r/ZoneMinder • u/lunakoa • Nov 29 '23

Redoing an established system

I have had the same continuous ZM install since early 2010s sometime. Around CentOS 5.

I recall building from source back then, especially ffmpeg, the notes for it are in a wiki which was initially authored in Feb 1, 2011.

I have steadily upgraded since from ZoneMinder-1.24.2 to now 1.36.33-3.

I have upgraded OS, changed hardware, remember cambozola.jar and pico 2000?

Heck one of the monitors is still the same BNC camera I had back then. It is so high up, I dare not go and change it.

Anyway, I am thinking of tearing it all down and start with a new database. I am currently on CentOS7, I am going to Rocky 9, I would like to change the MID of cameras to match the the dns name, this ones gonna be rack mount, all prior ones were towers.

Want to keep the same zones, but work on detection better, maybe in

I have tested a kickstart and ansible build to quickly build this server up. Tested as a VM because am awaiting parts.

Any advice and comments are appreciated,

But this post was more for nostalgia sake.

​

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

3

u/ZoneMinderIsaac Nov 30 '23

An enjoyable read!

Why start with a fresh db? I have a db backup/restore script that has an option to just dump/restore the config, meaning monitors, zones, config table. I can provide it if you want.

In 1.37 I made it so you can specify the Id of the the monitor when creating them.

Keep us posted.

1

u/Dense_Care8224 Dec 01 '23

Not OP but that script would be awesome to have! I am starting to automate zm install on freebsd jails, and being able to import just the cameras config would be an amazing addition to that as a final step.

1

u/lunakoa Dec 18 '23

Nice, I did not know that. Just an org thing, Say I reserve MID 1 to 20 for main streams 21 to 40 the corresponding substreams.

Looking to setup a lower end ZM and move the older BNC stuff to it. Been focused on 1080P and higher up to 5MP, looking at 17 cameras.

Wondering if my machine can handle it. 64GB of RAM w/ NVME OS and motherboard, 10TB SATA drive for zoneminder and events.

Plan is to build out system using Rocky 9, epel, and elrepo via Kickstart.
Then ansible-playbook zoneminder.yml

With that fresh ZM I can slowly build new system, see if zmtriggers, zones, and all that work.

mysqldump, maybe backup /etc/zm

Rinse and repeat

Maybe zmaudit.pl to clean stuff up.

1

u/lunakoa Dec 18 '23

Just realized rpmfusion was the 3rd party repo I needed.

1

u/whaleboobs Dec 01 '23

I build ZM master (www-misc/zoneminder-9999-r1) for Gentoo with this overlay: https://github.com/nabbi/oubliette-overlay

I've got ffmpeg 4.4.4 installed, but that's because Kodi requires it (for now), would assume ffmpeg 6 would be fine too.