedence value and three 1-bit flags. You
could use these bits to prioritize packets in an operating system kernel or router. IPv6 had an experimental (and now
deprecated) feature that provided for a 3-bit Priority, sent in the same header position as TOS precedence. This feature
was replaced by a TCLASS (later renamed TRAFFIC_CLASS) byte that works the same as IP_TOS in
IPv4.Differentiated Services (see RFC 2474) has replaced TOS with a single 6-bit value called DSCP (Differentiated
Services Code Point). In IPv6, the TCLASS octet has been renamed the DS octet, and the other 2 bits are reserved. In
IPv4, the TOS byte no longer has a name, and the other 2 bits are used for ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification).Edge
routers and endpoints can make decisions on a per-flow basis. They mark the packets within the flow so that internal
routers can look at the headers (as with TOS). DiffServ is defined such that edge routers can work entirely based on
service-level agreements (SLAs) between two networks, but internal sources can also mark packets based on the type
of service required for internal traffic.

DiffServ system requirements
Differentiated Services is supported on Linux only.There is no standard way of setting the bits on Windows platform
that would work on all versions of the operating system that Adobe Media Server supports. For more information on
setting Differentiated Services bits on Windows, see the following, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/248611.If you try
to set the bits on Windows, the following message prints to the Authorization log, “Setting Diff Serv bits is not
supported for Windows Platforms”.

DiffServ Internet Protocol versions
The Adobe Media Server Differentiated Services feature supports the IPv4 protocol only. Setting the bits for IPv4
protocol means setting the Differentiated Services field (previously called the Type of Service field) of the IP packet
header. The following is an IPv4 packet header:
0
1
2
3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|Version| IHL |Type of Service|
Total Length
|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|
Identification
|Flags|
Fragment Offset
|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Time to Live |
Protocol
|
Header Checksum
|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|
Source Address
|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|
Destination Address
|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|
Options
|
Padding
|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

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For IPv6, Linux provides no standard way to set the Differentiated Services field (which has been renamed TCLASS
field). If Adobe Media Server has IPv6 enabled and clients connect using an IPv6 address, setting bits on IPv6 clients
does not result in an error. However bits are not set.
Note: Although bits are not set, the server reports in the logs that bits were set successfully.

Unsupported operations
The following operations are not supported:

• Setting bits between an edge server and an origin server.
The connections made between an edge server and an origin server are not “normal” connections. These
connections are identified as “group” or “virtual”. To determine the connection type, call the Administration API
getNetStreamStats() command and look at the client_type property. Trying to set DiffServ bits on these
connections results in the following error message in the core log file, “Setting Diff Serv bits is not supported for
group, service or virtual connections”.

• Setting the ECN bits of a Differentiated Services field.
For example, if you try to set DiffServ bits to 50 with mask 255, the bits set are 48 with the following warning in the
AuthMessage log file, “ECN part of diffserv will not get set for diffserv bits 50 and mask 255”.

Configure DiffServ in the Server.xml file
Use the DiffServ and DiffServMask elements in the Server.xml configuration file to set DiffServ bits for all sockets
that connect to the RTMP listener. Bits are set for all sockets, including tunneling and HTTP proxy sockets. All the
outgoing packets on a socket are set, including the packets from the server that are exchanged during handshaking.
The following example sets DiffServ to 128 which sets the top 3 bits to 4. It sets the DiffServMask to 224 which turns
on the top 3 bits.
1 Open the rootinstall/conf/Server.xml file in a text editor.
2 Edit the Root/Server/ResourceLimits/Protocol/RTMP/DiffServ element:
128

3 Edit the Root/Server/ResourceLimits/Protocol/RTMP/DiffServMask element:
224

4 Save and validate the file.
5 Restart the server.

Note: The server doesn’t log whether the bits are set successfully or not. To verify that the bits are set, use the
getNetStreamStats() Administration API.

