NOOB with working ZM, now 2 house-keeping questions please!

[TwinCams]

I have a brand new working ZM 1.24.2 installed on Ubuntu 11.04 and love it!

I have these questions.....I have read and read but still don't understand...

- How does one upgrade from 1.24.2 to 1.24.4
[when I type the following: sudo apt-get install zoneminder, it will install 1.24.2 and not .4 ??]

- Also, I have 2 HDDs, one with 160GB (system files) & 2TB (video data) how do I point ZM to record to the 2TB HDD? What folder would I want it to record to?

I would like to learn how to upgrade now, make mistakes and learn before I add multiple cameras etc. so with future upgrades, I would know what i'm doing!


Thanks in advance, i'm still learning!

[camroidv27]

As far as I know, there are no 1.24.2 packages (.deb files) in the repositories for Ubuntu. You will need to build 1.24.4 from source code. There are several Wiki pages here that explain how to do that.

[TwinCams]

Thanks for your response Camroid.

Bear with me on this, but when you say, build 1.24.4 from source code, what exactly does that mean? I'm still learning & getting used to such lingo.

[camroidv27]

Bear with me on this, but when you say, build 1.24.4 from source code, what exactly does that mean? I'm still learning & getting used to such lingo.

It means that you are going to be taking the raw code that the programmer typed, and making the computer turn that code into the actual program. There are some copy-paste guides here that may help you. But, to be honest, you are probably better off just sticking with 1.24.2, otherwise you may hose up your system trying to build from source. I've done it a few times myself.

I suggest you test out some of the guides using a Virtual Machine first. VMBox works great for it.

[TwinCams]

AH! Thanks for the great advice. I shall heed until I become much more comfortable with Linux and have a broader understanding.

Will attempt the VMBox though, just to learn from the experience!


~ Any advice on changing the video data paths to my 2TB HDD?

[Flasheart]

~ Any advice on changing the video data paths to my 2TB HDD?

Hi

Mount it normally, then either change the path in web admin for events to the new drive, or follow the wiki page about using a dedicated drive.

[TwinCams]

~ Any advice on changing the video data paths to my 2TB HDD?

Hi

Mount it normally, then either change the path in web admin for events to the new drive, or follow the wiki page about using a dedicated drive.

Thanks Flasheart.

Trust me. I did search & search to no avail before posting for support, until you directed me to the Wiki pages.

I would tell you, even when I got to the Wiki pages it was still a struggle to find any info on using a dedicated drive!???! It was only by accident I found the Google search and used the keywords: dedicated drive, and finally I found the link in the results. Phew!

I'm happy I found it as it's such a nice write-up on the topic.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

See below:

Using a dedicated Hard Drive
From ZoneMinder
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On many installs you may wish to dedicate a hard drive or partition for Zoneminder events. There are many reasons why you may wish to do this - security, data segregation, preventing encroachment onto OS partition by zoneminder etc.

It's not terribly difficult to do, but may be non-obvious to the untaught so here's a brief guide.

Some commands here are based on Debian/Ubuntu installs


1. Become root or "sudo -s" to gain root privs.

2. Stop Zoneminder. "/etc/init.d/zoneminder stop" or "/usr/bin/zmpkg.pl stop"

3. Mount your new partition onto the root filesystem, ensuring it is automatically remounted at boot time by editing /etc/fstab -- For the benefit of this guide, I'm calling my new partition /newdrive

Note this new partition can be a local drive, raid partition, lvm/md device, external NAS, SAN, NFS share or SMB share. The only condition is that the I/O throughput should be up to handling what Zoneminder will throw at it. For that speed reason, some favour non-journalled filesystems and accept the extra risk of data protection

4. Locate Zoneminder's "events" and "images" directories. In Debian, these are usually in /usr/share/zoneminder

If you wish to copy the data across, MOVE the events and images directories to /newdrive (Note this will take a long time on systems with many events). Also, DO NOT restart zoneminder if it cannot locate these files as zmaudit.pl will delete the database entries for any events it cannot match files to

If you don't wish to preserve the data, it is MUCH faster to simply delete or rename the original events and images dirs and create new directories in /newdrive and link to them from the original locations. There is no need to remove the "orphaned" entries in the database, zmaudit will take care of those.

Eg:

mkdir /newdrive/events

mv /usr/share/zoneminder/events /usr/share/zoneminder/events_old

Note: It was recommended to use ln -s /newdrive/events /usr/share/zoneminder/events to link the new partition in. However, at least with the debian and ubuntu packages, upgrading zoneminder later will delete these symlinks and create new dirs. This will result in all your existing events being removed from the database.

It has been suggested this is used instead to mount the new drives;

these lines in fstab could allow you to bind-mount an alternate location:

/dev/sdX1 /otherdrive ext3 defaults 0 2
/otherdrive/zoneminder/images /var/cache/zoneminder/images none defaults,bind 0 2
/otherdrive/zoneminder/events /var/cache/zoneminder/events none defaults,bind 0 2
or in some cases,

/otherdrive/zoneminder/images /usr/share/zoneminder/images none defaults,bind 0 2
/otherdrive/zoneminder/events /usr/share/zoneminder/events none defaults,bind 0 2
or if you have a separate partition for each:

/dev/sdX1 /var/cache/zoneminder/images ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/sdX2 /var/cache/zoneminder/events ext3 defaults 0 2
(Repeat for images) 5. Finally, restart zoneminder ( "/etc/init.d/zoneminder start" or "/usr/bin/zmpkg.pl start") Monitor its operation and ensure new events are being created normally and are viewable. Zoneminder should also update the "Disk: %%" on its Console screen to reflect the disk space on its new partition.

Retrieved from "http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... Hard_Drive"