ZoneMinder video camera security and surveillance

ZoneMinder usually runs with Apache, but in this short how-to we use Lighttpd.

Base Install

ZoneMinder is found in the community repositories, please enable it by following the instructions here

Then, add the packages for zoneminder to our system

apk add zoneminder mariadb mysql-client lighttpd php-fpm php-pdo php-pdo_mysql php-intl php-session php-ctype 

Note: You will need to adjust the above to use the appropriate php version. For example, in alpine 3.17 php 8.1 is used therefore you would enter php81-fpm. In alpine 3.20 php 8.3 is used so you would enter php83-fpm. You can look up the php version by typing apk search php and sorting through the results for your given release. This version suffix should be added to each php package.

Database

Initialize MySQL database

rc-service mariadb setup

Start the database

rc-service mariadb start

Set root password for MySQL as instructed by MySQL setup

/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'your_secure_root_mysql_password'

You can log into MySQL as current root user with

mysql

Create a ZoneMinder MySQL database and user

mysql> create database zm;

mysql> CREATE USER zmuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'your_zm_password_as_set_in_config';

mysql> grant ALL on zm.* to zmuser@localhost;

Web Server

We are running lighttpd, so let's run php-fpm as lighttpd user/group

vi /etc/php8/php-fpm.conf

Note: for php 8.1

vi /etc/php81/php-fpm.conf

Add this section to the bottom of the file:

; Unix user/group of processes
; Note: The user is mandatory. If the group is not set, the default user's group
;       will be used.
;user = nobody
;group = nobody
user = lighttpd
group = lighttpd

Enable the php cgi fpm config in lighttpd.conf

vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Go down to the server modules section and uncomment mod_alias, which is needed for the cgi-bin, and mod_rewrite, for the api. It should look like:

# {{{ modules
# At the very least, mod_access and mod_accesslog should be enabled.
# All other modules should only be loaded if necessary.
# NOTE: the order of modules is important.
server.modules = (
     "mod_rewrite",
#    "mod_redirect",
     "mod_alias",
     "mod_access",
#    "mod_cml",
#    "mod_trigger_b4_dl",
#    "mod_auth",
#    "mod_status",
#    "mod_setenv",
#    "mod_proxy",
#    "mod_simple_vhost",
#    "mod_evhost",
#    "mod_userdir",
#    "mod_deflate",
#    "mod_ssi",
#    "mod_usertrack",
#    "mod_expire",
#    "mod_secdownload",
#    "mod_rrdtool",
#    "mod_webdav",
     "mod_accesslog"
)
# }}}

Go down to the includes section, it should look like:

# {{{ includes
include "mime-types.conf"
# uncomment for cgi support
   include "mod_cgi.conf"
# uncomment for php/fastcgi support
#   include "mod_fastcgi.conf"
# uncomment for php/fastcgi fpm support
   include "mod_fastcgi_fpm.conf"

# }}}

In order for video streaming to work in 1.36, you'll need the following added to /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf:

server.stream-response-body = 1

In lighttpd.conf for the API, we will want to redirect any api+ requests to cakephp. Thus, add:

url.rewrite = (
      "^/zm/api(.+)$"           =>              "/zm/api/index.php"
)

Edit lighttpd cgi config and add old style cgi support by adding to cgi.assign

vi /etc/lighttpd/mod_cgi.conf

which should look like

cgi.assign = (
    ""      =>      "",
    ".pl"   =>      "/usr/bin/perl",
    ".cgi"  =>      "/usr/bin/perl"
)

Also add the following to alias.url in mod_cgi.conf so that it looks like

alias.url = (
    "/cgi-bin/"            =>      var.basedir + "/cgi-bin/",
    "/zm/api"              =>      "/usr/share/webapps/zoneminder/htdocs/api/app/webroot/",
    "/zm/"                 =>      "/usr/share/webapps/zoneminder/htdocs/"
)

Remove the symlink in /var/www/localhost/htdocs (we will be using the alias, not the symlink).

unlink /var/www/localhost/htdocs/zm

Start php-fpm

rc-service php-fpm8 start

Note: for php-fpm81, use the following command:

rc-service php-fpm81 start

Start lighttpd

rc-service lighttpd start

Zoneminder

Set the MySQL hostname, username, password.

Change the ZoneMinder user (ZM_WEB_USER) and group (ZM_WEB_GROUP) to lighttpd

And set ZM_SERVER_HOST to your ZoneMinder hostname/ipaddress

vi /etc/zm/zm.conf

Which should look like:

# Username and group that web daemon (httpd/apache) runs as
ZM_WEB_USER=lighttpd
ZM_WEB_GROUP=lighttpd
ZM_PATH_DATA=/usr/share/zoneminder

# ZoneMinder database type: so far only mysql is supported
ZM_DB_TYPE=mysql

# ZoneMinder database hostname or ip address
ZM_DB_HOST=localhost

# ZoneMinder database name
ZM_DB_NAME=zm

# ZoneMinder database user
ZM_DB_USER=zmuser

# ZoneMinder database password
ZM_DB_PASS=your_zm_password_as_set_in_config

# Host of this machine
ZM_SERVER_HOST=yourserver

Change ownership of zm.conf to lighttpd

chown lighttpd.lighttpd /etc/zm/zm.conf

Zoneminder will create a cache in /var/cache/zoneminder which isn't created by default. Create this directory and allow lighttpd access to it. Note that if you are using a diskless install, you must lbu add /var/cache/zoneminder.

mkdir /var/cache/zoneminder
chown lighttpd.lighttpd /var/cache/zoneminder

Initialize the ZoneMinder database

rc-service zoneminder setup

Start ZoneMinder

rc-service zoneminder start

Profit!

Conclusion

To access ZoneMinder, browse to http://yourserver/zm/

To test the API, run

curl -X GET  http://yourserver/zm/api/host/getVersion.json

(This assumes you aren't using authentication.)

To make it start automatically on boot:

rc-update add lighttpd default
rc-update add mariadb default
rc-update add php-fpm8 default
rc-update add zoneminder default

Added notes to work with Nginx

Later to add some notes about running via nginx

Troubleshooting

General troubleshooting of lighttpd

You can enable debugging on lighttpd by uncommenting the debug options in /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf (which in 3.20 were):

debug.log-request-header   = "enable"
debug.log-response-header  = "enable"
debug.log-request-handling = "enable"
debug.log-file-not-found   = "enable"

Note that since 3.14, mod_alias is now built into lighttpd and is not a module (.so file).

For further troubleshooting, refer to the alpine build logs (https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/package/v3.21/main/x86_64/lighttpd or https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/package/v3.21/main/x86_64/zoneminder) or alternatively, the lighttpd redmine wiki & forums. The ZoneMinder forum/discord/github issues tracker is also available for any errors related to ZoneMinder.

PHP Fatal Error in /var/log/lighttpd/error.log

Sometimes the php extensions are missing. For example, in 3.20 I had to manually install php83-ctype, which was not required in previous versions. This is confusing because, there is php82 and php-fpm83 installed. Testing ctype from the php82 interactive shell will succeed, but ZM is using php-fpm83, and phpinfo() from an index.php lists ctype (which you might assume is installed) however ctype is listed as 'enable=shared' which I assume means you have to install the shared library for ctype.

ZM is not compiled with LibVNC support in 3.20

This is a missing feature, and should be resolved at some point in the future. This means source type:VNC will not work.