Configuring DiffServ in an Authorization plug-in
Use the F_CLIENT_DIFFSERV_BITS field and the F_CLIENT_DIFFSERV_MASK field of the Authorization plug-in
to set Differentiated Services fields.The sample Authorization plug-in shipped with Adobe Media Server has got the
header file updated.The following example sets the bits in the Authorization plug-in:

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U8 dscpVal;
if(getU8Field(m_pAev, IAmsAuthEvent::F_CLIENT_DIFFSERV_BITS, dscpVal))
{
dscpVal = 0xFC;
bool res = setU8Field(m_pAev,
IAmsAuthEvent::F_CLIENT_DIFFSERV_BITS,
dscpVal);
}
U8 dscpMask;
dscpMask = 0xF0;
bool res = setU8Field(m_pAev,
IAmsAuthEvent::F_CLIENT_DIFFSERV_MASK,
dscpMask);

The following table shows how to use the mask and bits fields together to get the desired bit settings on the socket:
No. Current value
on socket

DiffServ
bits

DiffServ mask

New
value on
successf
ul set

Comment

252

ECN bits were masked.

100

252

100

255

252

Although ECN bits were not masked,
setting them is not allowed.

100

200

128

228

Mask allowed only MSB to be modified.

100

200

252

200

Mask allowed DSCP bits to be modified.

Set operations
Set bits in the following Authorization events: E_CONNECT and E_PLAY.You can set bits in the authorize()
method of the Authorization plug-in. You cannot set bits in the notify() method of the Authorization plug-in.

Get operations
Get bits in the following events: E_CONNECT, E_PLAY, and E_STOP.The get result on the
F_CLIENT_DIFFSERV_MASK field always returns the value 0xFC.

Logging
The following table lists error messages for normal connections:
Condition

Message

Log file

Unable to set DSCP bits from the
Authorization plug-in.

While setting diff serv bits for uri %s: Unable
to set DiffServ field.

Core

Unable to query DSCP bits from the socket.

While setting diff serv bits for uri %s: Unable
to get DiffServ field.

Core

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Condition

Message

Log file

Setting DSCP bits for group/service/virtual
connections.

Setting Diff Serv bits is not supported for
group, service or virtual connections.

Core

Attempting to set DSCP values on Windows. Setting Diff Serv bits is not supported for
Windows Platforms.

Auth

Setting DSCP bits for an unknown type of
connection.

Core

Setting Diff Serv bits (B: %d, M: %d) for this
connection (from ip: %S) is not supported.

The following table lists error messages for tunneled connections:
Condition

Message

Log file

Unable to set DSCP bits from the
Authorization plug-in.

While setting diff serv bits for uri %s: Unable
to set DiffServ field.

Edge

Unable to query DSCP bits from the socket.

While setting diff serv bits for uri %s: Unable
to get DiffServ field.

Edge

A socket is being used for multiple sessions
and a session is trying to set the DSCP bits on
a socket that already has DSCP bits set by
another session.

Destination address %ls is being shared
Edge
among multiple net connections. Changing
the DSCP settings from the one for uri %ls to
the uri %ls.

Setting DSCP bits for group/service/virtual
connections.

Setting Diff Serv bits is not supported for
group, service or virtual connections.

Core

Attempting to set DSCP values on Windows. Setting Diff Serv bits is not supported for
Windows Platforms.

Auth

Setting DSCP bits for an unknown type of
connection.

Core

Setting Diff Serv bits (B: %d, M: %d) for this
connection (from ip: %S) is not supported.

The following table lists warning messages:
Condition

Message

Log file

If ECN part of mask is ON for the bits
informed by the Authorization plug-in.

ECN part of diffserv will not get set for
diffserv bits %d and mask %d.

AuthMessage

The following table lists info messages:
Condition

Message

DSCP bits are successfully set by the Authorization plugin.

While setting diff serv bits for uri %s:
Successfully set the diff serv bits (bits: %d,
mask: %d) for addr:port %S:%d and nc uri %s.
Current diff serv value is %d.

DSCP bits informed from the Authorization plug-in are
already set for RTMP.

Requested diff serv bits (bits: %d, mask: %d)
for addr:port %S:%d and nc uri %s already
set. Current diff serv value is %d.

Verifying bits
To verify that bits are set on a socket, call the getNetStreamStats() Administration API in a browser:
http://:/admin/getNetStreamStats?auser=&apswd=&appInst=&streamIds=-1

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The command results in output similar to following:

status
NetConnection.Call.Success
Mon 25 Jan 2010 08:00:00 PM PST

<_0>
sample
Sun 24 Jan 2010 06:00:00 PM PST
playing recorded
BCAgYLpK
BBAgYLpK
normal
0xfc

The diffserv_bits element updates only when bits are set successfully.

