The invention discloses a method and device for enabling a streaming media server to support an HLS protocol, relating to the technical field of streaming media. According to the method, an existing streaming media server can support real-time streaming media transmission based on the HLS protocol when the occupied storage space of the server is reduced. The method comprises the following steps: acquiring a server identifier of a streaming media server and file identifiers and characteristic parameters of media files stored in the streaming media server, wherein the characteristic parameters of the media files at least include file sizes and file time lengths of the media files; acquiring a fragment division time length and a fragment division size; and determining characteristic parameters of each virtual fragment in the media files according to the characteristic parameters of the media files, the fragment division time length and the fragment division size, and constructing an indexentry in an index file according to the server identifier of the streaming media server, the file identifiers of the media files and the characteristic parameters of each virtual fragment.