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Infocast Server overview

Infocast Server is the service that allows distribution of information from one single point (the Infocast Server) to all or a subset of the IP-STB units in a system. It consists of the Infocast server and a number of configuration files. The Infocast Server is used together with other fundamental services to realise system wide features within the IP-STB System.

The Infocast Server is installed during the installation process described in Installing the SDK. The Infocast server and its configuration files are installed in /opt/infocast.

The Infocast server uses a proprietary protocol called Infocast, which is a generic protocol for sending arbitrary objects on multicast channels. Each Infocast channel can handle multiple Infocast objects. It is fully configurable through the KreaTV Infocast server configuration file. The current solution uses (as default) three Infocast channels:

The metadata channel where date and time, boot image channel and boot loader image channel information is sent.
The boot image channel.
The boot splash screen channel.
Optional: The boot loader image channel.

The Infocast server supports redundancy for increased robustness and fault tolerance.

The Infocast server can be controlled using the following commands on the Infocast Server:

Command	Description
`service infocastserverd start`	Starts the Infocast server
`service infocastserverd stop`	Stops the Infocast server
`service infocastserverd restart`	Restarts the Infocast server
`service infocastserverd status`	Displays the status of the Infocast server

1. If service infocastserverd status says that the Infocast server is stopped when it should be running, look at /opt/infocast/infocast.log to check the server status.
2. The default size of INFOCAST_JAVA is 360M. If there are more channels, which may cause the JAVA out of memory issue, then the maximum size should be modified to about 40M x channel numbers.
3. Modify time in Infocast server host may block Infocast server multicast information objects when Infocast server is running. This depends on a bug in older version of JRE (Java Runtime Environment), in order to overcome this either upgrade JRE in Infocast server host or don't change Infocast server host time when Infocast server is running.

It is always a good idea to check the contents of /opt/infocast/infocast.log after starting the service, even if it starts correctly. An error in the configuration may cause the server to start, but to not broadcast all the objects as expected.