Verifying bits in an RTMP stream
Suppose a client connects to the server and plays a stream. Suppose that the Authorization plug-in sets the bits twice,
first when the E_CONNECT event is received, and then when the E_PLAY event is received.When the stream is
playing, use Wireshark or a similar tool to capture the packets. When streaming stops, stop the capture and filter the
packets so that the source port is 1935 or whichever port is used for RTMP.After you capture at least one packet, right
click and select “Follow TCP stream” to filter all packets for that particular stream. Sort the packet based on time.If you
observe the packets from the beginning of the stream, the DiffServ field is 0 until the NetConnection response is sent
from the server. From the NetConnection response packet until the NetStream.Play.Reset or NetStream.Play.Start
packet, whichever is sent first, the bits are set to what was set in the E_CONNECT event. From this point, the bits are
set to what was set in the E_PLAY event.
Note: When you use the Server.xml file to set bits, even the packets sent from the server as part of handshaking have the
bits set.

Verifying bits in an RTMPT stream
RTMPT connections behave a bit differently than RTMP connections. When creating an RTMPT connection,
multiple sockets can open from the client-side. If you open multiple NetConnections from the same client, these
sockets are probably shared among the NetConnections.In such cases, the DSCP setting for a socket is the DSCP value
from the session that most recently had its DSCP bits set. The following is an example:Time t1: NetConnection nc1
connects and play starts. Its DSCP bits are set to 0x64. The NetConnection uses sockets s1, s2, and s3. All the sockets
have the DSCP bits set to 0x64.t2: NetConnection nc2 connects. The Authorization plug-in doesn’t set any DSCP bits.
The NetConnection uses sockets s2 and s4. Socket s2 has the DSCP value 0x64. Socket s4 has the default value (if
specified in the Server.xml file).t3: NetConnection nc2 starts playing. The Authorization plug-in sets the DSCP bits to
0x88. From now on, sockets s2 and s4 have the DSCP values 0x88, whether they are carrying packets for nc1 or nc2.t4:
NetConnection nc2 play stops. Nothing changes.

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Chapter 3: Using the Administration
Console
Use the Adobe Media Server Administration Console to maintain the server, monitor applications, and manage users.
Application developers can also use the Administration Console to debug applications.

Connecting to the Administration Console
About the Administration Console
The Administration Console is an Adobe Flash Player application (ams_adminConsole.swf) that lets you manage the
server and view information about applications running on the server.
The Administration Console connects to Adobe Media Administration Server, which connects to Adobe Media
Server. To log in to the Administration Console, the Administration Server must be running.
By default, Adobe Media Administration Server in installed on port 1111. To change the port number of the
Administration Server after installation, edit the ams.ini file. Clients cannot access the Administration Server securely
(over RTMPS). As a result, Adobe recommends blocking port 1111 from external requests so that only clients within
your firewall can access the Administration Server.
Note: The Administration Console calls Administration APIs to inspect and manage the server. Use the Adobe Media
Server Administration API Reference to build your own administrative applications.

Connect to the Administration Console
There are two types of administrators: server administrators and virtual host (vhost) administrators. When you log in
to the Administration Console as a virtual host administrator, your session is specific to a virtual host, and you can
only manage applications running on that virtual host. Server administrators have access to all applications running
on the server.
1 To open the Administration Console, do one of the following:

• On Windows, select Start > Programs > Adobe > Adobe Media Server 5.0 > Adobe Media Server
Administration Console.

• On Linux, open the ams_adminConsole.htm and ams_adminConsole.swf files in a browser with Flash Player.
• On Mac® OS, copy the ams_adminConsole.htm and ams_adminConsole.swf files to the Mac. Open the
ams_adminConsole.htm file in a web browser that has Flash Player installed.
If you installed Apache with Adobe Media Server, the ams_adminConsole.swf and ams_adminConsole.htm files
are located in the rootinstall/webroot folder. Otherwise, the ams_adminConsole.swf and ams_adminConsole.htm
files are located in the root installation folder.
2 (Optional) Specify a server name. This name is an alias you can use to connect to a server quickly. The

Administration Console remembers the server address for this server name the next time the console is opened.

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3 In the Server Address box, do one of the following:

• Type localhost if the server and the Administration Console are running on the same computer. If the
Administration Server is installed on a port other than 1111 (the default), you must enter the port number as
well; for example, localhost:1234. Entering localhost connects you to the default virtual host on this computer.

