FMS server user authentication

Question

Hello,
Does anyone know of a way to authenticate users that are
accessing streams on the Flash Media Server. I read something about
LDAP and database authentication but it looks like I have to fork
off extra cash to have this authentication "product" which should
have come with my purchased copy of FMS in the first place.
Anyway, I would like to have just allowed users being able to
watch movies and if anyone can tell me how to do this I'd greatly
appreciate it.
I run Redhat EL 4. Right now I create a hash symlink on the
server that points to the content in some other directory. The
hashed symlink is different for every user. When the FMS stop using
the symlink a cronjob removes the symlink so nobody else can view
the content. However, this is not secure enough.
Thanks,
Raymond.

Answer 1

FMS_Developer,
Thank you very much for your extensive help. Per your
suggestion I used the XML object and was able to generate a request
to the web server which is awesome. I think there's one last piece
that I need to put all this together. How do I pass the user
credentials to the actionscript script on the server side?
For example here's a piece of the HTML on the browser that
embeds the movie:
<object
classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,79,0"
width="662" height="531" id="FLVPlayer">
<param name="movie" value="FLVPlayer_Streaming.swf" />
<param name="salign" value="lt" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="scale" value="noscale" />
<param name="FlashVars"
value="&MM_ComponentVersion=1&serverName=10.10.32.110&skinName=Halo_Skin_3&appName=flash3 20/video&streamName=stream1&isLive=false&bufferTime=0&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=false"
/>
<embed src="FLVPlayer_Streaming.swf"
flashvars="&MM_ComponentVersion=1&serverName=10.10.32.110&skinName=Halo_Skin_3&appName=fl ash320/video&streamName=stream1&isLive=false&bufferTime=0&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=false"
quality="high" scale="noscale" width="662" height="531"
name="FLVPlayer" salign="LT" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
pluginspage="
http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
/>
</object>
In the code above do I insert the username & pass in a
separate <param> tag or do I add it to somewhere else? Then,
once I have the HTML passing the user/pass info where on the server
do I grab that data and how do I go about it - do I pass it as a
parameter at the end of the onconnect method:
application.onConnect = function(p_client, p_autoSenseBW,
or do I plug it in somewhere else?
Raymond.