Steps to port forward zm video stream to the WAN

[khentiamentiu]

I have installed 1.25x on Linux Mint Mate 13 and have it running locally, which is to say that I can view and record one wireless IP camera with ZoneMinder. What I can't do is view the camera remotely (on the WAN) via zm. I've reviewed these forums for about a dozen hours now and tried a number of alternatives, but never having configured apache2 before, I'm apparenlty missing something fundamental. Advice like "read the apache manual", as if there were only one, is not helpful. I had no trouble port-forwarding the camera itself to the WAN. Given that I have an IP camera interfaced to zm on a linux system, what steps are required to expose zm to the wan? Can I even do that, or do I need to run another copy of zm remotely to access the IP camera? I want to add multiple cameras, I want to view them all remotely, and I want my wife, who refuses to give up Windows and IE, to be able to review them remotely on her Windows laptop.

But let me start with a basic question. Assuming my host static IP on the WAN is 198.173.122.xx, and I want to open port yyyy in my wireless router, how do I configure apache2 and zm on my Linux box such that I can run 198.173.122.xx:yyyy/zm from another system outside my LAN? Is that even possible?

Thanks!

[PacoLM]

Hi,

In order to access your ZM system, you have to open the port that uses apache2 in your router. Usually is 80, unless you changed. By doing this, you could access your ZM from a external LAN. Imagine that your public IP is 11.22.33.44: if you type this ip address from your network, is not gonna work, you need to access to it from a external connection (smartphone, for instance, but not connected to your wifi).

Once you have this working, then, in order to not worry about the changes of your public IP address (services usually provide dynamic IP assignment), you could use a DDNS provider and setup your router properly to have an alias for your public IP address (for instance: something like myzmserver.publicddns.com instead of your 11.22.33.44 address). This is the second step, first try to open the apache2 port!

Hope it helps,

PacoLM

[khentiamentiu]

Hi,

In order to access your ZM system, you have to open the port that uses apache2 in your router. Usually is 80, unless you changed. By doing this, you could access your ZM from a external LAN. Imagine that your public IP is : if you type this ip address from your network, is not gonna work, you need to access to it from a external connection (smartphone, for instance, but not connected to your wifi).

I tried that, but it didn't work. I also tried changing the port ID, then attempted to load (sorry for the deletions, but the forum's damn spam filter is telling me that my URLs look too spammy. How in the hell are you supposed to talk about URLs if you can't put URLs in the post?). I know that I can do port forwarding because I have a static IP, and am able to forward my wireless IP camera directly using another port ID. And I can actually access that port ID either from inside my LAN or outside.

Once you have this working, then, in order to not worry about the changes of your public IP address (services usually provide dynamic IP assignment), you could use a DDNS provider and setup your router properly to have an alias for your public IP address (for instance: something like instead of your address). This is the second step, first try to open the apache2 port!

I have a static IP address, so I don't need the service for that reason, but for security, I may use one anyway.

So I can open a port to the web server on my wireless IP camera, but I haven't been able to open a port to the web server on my host. So we're back to the apache2 manual again. Do you have any pointers to a quick recipe for opening a port other than 80 for apache2? Thanks for your help!

[axelm]

You need to make sure apache is listening on the correct adapter and port.

netstat -a -l -t -p -n will show you the tcp listeners and the process that owns each of them.

You need to have apache (or httpd, I don't remember exactly how it appears) bound to 0.0.0.0 or on the LAN IP address. If it appears listening on 127.0.0.1 then you need to change the apache configuration to make sure it's bound to the right address.

Another problem you could be facing is that the Linux firewall is not allowing incoming connections to apache's port.

[khentiamentiu]

You need to make sure apache is listening on the correct adapter and port.

netstat -a -l -t -p -n will show you the tcp listeners and the process that owns each of them.

You need to have apache (or httpd, I don't remember exactly how it appears) bound to 0.0.0.0 or on the LAN IP address. If it appears listening on 127.0.0.1 then you need to change the apache configuration to make sure it's bound to the right address.

Another problem you could be facing is that the Linux firewall is not allowing incoming connections to apache's port.

I have the Linux firewall disabled, but the apache configuration could be the problem. I'll check that when I can get to the system again. Thanks for the advice!

[jameswilson]

Assuming its working on the local lan then your issue is your router. You can configure apache to listen on another port but its easier to leave the zm machine on port 80 then forward say 82 to 80 in the router. Also some ISP block certain ports as a lot do not permit hosting