• To connect to a virtual host other than the default virtual host, enter the fully qualified host name (for example,
www.example.com). The host name must be mapped to a valid network IP address. To test this behavior on
Windows, you can edit your local hosts file at windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.

• If you are connecting remotely by running the Administration Console on another computer, enter the server’s
name (AdobeMediaServer.myCompany.com) or the IP address and port number (12.35.06.78:1112) of the
Administration Server to which you want to connect. Ensure your computer has permission to connect to the
specified port on the other computer. Also, check that the Administration Server has not been configured to
prohibit connections from the specific domain or IP address you are using.
4 Enter your username and password.

If you are the server administrator who installed the server, enter the administrator user name and password you
entered during installation. Otherwise, enter the username and password you received from the server
administrator.
Note: To reset a password, see “Delete administrator accounts and reset passwords” on page 92
For security reasons, the Administration Console does not save your password between sessions.
To log in to a virtual host that is not on the default adaptor, you must specify the name of the adaptor. For example,
when logging in to a virtual host on the adaptor _secondAdaptor_, the vhost administrator JLee would enter the
following information in the Username box: _secondAdaptor_/JLee.
5 (Optional) Select the Remember My Password option.
6 (Optional) Select the Automatically Connect Me option.
7 (Optional) Click Revert to return the Administration Console to its default settings.

Reverting deletes all saved servers, user names, and passwords from the Administration Console. All custom
resizing within the Administration Console is restored to the original state. (The Revert button, however, does not
affect the server.)
8 Click Login.

You can disconnect at any time by clicking Logoff.
Note: The color of the vertical bar in the upper-right corner (next to the question mark icon) indicates whether the
Administration Console is connected (green) or not connected (red) to a server.
Near the top of every screen of the Administration Console are two icons. Click the folder icon to display links to the
Adobe Media Server website and related resources. Click the question mark icon to display links to Adobe Media
Server Help.
To run the Administration Console from a computer other than the one in which the server is installed, copy
ams_adminConsole.htm and ams_adminConsole.swf to the other computer, or make sure that this file is in the
webroot directory so it can be accessed remotely. In both cases, verify that the Allow and Deny tags in the Users.xml
file allow the connection from the other computer’s IP address.

Change or pause the refresh rate
The information in the Administration Console panels refreshes every 5 seconds by default. You can change the
refresh rate to any time interval between 1 and 60 seconds, or pause refreshing at any time.

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Change the refresh rate of the Administration Console
❖ Click the pop-up menu next to Refresh Rate (upper-right corner) and select a new time duration, such as 10
seconds.
Pause refreshing the Administration Console
1 Click the pop-up menu next to Refresh Rate (upper-right corner), scroll down, and select Pause.
2 Click Pause Refresh to continue.

A red border appears around the panels of the Administration Console to show that the refresh feature is paused.
3 To start refreshing information again, click the pop-up menu and select a time duration.

Inspecting applications
View applications
After connecting to a server or virtual host, the Administration Console displays a panel that lists the currently running
application instances. From here, the state of an application can be monitored.

Use the View Applications panel to view, load, or unload application instances.

Note: If you add an application while the Administration service is running and the new application doesn't appear in
the Administration Console, move to another panel and then back to refresh the console.
Manually load an application instance in the Administration Console
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Enter the name and address of the server or virtual host to which you want to connect.
3 Enter the administrator user name and password.

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4 Click View Applications.
5 Click New Instance.
6 Select the application from the pop-up menu. (The application must already be configured on the server.)
7 The Administration Console adds a default instance _definst_, which can be edited. Press Enter to submit the

name and start the application instance. To cancel, press Shift+Escape.
Reload an application instance in the Administration Console
Reload an application instance to reload the server-side scripts for the instance or to disconnect all of its users while
immediately allowing new connections.
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click View Applications.
3 Select an application from the list.
4 Click Reload (circular arrow icon to the right of the Performance tab).

