Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 3 down vote favorite

I have read all over that Apache allows Byte-Range support from default. However I am unable to stream any of our audio files nor am I able to add them to a podcast on itunes because it says that Byte-Range support is not enabled on my server.

I have tried looking around to find a solution to this problem but can't seem to find it.

share|improve this question
You don't mention an OS, so I'm going to assume Linux. I'm assuming Linux because the various popular Linux distro ship really weirdly configured versions of Apache, so you can't assume any consistency or that the "defaults" are actually set that way. Further, I suspect that some misguided maintainer disabled Byte-Range in your distro because there was a security problem with it, and most Apache Administrator don't keep up on security well enough to prevent their server from being pwn3d the first time a script kiddy finds it. – Chris S♦ Sep 6 '12 at 13:04
Assuming Linux is correct. I am using Ubuntu 11:10 at the moment. How do I go about adding the byte-range support? Do you know? – JamieT Sep 6 '12 at 13:07
Look through the configuration files for something like RequestHeader unset Range, grep Range /path/to/configs should work. Symcbean is correct that HTTP can't do true streaming, however most software still refers to it as "streaming" regardless. – Chris S♦ Sep 6 '12 at 13:10
@ChrisS I dont seem to be winning. Which config file should I put that in? I have enabled mod_headers but I am still struggling to get byte-range support enabled properly – JamieT Sep 7 '12 at 8:42
That would be the line to disable Range support, you do not need to specifically enable Range support, it's on by default. You're looking for something like that line as it will be disabling support and you'll want to remove or modify the line. – Chris S♦ Sep 7 '12 at 12:54

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote

Streaming does not use byte ranges - HTTP doesn't do streaming.

I believe you are confusing pseudo-streaming over HTTP / progressive download with real streaming.

The former is not a defined protocol - it varies by implementation. While it would be possible to implement a client which simply used HTTP range requests, in practice it's a bit more involved than that.

share|improve this answer
I agree with you there. I am probably am confusing the two. I assumed that the problem was linked. – JamieT Sep 6 '12 at 13:10

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.