Zoneminder in Vm

adamjseed · Post by **adamjseed** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:24 pm

Sorry if there is a post about this already but I cant find any answer.

I have started to virtualise my server but ran into a problem with zone minder. Im using ubuntu 9.10 host and guest via virtualbox with a generic bttv pci card and 4 bnc cameras. My problem is that the guest can not access the pci card. So as far as I can see there are a few options

1) Use a VM with pci pass through, Have tried but been unsuccessful
2) Buy IP Cameras, Too expensive
3) Somehow convert my camera feeds in the host to emulate a IP camera. eg convert them to ffmpeg or jpeg?

Now my question is if anyone knows anything about option 3 or anything else I haven't thought of?

Thanks in advance.

coke · Post by **coke** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:49 pm

Option 3 should be relatively easy if your host and your guest are both ubuntu, but you're not clear on what the host is running.

whatboy · Post by **whatboy** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 11:08 pm

There's a 4th option... use a video server, there are 4 port video servers... around ~800 bucks...

adamjseed · Post by **adamjseed** » Sun Feb 14, 2010 8:45 am

Hey guys, thanks for the response,

Coke. Both host and guest are ubuntu 9.10, Do you know how i can go about achieving this?

Whatboy, Ideally I dont want to spend cash.

TechGuy · Post by **TechGuy** » Wed Feb 24, 2010 12:20 am

adamjseed wrote:Hey guys, thanks for the response,

Coke. Both host and guest are ubuntu 9.10, Do you know how i can go about achieving this?

Whatboy, Ideally I dont want to spend cash.

You can probably setup a rtsp video stream server using either ffmpeg (ffserver) or vlc. This will create a live video stream on the host. Then you can configure the zm vm to read in the stream. Although you may run into a performance problem since its going to take lots of CPU cycles to convert the video into a compressed rtsp video stream, unless your capture card does hardware mpeg conversion for you. Perhaps there is a way to avoid compressing the video stream.

For PCI Passthrough your motherboard must include an IOMMU, or Intel vt-d support.

For a video server, any device you buy must be supported by ZM. I don't know which ones work and which ones don't work. Don't assume that any video server will work.