View information about an application
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click View Applications.
3 Select the application from the list. The following information is listed for the application on the different tabs:

• Log messages generated by the application instance on the server
• A list of clients connected to the application instance
• A list of active shared objects for the application instance
• A list of active streams for the application instance
• Information about the overall state of the selected application instance, such as total uptime or number of users
Sort applications list
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click View Applications.
3 In the applications list, do one of the following:

• Click the Name column header to sort the applications list by name.
• Click the Clients column header to sort by client.
End an application instance
When an application instance is ended, all users are disconnected and all instance resources are released.
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click View Applications.
3 Select an application from the list.
4 Click Unload (stop icon to the right of the Performance tab)

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Viewing log messages for an application
The Administration Console Live Log panel displays log messages and trace() statements from server-side scripts
for the selected application instance. The information in this panel is updated whenever the application instance
generates a log message. (If the console refresh feature is paused, log messages are still received.)

Live Log panel

1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click View Applications.
3 Click Live Log.
4 Select an application from the list.
5 Type text in the Find text box and click Find Next. Use the Find Previous and Clear Log buttons as necessary.

Viewing active streams
Use the Administration Console Streams panel to view information about streams and to play streams.

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Streams panel

1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click View Applications.
3 Click Streams.
4 Select an application from the list. The Streams panel displays the following information:

• Name: For NetStream streams, the name is the NetStream ID (a server-generated number). For a live stream
being published, the entry displays the live stream name. For a recorded steam, the entry displays the FLV or
MP3 filename; for example, flv:stream2.flv or mp3:sound.mp3. If a client requests the stream2.flv, there will be
two entries: one for flv:stream2.flv (stored) and one for the actual network stream going to the client.

• Type: A string that describes the type of stream, either stored, live, or NetStream.
5 Select a stream to view its properties. The values of the properties are as follows:

• Name: The actual stream name, not streamID.
• Status: States if the stream is publishing, playing live, or playing recorded.
• Client: The client ID playing the stream.
• Time: The time that the client started playing the stream.
Note: If the stream type is available for debugging, the Administration Console displays its properties in the adjoining
panel. If the type is not available for debugging, an error message is displayed.
6 Click Play Stream to start playing the selected stream in a separate window that is the size of the selected stream.

(The Play Stream button appears only if a debug connection is possible. Only named streams can be played.)

Viewing active clients
The Administration Console Clients panel lists detailed information about all clients connected to an application.

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Clients panel

1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click View Applications.
3 Click Clients.
4 Select an application from the list. The following information is displayed:

• Client ID: The internal ID of the client; this represents a server-generated number that Adobe Media Server uses
to identify each client.

• Protocol: The connection protocol that the client uses, such as RTMP.
• Bytes In and Bytes Out: The average bytes per second being sent to and from the server. The Administration
Console calculates this ratio by dividing the total number of bytes received in the most recent 15 seconds by 15.
When the panel first appears, these figures appear as pending because there is only one data point to start with;
figures appear after the panel is open for 15 seconds.

• Connection Time: The date and time the client connected.
• Messages In and Messages Out: The number of messages sent to or from the client. Messages In reflects update
requests sent from clients to the server; Messages Out reflects notification of successful updates sent from the
server to connected clients.

• Drops: The number of messages dropped since the client connected. For live streams, audio, and video,
messages may be dropped; for recorded streams, only video messages are dropped. Command messages are
never dropped.

Viewing active shared objects
The Administration Console Shared Objects panel lists the active shared objects for an application and can be useful
when debugging an application. The information is automatically refreshed every 5 seconds, or click Refresh to refresh
at any time. The Administration Console displays the name, type (persistent or temporary), and connections (number
of users subscribed) of each shared object.

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Shared Objects panel

Note: The Administration Console was built using ActionScript 2.0 and cannot understand AMF3 data. Therefore, the
Administration Console cannot display data in remote shared objects in applications built in ActionScript 3.0 unless the
application sets the NetConnection.objectEncoding property to AMF0.
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click View Applications.
3 Click Shared Objects.
4 Select an application from the list.
5 To display information about a shared object, click the object. The number of users currently connected to and

using the shared object is displayed, along with the data properties assigned to the shared object.

View performance information
The Administration Console Performance panel shows information about the overall state of the application instance.
The information is automatically refreshed every 5 seconds, or click Refresh to refresh at any time.

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Performance panel

1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click View Applications.
3 Click Performance.
4 Select an application from the list. The following information is displayed:

• Clients: Information about clients connected to this application instance, including the total number of clients
who connected to the application instance since it started, active clients, and the number of users whose
attempts to connect to the application instance were rejected. (To determine why connections may have failed,
look at the Live Log panel under View Applications.)

