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Don't ask me how I did it (ok, you can ask, in fact I'm going to tell you...), but somehow I now have a remote git server and gitolite for repo and user administration installed and running on Ubuntu 11.10 using an Amazon EC2 Micro instance.

I've spent all morning on this, tested it on 3 different instances (I love it how you can just throw away an EC2 instance and start again with a new one in a matter of minutes) and have kept a log of the steps which got me there. Please note that there may be errors or illogical jumps in this summary, but maybe it will be helpful nonetheless - or it may even work outright, who knows.

BEfore we get started, here are some links that helped me (but note I had to pick some steps from some links, and other steps from others...). In particular I did not clone gitolite to my local machine (as this post suggests but ended up using

Links I used:
git + gitolite + git-daemon + gitweb setup on Ubuntu 11.10 server
How to setup git server using gitolite in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric
Install Gitolite To Manage Your Git Repositories

First of all, get yourself an instance of Ubuntu (you may swap this for your preferred Linux distro). If you are in love with EC2 then head over to alestic.com and click the selection at the top of the page (I'm using the us-east region), and then pick your preferred image.

The neat thing is that if you already have an Amazon Web Services account you can launch your instance with virtually one click, very neat. I picked the Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric EBS boot image, 64 bit.

Once booted, SSH into your instance (consult other blogs for details on this if you need help).

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Posted on February 13, 2012 at 11:19 AM. 10371 views. Print

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As some of you may already know, I run and maintain a few of my own products, the most popular of which being Scribblar which pushes hundreds of sessions every day.

Recently I started getting reports from users that the main page which hosts the applications' main SWF file was not loading properly, or it would work in one browser but not another. Within the handful of reports I had, Google Chrome appeared to be the browser that posed most of the issues - this seemed odd as Chrome effectively has Flash Player built-in and always auto-updates to the latest release version which is why I recommend it as the preferred browser to anyone who asks.

My first look was towards SWFObject - I figured that maybe something in Chrome had changed and broken the Flash Player detection. A common trap that some developers fall into is to check for specific Flash Player versions, for example only allowing access to Player 11 or below, which then locks users out once Player 11.5 (or similar) is released. But this wasn't the issue here.

After much more digging and more back-and-forth emails with some users I noticed a very odd behaviour when trying to access my SWF directly (without an HTML wrapper) in Chrome. This image shows the request in the Chrome Debugger.

Notice how the shows as 'canceled', and that the content type is coming up as the generic binary/octet-stream? Clearly this pointed towards Chrome not being able to deal with a wrongly set MIME type correctly, whereas other browser may have handled this is a more flexible way.

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Posted on January 30, 2012 at 8:48 AM. 4465 views. Print

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Here's a quick tip on how to configure a Windows Amazon instance to successfully respond to ping requests.

By default an EC2 security group does not allow ICMP ping requests, and in some cases the internal Windows firewall will also block it. You therefore should check both settings if you want to be able to ping your EC2 Windows instance.

Step 1: Check Windows Firewall Settings
To enable the Windows firewall to allow ping request check that under 'Inbound Rules' the setting 'File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In)' is enabled. The icon should turn green if the rule is enabled.
Alternatively you can use the commandline option:

This should take care of the Windows firewall.

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Posted on October 28, 2011 at 5:23 AM. 7696 views. Print

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Oh don't you just love cryptic error messages that could mean one hundred and one things? Yeah, me too.

So in the interest of some poor soul (maybe it's you ;-) searching on this topic in the year 2142 I decided to point out what resolved this issue for me.

Background: I am running Windows Server 2008 R2 with IIS inside a Hyper-V instance. The VM was configured with a static IP and each IIS site was configured to bind to that IP, and that IP alone.
I transferred the VM to Amazon EC2 (using the ec2-import-instance API) since I wanted to move away from having to maintain my own physical hardware. Long story short, once transferred I was unable to start any of the IIS sites, they all failed with the error 'The format of the specified network name is invalid - Error 0x800704BE'.

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Posted on October 24, 2011 at 9:45 PM. 6809 views. Print

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Yesterday afternoon I presented at Flash on the Beach 2011. The title of the sessions was 'AWS(omeness) - An Introduction to Amazon Web Services.
Overall the session went pretty well and I had a good number of bums on seats despite going up against the awesome Jared Ficklin, the inspiring James White and legendary Keith Peters who was presenting in the Influxis lounge.

The conference itself was immensely interesting, and even though at one day it felt as if we were laying Flash to bed, the next day was the resurrection with elevator pitches that showed so much creativity and skill that I felt that Flash has little to worry about - there's just too much talent and diversity in this community. But only time will tell. Personally I enjoy being part of it all, whether it lasts or not.

Ok, enough of that, here are my slides (also available as PDF - 4.8MB).

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Posted on September 15, 2011 at 4:01 PM. 2951 views. Print

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I'm happy to announce that I will be speaking at Flash on the Beach this year, and for a change my session will not be directly about Flash but about my experience with Amazon Web Services (AWS) over the last few months. During my work on Scribblar.com I have learned to love AWS and think that many of my fellow developers would find it very interesting and useful.

