/*
 *   senator - ASF video stream server
 *   Copyright (C) 2002  anonymous author
 *
 *
 *  senator is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 *  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 *  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 *  (at your option) any later version.
 *   
 *  Senator is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 *  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 *  GNU General Public License for more details.
 *	
 *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 *  along with senator; if not, write to the Free Software
 *  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA 
 *
 */

-[ intro ] ---

Welcome dear reader,

A much heard complaine in newsgroups and on various messageboards around 
the internet there is a request for an ASF streaming server for linux. 
This software should provide a basic ASF stream server.

The author of this software wiches to remain anonymous, since The Beast is
probably not so very happy with third party servers, especially when they
are running on linux :)

The implementation of the stream protocol is a bit of a crappy hack, the real
protocol uses some sort of group system to chain packages. This is maybe 
the reason why it takes some time to initialize the stream. Also the delay
between the packages being send is not the "official" way. Please, feel free
to experiment and make this software better.

I guess the source code is a bit of a mess, sorry for that. This should be
seen as a first try... and it works :)

have fun,

    anonymous 


-[ how to install  ] ---

Ok, before you can compile and install this software you need to make sure you have 
NetClass installed. You can get it from: http://netclass.sourceforge.net
(great piece of software!)

from here down in four easy steps:

1. upack the archive

    tar zxfv senator_0.1beta.tar.gz
    
2. to compile the source code

    make
    
3. 
    ** DEBIAN USERS **

    to install senator to the default directory (/usr/bin/) and to install
    the config file (/etc/senator.conf) and to install the start / stop
    script (/etc/init.d/senator) 
   
    su -
    <password>
    make install_debian

    ** REDHAT/MADRAKE USERS **

    su -
    <password>
    make install_redhat    
	 
4. check /etc/senator.conf if everything is ok and place some asf files in the directory
   you have configured in the configuration file.

    Now you are ready to start the server:
    
    ** DEBIAN USERS **
    
    type:
	 
    /etc/init.d/senator start
    
    ** REDHAT USERS **
    
    /etc/rc.d/init.d/senator start

    
    NOTE: 
    
    to stop the server you can do the same trick, only replace the start with stop.

    c'est tout 

-[ time to stream ] ---

Once you have succesfully compiled to project, installed it on your box and 
have feeded it some ASF files it's time to see if it works :)

Fire up mediaplayer (or any other software capable of playing ASF streaming
media using the HTTP protocol, only I've only tested it with mplayer so if 
you find a bug, please send me a message, or even better, a fix :)

anway, mplayer2 is running;

open a location; (ctrl-o in version < 6 / ctrl-u > 6) and type: 

    http://<server host>:<port>/file.asf
 
I type: http://192.168.0.1:4444/blabla.asf 

    wait a few secs while the player buffers the stream.

-[ status page] ---

There is a status page that can be generated by the server, in the config file
the default name is set to /status.html

if you request this page the server will give you an overview of the current
clients connected to the server, what files they are playing and how far
they are (%). This functionality has not been really tested so it could be 
the server crashes... sorry for that, but hey :) this is just a beta.

- [ bug report ] ---

Thanks for testing the software, to bad it doesn't work =)
If you want to make a bug report you can compile the source into debug
mode, and send me the complete output of the server and the file you have
been trying to play. (if it's not to big :)

(There will be better handling for debug output in the future release)

to compile in debug mode:

make clean

open the file include/global.h. There you will find the following lines:

1. //#define STREAM_HANDLER_DEBUG
2. //#define ASF_READER_DEBUG_OUTPUT
3. //#define STREAM_HANDLER_TALK_HAPPY

1: shows what happens with the connection between mplayer and the server
2: gives more info about the file being parsed
3: shows every packet being send to the client

If you want to submit a bug, please uncomment line 1 and 2 recompile ( type make)
and run senator in debug mode with verbose output:

./senator -d -v

and mail me the result

thanks!