• Lifespan: The length of time the application instance has been running and the date and time it began to run.
• Messages Per Second: The average number of messages (video frames, audio packets, and command messages)
sent per second.

• Bytes Per Second: The average number of bytes sent per second for this application instance. The
Administration Console calculates this ratio by determining the total number of bytes received in the most
recent 15 seconds and dividing that value by 15. When the panel first appears, these figures appear as pending
because there is only one data point to start with; figures appear after the panel is open for 15 seconds.

• Active Connections: The number of users currently connected to the application instance.
• Bandwidth: The amount of data that the application instance manages, including data sent, data received, and
the combined amount of data traffic.

• CPU and Memory Usage: The percentage of CPU and memory used by Adobe Media Server.
5 Select and deselect checkboxes to customize the information displayed on the graphs. For example, in the

Bandwidth graph, select Total and deselect In and Out to show only the total amount of bandwidth used.

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Manage administrators
About administrator roles
Administrators are users who are allowed to log in to the Administration Console. There are two types of
administrators: server administrators and virtual host administrators.
Server administrators can control all virtual hosts and perform server-level tasks, such as restarting or shutting down
the server. Server administrators can access and perform all operations on all tabs.
Virtual host administrators can manage the applications on their virtual host—for example, they can reload or
disconnect applications. Virtual host administrators can access and perform operations on the View Applications tabs.
They cannot manage servers or administrative users.

Add administrators
Use the Administration Console to add server administrators
Note: You must be a server administrator (not a virtual host administrator) to access the Manage Users tab.
1 Log in to the Administration Console as a server administrator.
2 Select the Manage Users tab.
3 Click New User.
4 Enter the user name and password and click Save.

The Administration Console adds the new user and password to the Users.xml file. You do not need to restart either
server.
Edit the Users.xml file to add server administrators
1 Open the rootinstall/conf/Users.xml file.
2 Locate the UserList section.
3 Add a new section for each server administrator you want to add.

The User name attribute specifies the user name. The Password element specifies the password. The Allow, Deny,
and Order elements specify the hosts from which the administrator can connect to the Administration Console.
The following sample XML adds a user who can connect from any domain:

${SERVER.ADMIN_PASSWORD}

Allow,Deny

S4mpl3P4ss

Allow,Deny

For more information, see the comments in the Users.xml file.

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4 Validate the XML and save the Users.xml file.

Add virtual host administrators
1 Open the Users.xml file in the root folder of the virtual host; for example,
rootinstall/conf/_defaultRoot_/www.sampleVhost.com/Users.xml. If the file doesn’t exist, copy the Users.xml file
from the rootinstall/conf folder.
2 Locate the UserList section.
3 Add a new section for each virtual host administrator you want to add.

${SERVER.ADMIN_PASSWORD}

Allow,Deny

Ex4mpl3P4ss

Allow,Deny

For more information, see the comments in the Users.xml file.
4 Validate the XML and save the Users.xml file.

Delete administrator accounts and reset passwords
Only server administrators (not virtual host administrators) can perform operations on the Manage Users tab.
Passwords are stored as salted hashes in the rootinstall/conf/Users.xml configuration file.
Delete user account
1 Log in to the Administration Console as a server administrator.
2 Click Manage Users.
3 Select a user.
4 Click Delete This User Account On The Server.
5 Confirm the action.

Reset user password
1 Log in to the Administration Console as a server administrator.
2 Click Manage Users.
3 Select a user.
4 Click Reset The Password For This User.

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5 Enter a new password.

Use the command line to reset a user password
1 Open a shell window.
2 Go to the Adobe Media Server installation directory:

(Windows) C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Media Server 5.0
(Linux) /opt/adobe/fms
3 Stop Adobe Media Server and Adobe Media Administration Server. See Start and stop the server.
4 Enter one of the following:

• (Windows) amsadmin -console -user
• (Linux) ./amsadmin -console -user
Enter an eight character password.
Note: The password is not exposed because terminal echo is off.
Use the Administration API to reset a user password
❖ Call the changePswd() API.
For more information about using the Administration API, see “Working with the Administration API” on
page 118.