The plan is to give attendees an overview of AWS and then take a closer look at its main products such as EC2 and S3. I'd like to cover things such as setting up a static site directly in S3, and go into some more detail about EC2's capabilities when it comes to building highly available and scalable websites. If time allows I will also cover options for running your database on AWS. No previous knowledge about AWS is needed.

I'm very excited to be back at FOTB again this year having previously been there once as a pseaker and twice as an attendee. I hope to see you in Brighton in September.

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Posted on June 6, 2011 at 1:55 PM. 2876 views. Print

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Here is a quick heads up on an issue you may encounter when streaming video using Flash Media Playback and f4m files to provide dynamic streaming whereby the player will automatically pick the correct bitrate version depending on the user's connection speed.

In my case I wanted to stream my videos using Amazon's Cloudfront service. A typical RTMP URL will look something like this:

If you go ahead and create an f4m file using this you may end up with something like the following (presuming 3 bitrates at 500, 1000 and 1500 kbps): Unfortunately this file will not work when fed into Flash Media Playback. The reson (and fix) is quite simple and one some of us may remember from using the FLVPlayback component in Flash. It is a missing application instance name. In our case this is the default instance _definst_ that needs to be added to the baseURL. The correct f4m listing would therefore be as follows: I hope this helps someone. I was slightly confused by this as any one of my files would play fine using the FLVPlayback component without specifying the _definst_ in the video RTMP URL.

And one final gotcha: if you host your f4m files in an Amazon S3 bucket (but not your streaming bucket, you need to use a separate non-streaming bucket for non-video files) you may require your own crossdomain file inside it or the Adobe hosted Flash Media Playback SWF won't be able to load it.

A free tool to help you manage your S3 buckets (if you are on Windows - I run this tool in a VM) is CloudBerry Explorer. It's one of the better S3 related tools out there. Do you know an equally good one for OSX?

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Posted on May 7, 2011 at 3:31 PM. 8149 views. Print

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Join FMS Product Manager Kevin Towes for an online session titled 'FMS 4 on Amazon Web Services'. This presentation is part of the FMS Online User Group and takes place on Tuesday, January 18th at 12:00 Eastern / 9:00am Pacific (GMT-8).

Join Kevin as he reviews and demos Flash Media Enterprise Server 4 running on Amazon Web Services, Adobe's newest deployment option that makes it easy to access new Peer to Peer functionality and much more. You'll learn how to deploy your FMS applications quickly and affordably on Amazon Web Services and access the power of new features including major enhancements to playback experience, and quality of service, and support for F4F packaging for HTTP streaming.

If you're looking to include the FMS platform in your business, and are curious about the opportunities with Amazon Web Services, or just want to get the most out of your investment in Adobe Flash Media Server technology, this session is one you don't want to miss.

RSVP: http://fms.groups.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=post.display&postid=32832

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Posted on January 11, 2011 at 11:46 AM. 3080 views. Print

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Today Adobe announced the availability of a new hosting service for FMS: Flash Media Server on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Kevins Towes, FMS Product Manager, has full details on his blog.

In a nutshell, FMS on AWS allows you to quickly deploy a fully licensed instance of FMS 4 in the cloud. The charges are a combination of FMS license fees and Amazon AWS charges, plus a mark-up on the hourly AWS fees. For example a lareg FMS instance which is limited to 100 RTMFP P2P connections will cost $0.44 per hour to run. A normal AWS large instance (without FMS) is charged at around $0.38 per hour. To run such an FMs instance for a month will cost just over $300, plus any bandwidth on top plus a $5 recurring monthly fee. But do not forget the benefits this type of deployment brings. Imagine having to run a massive live event - previously you would need to rent your own hardware, buy FMS licenses and set everything up by hand. Combining FMS with AWS essentially gives you FMS on tap - you may use it for a whole month, or just a few hours for your actual event. In such cases the AWS deployment can work out extremely cost effective.

I was able to test the AWS instances with FMS and I must say it was very easy to get up and running, especially when you are already an AWS customer as I was. I simply logged into the AWS portal, chose the FMS AMI bundle, went through the subscription sign-up and within minutes I had a fully working FMS 4 instance up and running, ready to stream.

I suggest you give FMS on AWS a try next time you need to run a large scale event or need to scale up your existing FMs infrastructure.

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Posted on December 15, 2010 at 12:04 PM. 4874 views. Print

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Streamingmedia.com have published a great tutorial and overview on how to get started with Amazon's new Cloudfront Streaming service. While the service currently only supports on-demand streaming of Flash video content the company also has plans to support live streaming in the near future. This service looks like a very cost effective and scalable video streaming service, and is relatively easy to set up.

If you are interested in this service and require any help or advice then please feel free to get in touch. I've set up several video streaming environments on Amazon Cloudfront as well as EC2 in the past.

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Posted on February 25, 2010 at 10:36 AM. 5022 views. Print

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