How to check that a file is being streamed and not downloaded? - nginx

Abstract: There is a page with a player that loads audio file and plays it. The player used on the web page is jwplayer. I need to find a way to determine if the audio file is being streamed to the player or not.
Background: In my research I found that if I use nginx header like X-Accel-Redirect - the file will be streamed. I have setup the web server with nginx + apache combination (nginx is reverse proxy for apache), after that I pointed jwplayer to the mp3 file - and it is working. I mean I am able to click anywhere on the audio timeline and it immediately starts playing sound. But, since I didn't set that header yet, and adding the fact that player already works - that's why I need to check my question and know for sure.
Some of my own thoughts: JwPlayer itself supports some kind of bufferring, so I have no idea whether it just downloads the mp3 file I am testing this functions on, or it receives the stream and plays it out.
Is there a way to check and know for sure? The only idea about all of this I have is to check access logs, but I don't know what to look for, or if I need a special format for the logs to see those requried data.
While I was researching the issue I got some weird download related topics and something about HTTP headers with "Ranges" in them, but I am not sure that it relates to the streaming or not.
Please advice.

From the point of view of the server, there is no difference between download and streaming. A server just send bits. What happens to those bits later is unknown. What you need is a player that sends reports to back to the server or a loging service such as mixpanel.

Related

Why Jmeter can't record sites using the firebase as data connection

I tried to record a site using JMeter which uses Firebase for data storage but it fails to access the firebase and I can not log into the site while recording. Is there any way to access firebase during the recording of load testing in JMeter? I entered the JMeter certificate also but still, the problem is there. And also tried using the chrome extension still it also didn't give the expected output Error Description Image
Most probably it's due to incorrect JMeter configuration for recording, you need to import JMeter's certificate into your browser. The file is called ApacheJMeterTemporaryRootCA.crt, JMeter generates it under its "bin" folder when you start the HTTP(S) Test Script Recorder.
See HTTPS recording and certificates documentation chapter for more details.
Going forward consider looking at View Results Tree listener output and jmeter.log file, they should provide sufficient amount of information in order to get to the bottom of the issue. If you cannot interpret what you see there yourself - add at least essential parts of response/log to your question.
Also be aware of alternative "non-invasive" way of recording a JMeter test - JMeter Chrome Extension, in that case you won't have to worry about proxies and certificates and should be able to normally record whatever HTTP(S) traffic your browser generates

How can I record audio in a web app client side and save it in a web server?

I have a requirement to do a flash program or something like that (not necessarily flash, it can be javascript or something in aspnet) that allow me to save audio in the client side of a web app, and save it on a file in the server side of the web app.
I've been searching a lot in google, and all I've found are just old questions, but no answers that fulfill my question
Please I need help!
Ive found this but the only thing that it does its to recognize the microphone, I need the hability of saving the audio file, by the way the server is implemented in aspnet
Possible Duplicate (when tagged with Flash)
How can I record audio using Action script then upload it to server?
The static function
Microphone.getMicrophone() returns a
reference to a Microphone object for
capturing audio. To begin capturing
the audio, you must attach the
Microphone object to a NetStream
object (see NetStream.attachAudio()).
There's at least one example in the
LiveDocs. Start at
flash.media.Microphone.
via #aaaidan
This is like asking everybody to do your entire homework for you.
You need to break the problem down into smaller achievable pieces/goals.
Example:
Record audio
Send to web server
Now you'll most likely get better results when you google it up.

Need to check uptime on a large file being hosted

I have a dynamically generated rss feed that is about 150M in size (don't ask)
The problem is that it keeps crapping out sporadically and there is no way to monitor it without downloading the entire feed to get a 200 status. Pingdom times out on it and returns a 'down' error.
So my question is, how do I check that this thing is up and running
What type of web server, and server side coding platform are you using (if any)? Is any of the content coming from a backend system/database to the web tier?
Are you sure the problem is not with the client code accessing the file? Most clients have timeouts and downloading large files over the internet can be a problem depending on how the server behaves. That is why file download utilities track progress and download in chunks.
It is also possible that other load on the web server or the number of users is impacting server. If you have little memory available and certain servers then it may not be able to server that size of file to many users. You should review how the server is sending the file and make sure it is chunking it up.
I would recommend that you do a HEAD request to check that the URL is accessible and that the server is responding at minimum. The next step might be to setup your download test inside or very close to the data center hosting the file to monitor further. This may reduce cost and is going to reduce interference.
Found an online tool that does what I needed
http://wasitup.com uses head requests so it doesn't time out waiting to download the whole 150MB file.
Thanks for the help BrianLy!
Looks like pingdom does not support the head request. I've put in a feature request, but who knows.
I hacked this capability into mon for now (mon is a nice compromise between paying someone else to monitor and doing everything yourself). I have switched entirely to https so I modified the https monitor to do it. The did it the dead-simple way: copied the https.monitor file, called it https.head.monitor. In the new monitor file I changed the line that says (you might also want to update the function name and the place where that's called):
get_https to head_https
Now in mon.cf you can call a head request:
monitor https.head.monitor -u /path/to/file

Why is the 'Range' URLRequestHeader in Flash restricted?

