Install ZoneMinder 1.22.3

ZM is not difficult to install, if you follow below's steps:

  • ZoneMinder application
  • IP cams
  • USB webcams with driver
  • Firefox config (for the viewer)

Installation

apt-get install zoneminder

You need to sym-link the apache configuration file before the ZM pages can be served:

ln -s /etc/zm/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/zoneminder.conf
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Setup ZM application

ZoneMinder installs the following server applications if not present in your system: Apache2, PHP5, MySQL2. events, images and sounds will be installed in ~/zm

Setup IP cams

The excellent Panasonic IP cams BL-C10/C30 are pre-configured in ZM, since the camera's documentation indicates the path to the mjpeg file stream, which is as

Setup OV511+ webcams

In Ubuntu Edgy, it is necessary to replace the drivers. I used the experimental version 2.32, which works well for me.

  1. unload the old driver and physically remove it
modprobe -r ov511
rm -R /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/media/video/ov511
  1. Download the driver at http://alpha.ovcam.org/ov511/
  2. Decompress the tar file
  3. cd to the newly created directory, e.g. {$HOME}/driver/ov511
  4. vim Makefile and set INCLUDEDIR=/usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include
  5. run make as regular user, then make install as super-user
  6. Add ov511 and ovcamchip to /etc/modules, one separate line each
  7. Modify the driver settings in /etc/modprobe.d/options (the first option is mandatory for zm to work, find details here)
options ov511 force_palette=15 v4l2=1 lightfreq=0 cams=2 autobright=1 led=2 autoexp=1 i2c_clockdiv=0
  1. Load the new modules
modprobe ov511
modprobe ovcamchip

You also need to set the group access right for ZM to access the video devices (/dev/video0). Add www-data to the video group for the device files

vim /etc/group

If this does not work, you can enable ZM to modify the permissions of the video device files on startup (/dev/video0). To be able to do so, you need to changes the permissions of zmfix. Further info can be found at http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8621&highlight=zmfix+chmod.

chmod 4755 /usr/bin/zmfix

Further info how to setup cameras: zoneminder_install.doc

Configuration for Firefox

You need to edit the following parameters in about:config of Firefox to allow sufficient connections to the ZM server (type about:config in the address bar and scroll to each parameter):

browser.cache.check_doc_frequency: 3 --> 1
browser.cache.disk.enable: true -> false
browser.cache.memory.enable: true --> false
network.http.use-cache: true --> false
network.http.max-connections: 24 --> 100
network.http.max-connections-per-server: 8 --> 100
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy: 4 --> 100
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 4 --> 100

Try the following:

Install ffmpeg sources

sudo apt-get build-dep ffmpeg
sudo apt-get install liblame-dev libfaad2-dev \
libfaac-dev libxvidcore4-dev checkinstall fakeroot
apt-get source ffmpeg
cd ffmpeg-0.cvs*
vim debian/rules

Add the following lines to debian/rules, under the other confflags lines:

confflags += --enable-mp3lame --enable-faad
confflags += --enable-faac --enable-xvid

Continuing in the terminal:

fakeroot debian/rules binary
sudo checkinstall

This will take some time, after which the process asks for some details. You can accept the default choices, except for the following changes:

  • Set ‘Name’ to ‘ffmpeg’.
  • Set ‘Version’ to something newer than the currently installed ffmpeg (I called mine ‘3:0.cvs20050121-1ubuntu2’).

After that, you should have a system-recognised, fully-loaded version of ffmpeg. If you have problems, leave a comment. The above method worked for me on 5.04; it might not work on also works on 5.10 according to reports. (Thanks, Kyle.)

I’ve made a small improvement to the cd ffmpeg-0.cvs* line in the instructions: it now uses a wildcard so that they can be copied and pasted directly into the command line.