What is owncast?

Owncast is a streaming server that you can selfhost, a Twicht in a box as the developers call it. You host owncast on your server (a small VM with good downlink is enough) and can stream your own own content like you would do on Twicht, YouTube etc...

It has a chat, a admin panel for customization and thats it! You don't need more to e.g. stream while you are playing minecraft or want to share a talk.

Getting started

Get the latest release on GitHub by using

$ mkdir owncast
$ cd owncast
$ wget https://github.com/owncast/owncast/releases/download/v0.0.7/owncast-0.0.7-linux-64bit.zip
$ unzip owncast-0.0.7-linux-64bit.zip
$ rm owncast-0.0.7-linux-64bit.zip

And move the webroot to your document root and make sure the permissions fit

$ cd ..
$ mv owncast /var/www/owncast
$ cd /var/www/
$ chown -R www-data:www-data owncast

Now create a new NGINX site e.g. /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/owncast with the following content


map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
        default upgrade;
        ''      close;
}

server {


    listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/stream.hyteck.de/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/stream.hyteck.de/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

    server_name stream.hyteck.de;


    # Set header
    add_header X-Clacks-Overhead "GNU Terry Pratchett";
    add_header Permissions-Policy interest-cohort=(); #Anti FLoC


    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;

    }

}

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name stream.hyteck.de;
        return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}

Make sure to adjust the server name and SSL certificats (I will not go into detail on how to obtain them, but feel free to ask me!).

Start server

Now start owncast to test

$ cd /var/www/owncast
$ ./owncast/owncast

and visit https://yourdomain.org! If everything works you should see your site now. By visiting https://yourdomain.org/admin you can configure your server. The default credentials are admin and your stream key which is abc123. Change this immediately!

Before you configure, let's make sure this runs whenever your server starts. Goback in the terminal and cancel with Ctrl+C.

Run as system service

You want to install owncast as a system service. Therfore create /etc/systemd/system/owncast.service with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Owncast
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/owncast
ExecStart=/var/www/owncast/owncast

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Update the daemon with systemctl daemon-reload enable systemctl enable owncast``and start with systemctl start owncast. Make sure everything is correct with systemctl status owncast`.

Configuration

You can now change back to yourdoiman.org/admin and configure, title, logo and more.

Streaming

You can now use OBS or similar software to start streaming. Got to settings and configure your server.

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