Can anyone tell me why the Range, header is restricted in the Flash player?
I want to be able to pause and resume downloads in my flex application, but I get a RTE when trying to set the Range header.
Error #2096: The HTTP request header Range cannot be set via ActionScript.
I imagine there isn't going to be a work around client side, but expect there is a way you can get a server to change the name for the range header to something else...
Would like to know Adobe's reason for this though, hopefully it's not just to sell more copies of FMS :p
I just discovered exactly the same issue with the Range header while attempting to add ranged GET requests to our REST layer in Flex. Range is on the "blacklist" and the Flash Player simply won't send it.
Flash/Flex headers ate my brain a year or so back (verveguy.blogspot.com) but this is the last straw.
The solution I am now going to finally embrace is to use the open source as3httpclientlib and just abandon the Flash HTTP stack. We've used it successfully for some minor parts of our app (specifically, for talking to the JIRA API) so it's time to beat it into submission for all HTTP traffic.
For your specific problem, you could certainly switch to a custom header, say X-Range. This assumes you have control of the server side code and that you also have a crossdomain.xml policy file that allows headers. (Blacklisted headers are the first set to be culled. After that, the Flash player checks the crossdomain.xml advertised by the server you're talking to see whether it allows specific (or all other) headers)
Hope this helps
Here are a couple of Adobe Tech Notes that explain their reasoning:
Arbitrary headers are not sent from Flash Player to a remote domain
ActionScript error when an HTTP send action contains certain headers (Flash Player)

How can I prevent/make it hard to download my flash video?