Managing the server
Monitoring server performance
You can review the performance of individual servers or a group of servers using the Administration Console. The
servers are arranged in a tree structure.
A series of tabs is displayed along the top of the Manage Servers panel. From here, you can perform the following
actions:

• Review the performance statistics for the computer where the applications are running.
• Review information about connections to the server.
• Review information about the applications located on the server or virtual hosts.
• Review server licenses and, if necessary, add serial keys.
• Review the access log and server log.
The Servers panel occupies the left side of the screen in this section of the Administration Console. The panel lists the
servers and virtual hosts that you can access and manage.

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Manage Servers panel

Use the small buttons at the top and bottom of the panel to perform the following tasks:

• Add a new server to the list.
• Edit server login information (user name and password) and select options such as remembering the password and
automatically connecting when logging in to the server.

• Delete a server from the list.
• Connect to the selected server.
• Ping the server to verify that it is running.
• Restart the server or a virtual host.
• Run garbage collection to clear unused server resources, such as streams and application instances, from memory.
(Automatic garbage collection intervals can be set in the Server.xml and VHost.xml configuration files.)

• Stop a server or virtual host.

Viewing server details
The Administration Console Details panel displays live information for the server.
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click Manage Servers.
3 Click Details.
4 Select a server from the list. The following information is displayed:

• Total number of current clients
• Life span of the server

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• Graphical displays of active connections, bandwidth resources consumed, and CPU and memory resources
consumed

Viewing connection details
The Administration Console Connections panel lists all client connections to the selected server.
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click Manage Servers.
3 Click Connections.
4 Select a server from the list. The following information is displayed for each client accessing the server or virtual host:

• Server name
• If connection has been made
• Number of connections
• Number of disconnections
• Number of bytes in and out
• Number of messages dropped

Viewing application details
The Administration Console Applications panel displays detailed information for all the applications running on the
selected server or virtual host.
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click Manage Servers.
3 Click Applications.
4 Select a server from the list. The name of each application, along with the following information, is displayed:

• Server name
• Application name
• Number of instances of the application that have been loaded on and unloaded from the server
• Number of users that are connected
• Number of users that have connected and disconnected
• Number of instances currently active
• Number of instances that have been unloaded from the server
• Total number of connections that have been accepted or rejected for each application

Viewing license files
The Administration Console License panel is where you add serial keys. The panel also displays detailed information
for all serial keys authorizing you to run Adobe Media Server on the selected server. The lower frame displays
information about custom licenses.
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click Manage Servers.

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ADOBE MEDIA SERVER 5.0.6 CONFIGURATION AND ADMINISTRATION
Using the Administration Console

3 Click License.
4 Select a server from the list. For each license, the following information is displayed:

• The individual serial key number
• Authorized peak number of client connections
• Bandwidth cap
• Whether the license is valid (true) or not (false)
Note: Your organization may have more than one license, so note the capacity totals listed near the bottom of the
Administration Console.

Add a serial key
Add serial keys in the Administration Console License panel.
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click Manage Servers.
3 Click License.
4 Enter the serial key number in the text boxes at the bottom of the Administration Console.
5 Click Add Serial Key.
6 Restart the server.

Note: Serial numbers that are added manually (that is, added by editing configuration files directly) to either ams.ini or
the tag of the Server.xml file cannot be removed using the Administration Console. Only serial numbers
that are added using the Administration Console can be deleted using the Administration Console.

View the access log file
The Administration Console Server Log panel displays messages that are written to the access log.
1 Follow the steps in “Connect to the Administration Console” on page 82.
2 Click Manage Servers.
3 Click Server Log.
4 Select a server from the list.
5 To locate a specific string, type it in the Find text box and click Find Next. Use the Find Previous and Clear Log

buttons as necessary.

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Chapter 4: Monitoring and Managing Log
Files
Adobe Media Server has a variety of log files to help you manage and troubleshoot the server. The log files track server
activity, such as who is accessing the server, how users are working with applications, and general diagnostics. Logs are
in W3C format. Administrators can use standard parsing tools to parse the log files.

Working with log files
About log files
The server maintains several different types of logs. The server outputs statistics about client connections and stream
activity to access logs. The server also maintains diagnostic logs and application logs for application activities.
access.XX.log Tracks information about users accessing the server.
application.XX.log Tracks information about activities in application instances.
diagnostic logs Track information about server operations.

Note: In Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3, Flash Player no longer notifies the server about pause events.

