ZoneMinder Forums

Hello,

New user here.

I just installed Fedora 33 on a host that i have and then installed Zoneminder following the guide on the main website (https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/st ... edhat.html) and I've run into several issues.

1. MariaDB was missing as a dependency so i had to install that manually
2. As a result of MariaDB being missing the ZoneMinder database user etc were not configured. To attempt to fix this i left mariadb installed removed and reinstalled ZoneMinder. That didn't work. I found a page on how to create the databse manually (https://wiki.zoneminder.com/MySQL#Recreate_ZM_DB)

After that i restarted ZoneMinder (systemctl restart zoneminder). The service started but a 'ss -ant' shows that there isn't any port listening besides mariadb.

Essentially I keep chasing ghosts and misconfigurations in the code. Is anyone able to point me to a single location where i can run through the steps to install ZoneMinder for Fedora 33 please?

Any help/direction would be great.

Yep, that will happen if you don't follow the README.

From the link you referenced:

Each ZoneMinder rpm includes a README file under /usr/share/doc. You must follow all the steps in this README file, precisely, each and every time ZoneMinder is installed or upgraded. Failure to do so is guaranteed to result in a non-functional system.

You can see the README online, here for Apache web server:
https://github.com/ZoneMinder/zoneminde ... ADME.httpd

This is the README for nginx:
https://github.com/ZoneMinder/zoneminde ... ADME.nginx

Awesome thanks for that.

The documentation in that README is way better than what's in the 'How to Install ZoneMinder' section.

Is there a way to get the documentation updated to just make the 'https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/st ... t.html#id5' link to the URL that you provided to me or update its content because 'dnf install zoneminder' is clearly not all that is required to get the software installed for this particular platform?

Seems like the structuring of the webpage is misleading and would easily deter less patient potential users / contributors.

At a minimum could the site be changed to move that last bullet point that you referenced to the 'How to Install ZoneMinder' section after the 'dnf install zoneminder' command?

Side Note: It also really stinks that you have to disable SELinux to get this going. Really discouraging i may not even use it now.

Well, I'm not going to manage the same documentation in two places. It exists as a README on the local filesystem for users who might be installing on a headless server and can't open the instructions in a modern browser.

Regarding your question, the online documentation already does refer the reader to the README, right after it instructs one to "dnf install zoneminder". It's there. Sorry you missed it.

The rpm itself even mentions this too during package installation, but it can be hard see as it can scroll off the screen rather quickly.

Note that I have made some changes to the documentation, to further distinguish what is required when using Nginx versus Apache, or when using a remote database.

To see it, you need to toggle to the "latest" version of readthedocs:
https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/la ... zoneminder

This will become "stable" following our next release, which will be "soon".

Gotcha thank you for your time and patience. I appreciate the help. Also, completely random i think you live a town over from me oddly enough if you live in the Shiloh thats like 30 minutes from STL. Have a good rest of your weekend.

Hey, neighbor. I do indeed live on the Illinois side of St. Louis.

selinux is highly problematic with ZoneMinder, and we simply don't have the resources to maintain an selinux config for it. It's a constant moving target.

You can run ZoneMinder in a container, however. I've been told that our Fedora dockerfile works with pigman: https://github.com/ZoneMinder/zmdockerfiles

If some component does misbehave, at least it will be running in its own container to mitigate the damage.