I want to at least prevent normal users to download my flash video.
What's the best way to do it?
Create a httphandler, add a token (e.g. timeid), set the cache control to no-cache so that only the users with correct token can view the correct video. Is that feasible?
It is the requirement from client that the video should not be downloaded by users and should be watched only in the particular website.
I want to know if this works:
http://www.somesite.com/video.swf?time=1248319067
Server will generate a token(time in the above example) so that user can only have one request to this link. If the user wants to watch the video again, he needs to go to our website to get the token again. Is this okay to prevent novices from downloading?
I can't download this flash video by the downloadHelper firefox plugin:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8164177.stm
Updated (13:49 pm 2009/07/23):
The above file can be downloaded using some video download software.
The video files of following Chinese sites are well protected (I can't download it using many video download software):
http://programme.tvb.com/drama/abrideforaride/video/
Do you know how it is done?
I dont think there is an easy way to stop people from getting your videos if they want them,
there are plenty of plugins for firefox that allow downloading from even youtube and many places. And i imagine those plugins would disable any attempt you made to hide your videos.
not too terribly different than taking an image from flicker, they put a clear gif image over the image that you want to view, so that when you right click and save you get "the shield" image, however can be defeated by the lowly print screen button.
if you want casual users from getting your file, use a flash control and buffer a minute or two of your videos and make that flash authenticate with the server to get those files. that seems reasonable to me
I don't think there really is an easy way to limit people from getting at it. Your sending them the video, that is how they are able to view it. Any user could just use FRAPS or a similar tool to copy the video from the screen as well.
If your worry is being copied and used elsewhere then you can watermark it or use a few other types of copy protection methods that will allow you to identify your work on other sites. If your worried about people copying it for personal use, then you really have no way of stopping it, you are sending it to them.
Edit: Due diligence would be to inform your customer of how easy it is to copy the work that they will be posting. Most clients have really no idea how easy it is.
This is how I like to tackle this issue.
This method works by creating a ticket to download the content over one http request...Another attempt to use the same ticket to download the content will fail, hence any extensions that attempt to download the content again or a user manually attempting to fail to do so, hence the flash player will be the only way to download the content. However there is one downfall for this approach, users will not be able to skip to a part of the video that has not been download...in some standard player implementation that may even stop the video from loading. Any ideas on this will be highly appreciated.
I begin by writing a PHP script that takes in a video_id, file_name, or a local path to your video file (Depending on the storage infrastructure of your video collection) in a GET request along with a unique hash value (a hard to guess and come up with probably generated with a secret key so it can be validated to be coming from our reciever (flash player), if the hacker send us a used hash or an invalid hash (does not satisfy our key), we will not send him the file). The PHP script then opens the video file and sends its content with the correct video mime type. for FLV the mime type is video/x-flv. It makes sure that once a unique hash has not been used before and is validly generated from your secret encryption key.
Then once the page with the flash player is loading we can give the .php file with the right get parameters as the video url to the video player. (If it is a prude player that only allows flv files you can always program your .htaccess file to parse .flv files as php script in the specific folder only, and rename your .php file as .flv and try your luck)...anyways...Also generate a hash key...perhaps you can take the servers current time and append it to a salt value such as another key known by both scripts, and encrypt this final concatenation with your secret key.
So once the video gateway php script will recieve a filename or hash key...it will decrypt the hash key and figure out if it is validly generated from teh sister script, and make sure not to send the video again to the same hash key...
For added security you can perhaps reset the secret key everyday using either a cronjob or bootstrap mechanism. To prevent duplicate use of hashkeys you can store them in a mysql database, file operations, or NOSQL (depending on your needs and infrastructure).
Make sure that the file is requested by the same user agent the hash key was generated for. In case the hacker trys to cURL or Wget your videos unused url before the flash player gets a chance to consume the hash key. In this case the hacker will have to imitate the browser's user agent or download the file using their command line tool as well...However please note that this is not your average champ.
It sounds like you need to add authorization and authentication.
You could put the flash video under a different folder in your ASP.Net application and add a web.config file in that folder to deny access to unauthorized users. For example:
Then you need to enable authentication for your website. The simplest method is forms authentication. A trivial example with hard coded username and password is provided here.
There is loads that you can do with the authentication framework in ASP.Net I suggest googling a bit.
The only way to do this is with a trusted client, DRM and an encrypted source.
Your player opens up a connection, the user has a connection to the stream, you perform some magic authentication with their token and then transmite the encrypted data to them.
If you don't do this then anyone can download your video and save it out.
However with all that aside, someone can run screen capture, then save your video and do it again. This is again where the DRM comes in as one of the key features of the DRM in windows clients is that the buffer cannot be sniffed as it's on the protected media pathway.
I guess its a question of how to protect your revenue but dealing with pirates is always going to be a problem for software devs no matter what their business is.
I have a solution that i'm gonna try for myself (as I have the same worries) but I know that it includes a lot of extra time and work...
Solution: using flash compress the video into an swf file. Before compressing add some AS code to the movie for authentication. suggestions for authentication:
1 test url
2 create a dedicated flash player that has handshake code checked by the video.swf
I like #2 better, and as an extra measure, you can overlay an id code over the video, so if someone captures the video using screen recording software, you'd at least be able to track the original source of the copied video.. and exact suitable retribution...
Simply you can't prevent it.
But..you can make it difficult.
Here some ideas come in my mind
1 First of all add your identifier to the video (always someone can download it)
2 The hard way... Add Ajax call back to server to check a random generated key that it will stored in the session every N seconds. After every post back clear the buffer of the player and start the video from were i was (using javascript).
Use again JavaScript prevent the video source from downloading by "view source".
3 Handle all your videos in urls like http://www.example.com/viewvideo/1 OR ../?id=1.
Add blank image overlay with transparent background.
Serve the original video and a blank video somewhere on the page with normal extension and style attribute "display:none". (will create problems to some download helpers)
4 Everytime you serve a video CHECK if the request is from a browser (ie check UserAgent)
5 Cookie with some random value combined with the id of the video. Check it client-side and server side and then serve the video.
6 On focusout event hide the video with javascript. put a resume button in the flash and leave the frame unchange (like pause but with no original video in buffer).
7 Combine those methods
these are random generated ideas,
not tested neither i say that guaranties no video downloading.
I have attempted two way to prevent the downloading but fails.
Using javascript to dynamically generate the object for flash.
Using the token idea proposed in the question.
What annoying me most is that a simple SAVE/AS from the firefox browser could easily bypass the tricks.
The only variable way so far is to using an empty swf file to load another swf file in. Combined with the token idea, it works.
in my answer you cant stop image/video theft but you can make harder for normal users but you can't make it harder for the programmers like us( i mean thiefs that knows little web programming) there are some tricks you can try:-
1.) Using flash as youtube and many others sites like http://www.funnenjoy.com does .
2.) Div overlaping or background pic setting (but users with little sense can easily save all resources by opening inspect element or other developer option).
3.) You can disable right click and specific keys like CTRL + S and others possibles with JAVASCRIPT but main drawback is that if user disable JAVASCRIPT our all tricks fail down.
4.)Save image in none online directories(if you have full access to web server) and read that files with server side languages like PHP every time when image / video is required and change image id time to time or create script that can automatically change ID after every access.
5.)Use .htaccess in apache to prevent linking of your images by others sites. you can use this site to automatically generate .htacess http://www.htaccesstools.com/hotlink-protection/

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