ddvtech/mistserver repository overview

⁠What is MistServer

MistServer is an open source multimedia multi-standard streaming server. More information at: mistserver.org⁠

For online documentation visit: docs.mistserver.org⁠

For a more up to date guide on Docker and Docker Desktop visit our Docker installation guide⁠

This repository is a from scratch repository containing only the MistServer binaries and their dependencies, allowing it to be a very small image.

⁠Other available images

⁠Suggested use for running MistServer

docker run --detach --mount type=bind,source=/PATH/TO/CONFIG.JSON,destination=/config.json --mount type=bind,source=/FOLDER/WITH/VIDEOFILES,destination=/video --shm-size=4g --network=host ddvtech/mistserver

By default Docker does not allocate a lot of shared memory (64m by default) which MistServer relies on heavily. We recommend extending the shared memory of the docker as well. This can be done through: --shm-size=number

⁠Windows & Mac specific

We recommend port publishing when using Docker images with Windows and Mac, --network=host is not available on these systems. MistServer's default ports are:

Should you wish to change/add ports do so accordingly. For example 443 for HTTPS.

⁠Limitations

The ephemeral range will be unavailable for use, which means protocols that rely on this such as RTSP over UDP will be unavailable. WebRTC would be affected however a dedicated UDP port (18203) is instead used.

⁠Option explanation

--network=host This setting makes the Docker use the server network instead of creating a separate one for the docker image. Running on host network is recommended for two reasons: First of all, as a media server, MistServer sends and receives a lot of data. The extra layer of indirection caused by running on non-host network has a measurable performance impact on data transfer. Secondly, some protocols will use arbitrary ports from the ephemeral range, and forwarding port ranges to a docker image is not easy to do in a reliable way. Running on host network makes this port forwarding unnecessary and simplifies configuration as well.

--publish HOST_PORT:CONTAINER_PORT This is used as alternative for the --network=host option. This will open access for others to access MistServer running on the HOST. You can bind UDP ports by adding a /udp to the CONTAINER_PORT. For ease of use we recommend setting the same ports on both ends, but that is by no means necessary. Keep in mind that the HOST_PORT is what your users will connect to and the CONTAINER_PORT is where MistServer will be listening.

--mount type=bind,source=/PATH/TO/CONFIG.JSON,destination=/config.json This setting binds a MistServer configuration file from the server to the docker. This allows you to “keep” the configurations in between several docker images.

--mount type=bind,source=/FOLDER/WITH/VIDEOFILES,destination=/video This setting binds a folder on the host as /video within the Docker. Allowing you easy access by using /video as source to reach the files within. This only makes sense if you have a folder with video assets - for a system that only handles live streams you may not need to set this at all.

⁠Usage

Connect to http://localhost:4242⁠ in your browser to complete setup through the web interface (or change localhost to whichever address your container was assigned, if not using host networking)