ZoneMinder and CIFS

[Potato Master]

I'm running v1.30.4 on a Debian 9 lxc container on a Proxmox machine. I have a dedicated hard drive that have setup on the hypervisor as a network share via smb.

I would like to use that network share with ZoneMinder, but have been having issues with symlinks, identically as mentioned here: viewtopic.php?t=24448.

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Can't symlink events/x/xx/xx/xx/.xxxx -> events/x/xx/xx/xx/xx/xx/xx: Operation not supported

I've added the global/share entries, but ZoneMinder still cannot create symlinks. No permission problems here, as ZoneMinder populates the deep folder structure, but nothing further. I've been trying all sorts of things out, but currently I have two folders from CIFS network share directly mounted in the zoneminder root directory (/usr/share/zoneminder/www/events/ and /usr/share/zoneminder/www/images).


Two questions:

• (More samba related) How can I get symlinks to work?
• (ZoneMinder best practices) What are some alternative network storage methods for using with ZoneMinder?

[bbunge]

Best to have your external drive formated to EXT3 or 4. I have gotten NTFS to work but... Also use systemd to connect to the external drive. See the ZM WIKI for Ubuntu for the how to. Will work for Debian.


https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Common_Issu ... ive_or_NAS

[Potato Master]

My CIFS share actually is ext4 formatted.

I was following that wiki entry as well, but still getting the same error, which leads me to believe that the smb server is to blame. Gonna reset the ZoneMinder container and start from scratch to rule out any client-side errors.


I might just give up on CIFS and turn to block level style external storage with NFS. Not ideal, as it would be nice to access the events/images outside of the container, but maybe I don't have a choice. There's a couple of other wiki pages and forum posts that mention a sync/copy offloading solution for events/images is the way to go.

[mikb]

There is no guarantee the writer of the SMB server has correctly implemented the boring bits.

"It reads, it writes, something about permissions, yeah, ship it. No one uses symlinks."

You can test it outside of zoneminder. Create yourself a directory on the external drive, where you have permission to create/delete files.

Create and delete will work ...

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touch testfile
rm testfile

But will this?

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touch testfile
ln -s testfile testfilesoft
ln testfile testfilehard

I bet you get an error on the last two ...

[Potato Master]

In the thread I linked in the original post lies your past post about the same test which of course does not work otherwise we wouldn't be here. I post here since that thread didn't really go anywhere, and I would have thought that the smb server, which is widely used, would have more documentation (or at least posts like this) about how to setup symlinks.


I'm just baffled that its difficult to find that no one uses ZoneMinder with CIFS.

[bbunge]

Actually there are folks that use SMB or CIFS. And I have done a fair ammoint of testing with SMB amd NFS. I prefer SMB.

I do feel that you should not run Zonemimder/Linux on a virtual box or container. Just my preference as I have had some strange issues doing that. I feel you are better off with an pld PC running Ubuntu, 16.04, and just LAMP with Mariadb and Zoneminder 1.30.4.

[trillobite]

Just wanted to make a note that I am having the exact same issue as the OP, and even created an account to ask the exact same question, due to the lack of Zoneminder + FreeNAS implementations. It almost feels like everyone is simply turning a blind eye to the issue, as nobody seems to know what may be causing it. I completely agree with the OP, this is a very frustrating issue, and it doesn't seem like there is any documentation on this.

Maybe there should be a guide on how to setup zoneminder using NFS?

Zoneminder v.1.30.4
FreeNAS v.11.1

[bbunge]

Just wanted to make a note that I am having the exact same issue as the OP, and even created an account to ask the exact same question, due to the lack of Zoneminder + FreeNAS implementations. It almost feels like everyone is simply turning a blind eye to the issue, as nobody seems to know what may be causing it. I completely agree with the OP, this is a very frustrating issue, and it doesn't seem like there is any documentation on this.

Maybe there should be a guide on how to setup zoneminder using NFS?

Zoneminder v.1.30.4
FreeNAS v.11.1

well, there is of sorts. Systemd moint can use NFS and I have done it a couple of times. Check the WIKI...