ZoneMinder Forums

Dear ZoneMinder Experts,

Im nubby with ZineMinder, with big difficulties I managed to install and have it running.
Now I'm trying to set event for 24/7 recording,
according the ZoneMinder wiki Function Record will record no matter what the motion are.
I have set up the record function and I have Events being created. However the event duratio is 00:00:00 Frames column are empty.

Please advise what do I do wrong and what to be setup and where.

Kindly appreciate your support.

Linux distro?
What instructions did you use to set up Zoneminder?

I actually had no instructions used.
Just tried to Google and read the wiki.zoneminder

If you have any instruction please, I will be very happy to receive it.

I have setup 2 D-Link DCS 2132l cameras, I receive the picture.
I have connected USB hard drive that I used --bind function to mount USB drive to zone minder event folder.
Events folders will be written to event folder but they are empty.
Next I want to set 24/7 recording for the cameras.

These symptoms will occur if the web user account cannot write to the events folder.
Sounds like you forgot to chown the events folder after you bind mounted your drive.
See this: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Using_a_ded ... Hard_Drive

Note that, we do not recommend using a removable drive for your events folder. If that drive becomes disconnected, or is even slow to mount, even for 1 second while ZoneMinder is running, all your events will be flagged as orphans in the database and they will consequently be deleted. Plugging the drive back in won't fix the problem. ZoneMinder will follow up by deleting the events from your disk. This is by design.

I see you did not answer bbunge's question regarding which distro you are using. That means we can't point you to the correct documentation. You are guaranteed to have multiple problems if you do not follow the official documentation for the distro you are using.

Saulius2006 wrote:I have connected USB hard drive that I used --bind function to mount USB drive to zone minder event folder.
Events folders will be written to event folder but they are empty.

Can I ask what file system (FAT, NTFS, ext2/3/4, other) your external USB disk is formatted to?

If it's FAT/NTFS you are going to struggle as Zoneminder uses symbolic links (a Unixy thing) inside the events folder, and FAT/NTFS don't support this.

Secondly -- the caution about not using "removable" disks is very true. Simply disconnecting the USB disk could cause Zoneminder to remove all your CCTV. Firstly, wiping the database of entries (due to all the underlying image files vanishing). And then, when you reconnect, wiping all the images on the disk to match the empty database. Don't do it unless you are prepared to accept that

Hi all,

Thanks for all your support, ext 2/3/4 format solved all the problems.

I'm assuming somewhere in the documentation there's a big warning saying DON'T PUT YOUR EVENTS ON A FAT/NTFS file system.

If there is, it needs to be in big flashing red print

Glad you got it sorted.