Your account, and pairing a television

Your owner account

The first time you open your address, GeekStream asks you to create it. One username,

one password, at least twelve characters.

That password is the only thing standing between the internet and your server, so make

it a real one. Wrong guesses are free for the first few and then get slower — fifteen

seconds, then thirty, then a minute, up to a quarter of an hour — so nobody can work

through a list of passwords. Signing in correctly clears it immediately. If you mistype

yours twice you will never notice this happening.

There is one owner account. Everyone else reaches your server through a paired device,

never by signing in.

**If you forget the password**, there is no reset link and no way for anyone to send you

one; nobody else holds it. Your library is encrypted with a key on the server, so the

library itself survives, but the account does not.

1. In the dashboard, open **Pair Clients** and press the button. You get a short code

and a QR code, good for five minutes, usable once.

2. On the television, type the code. On a phone, scan the QR instead.

3. The device appears in the dashboard with the name it gave. **You approve it**, and

only then does it get access.

**The code works from anywhere.** The device does not have to be on the same network as

the server — which matters, because people watching together usually are not. Your

server has its own address, and that is what the device connects to.

Nothing secret travels in the code itself. It is a five-minute, single-use reference;

the device collects its actual credential once, after you approve it, and that

credential lives on your server where you can revoke it.

**Pair Clients** lists everything with access. Revoking one takes effect immediately and

does not disturb anything else.

Revoke a device you have given away, sold, or lost. A paired television can reach your

library until you do.

Guests on other networks reach your server through your address like any other device,

and stream from it directly. The one thing this needs is that port 8790 is open to them:

on a rented server that is a rule in your provider's console, and

[Install and first setup](install-first-setup.md) has the exact path for Oracle Cloud.

**The code is refused.** Codes last five minutes and work once. Make a new one.

**The device pairs but plays nothing.** Pairing and playback take different routes:

pairing goes through your address, playback comes straight from the server over port

8790. If pairing worked and playback does not, that port is the thing to check.

sudo bash /opt/geekstream/installer/linux/install.sh --troubleshoot