How to Install and Configure Icecast 2 Streaming Audio Server on CentOS 8

Icecast is a high-performance, open-source streaming media audio server capable of broadcasting MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and Opus audio streams. Because prebuilt Icecast packages were initially omitted from CentOS 8 and EPEL 8 repositories, compiling from source with Vorbis and Theora audio support is required.

Environment: CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 • Icecast 2.4.x • Ogg / Vorbis / Theora Codecs

1. Install Build Tools and Codec Dependencies

yum groupinstall "Development Tools" -y
yum install curl-devel libtheora-devel libvorbis-devel libxslt-devel speex-devel libshout-devel -y

2. Download and Build Icecast

cd /usr/src
wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/icecast/icecast-2.4.4.tar.gz
tar -zxf icecast-2.4.4.tar.gz
cd icecast-2.4.4

./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
make && make install

3. Create Service User and Start Daemon

useradd -r -s /sbin/nologin icecast
chown -R icecast:icecast /var/log/icecast

# Launch Icecast as a background daemon
icecast -b -c /etc/icecast.xml