Configuration files for logging
Use the Server.xml and Logger.xml configuration files to configure logging. The Server.xml file contains a Logging
section that controls logging behavior for the entire server. The Logging section includes an Enable tag that
determines whether the server logs events. The Logging section also contains a Scope tag that determines whether the
server writes separate log files for each virtual host or one file for the entire server. The location of each log file is
determined by the Directory and FileName tags in the Logger.xml files.
If the Scope tag is set to server, the Logger.xml file in the rootinstall/conf folder determines the logging configuration
for the whole server.
If the Scope tag is set to vhost, you can place Logger.xml files in virtual host root folders to control the behavior of
each virtual host. If the Scope tag is set to vhost and a virtual host Logger.xml file doesn’t exist, the root Logger.xml
file controls the logging behavior. If the Scope tag is set to server, virtual host Logger.xml files are ignored.
For more information, see comments in the Server.xml and Logger.xml files installed in the rootinstall/conf directory.

Working with web server log files
Adobe Media Server installs with the Apache HTTP Server.
The default location of the ApachAdobe Mediae log files is RootInstall/Apache2.2/logs. The logs are in the default
Apache error and combined access log formats. To change the location of the log files, edit the
RootInstall/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf file.
The Apache logs are named access_log and error_log. Adobe Media Server handles log rotation for the Apache logs.
For more information about Apache log files, see the Apache documentation at www.apache.org.

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ADOBE MEDIA SERVER 5.0.6 CONFIGURATION AND ADMINISTRATION
Monitoring and Managing Log Files

Rotating and backing up log files
Log files grow larger over time, but there are methods for managing log file size.
One option is to rotate log files, moving or deleting the oldest files. Use the rotation element in the Logger.xml file
to specify a rotation schedule for log files. Two types of rotation schedules can be established. The first option is to set
a daily rotation at a certain time. For example, setting daily at 00:00 rotates files every 24 hours at midnight.
Alternatively, set a rotation that occurs when the log exceeds a specified length. Name, maximum file size in kilobytes,
and maximum number of log files to keep can also be customized using the rotation element. For an example, see
the Logger.xml file installed in the /conf directory.
Note: Log file rotation cannot be disabled. However, you can set values in the Logger.xml configuration files that
effectively turn off rotation. Choose a large value for the MaxSize tag. Set the Schedule type to "duration" and choose
a long maximum duration. For more information about the Logger.xml configuration files, see “Configuration files for
logging” on page 97.
You can write an operating system script to delete or back up the log regularly. For important log files, move the log
directory to a backup location. You can move the current active file; the server creates a new file on the next log event.

Access logs
Reading access logs
The access log records information about requests by Flash Player and Adobe Media Server application instances.
Using these logs, you can find out about various events, such as when a user connected to the server, how much total
bandwidth was consumed during the session, and which streams were accessed by the connection (and similar
resource information). You can use the status codes associated with specific events to troubleshoot event failures. You
can also use this information to determine which applications are used most.
The default access log is access.xx.log, which is located in the RootInstall/logs directory. The default configuration
creates a single access log per server. You can also configure the server to create a separate file per virtual host. When
logging is configured on a per-virtual-host basis, all logs for a particular virtual host are found in a subdirectory within
the logs directory. The name of the subdirectory matches the virtual host name. Substitution strings can be found in
the [] brackets, with YYYY, MM, DD, and NN representing year, month, date, and version, respectively. You can use
the substitution string to customize the filename of the access log. (For example, access.[YYYYMMDDNN].log could
be named access.2007052401.log.) To configure the server to create separate log files for each virtual host, set the value
of the Scope tag in the Server.xml file to “vhost.” (This is a separate scope tag just for logging.)
Adobe Media Server defines event categories, and for each category, it defines events that can be recorded. Logging
can be customized to record all events or only specific events by editing the and elements in the
Logger.xml file.

Logging events periodically for live and 24/7 applications
Many companies use statistics from the access log to bill customers. If your programming includes live events or 24/7
programming, the events you need to calculate billing might not occur within a billing cycle. To solve this problem,
you can enable checkpoint events. Checkpoint events log bytes periodically from the start to the end of an event. You
can configure how often the server logs checkpoint events. The following are available as checkpoint events: connectcontinue, play-continue, and publish-continue. For information about configuring checkpoint events, see
“Enable checkpoint logging events” on page 45.

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ADOBE MEDIA SERVER 5.0.6 CONFIGURATION AND ADMINISTRATION
Monitoring and Managing Log Files

Access events defined in access logs
Event

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