ZoneMinder video camera security and surveillance

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

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

First, add the needed packages to our system

apk add zoneminder mariadb mysql-client lighttpd php8-fpm php8-pdo php8-pdo_mysql

Initialize MySQL database

/etc/init.d/mariadb setup

Start the database

/etc/init.d/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;

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

vi /etc/php8/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. 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"

# }}}

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"
)

Start php-fpm

/etc/init.d/php-fpm8 start

Start lighttpd

/etc/init.d/lighttpd start

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:

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

Initialize the ZoneMinder database

/etc/init.d/zoneminder setup

Start ZoneMinder

/etc/init.d/zoneminder start

Profit!

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

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

Related Links

• https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_3_-_Browser_Client - Kiosk to watch Streams