aptalca Zoneminder - 2 questions / help


hilly

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Hi. I installed the zoneminder docker and after some effort managed to get  my IP camera working in the gui just fine. I created a new camera "home_front" and this is now capturing events so all seems good so far, just 2 small issues i need help to resolve.

 

1. In the "events" folder i have a folder beinge generated called "1" and a folder called "home_front" but all event images are being captured to both folders exactly the same and so doubling the stored data. I only have 1 monitor installed, only one listed in the gui etc so i cannot see where or why i am getting this other "1" folder and data from - how do i get rid of it so data that is written relates to the monitor i have added?

 

2. The amount of data can get quite high and quickly. Is there a quick and simple way to make the "events" data get written to somewhere other than its current folder as its filling the /cache/appdata/ quickly. I did some searches but all of the responses seemed to be quite involved command line kind of thing rather than just a simple cariable to change?

 

Many thanks in advance

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I have it set to 10fps, seems to work ok at that rate. I did have it higher but the whole setup could not cope. I will consider setting it down to 5fps if it becomes a pain. The location of the files is not a big issue if its not so simple to move as i will just keep it clear on a regular basis.

 

The issue of having 2 duplicate events folders being written to means i am doubling everything so this is the priority to fix. I just double checked i have only 1 monitor set up called "home front", i have no idea where this "1" folder comes from or how to get rid of it - it is an exact mirror of the monitor folder i have set up and is recreated if i get rid of everything and then trigger and event.

 

Thanks

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5 fps is a good frame rate for recording events and will take less space and less cpu processing of events than 10 fps.  I also find that the iPad and Android apps (Zmview) have trouble keeping up with 10 fps.  Sometimes 5 fps is a challenge.

 

There is a purge files filter task that will keep your storage usage below a set percent.  By default it is 95%.  That way you wouldn't have to do it manually and it will keep storage to the percentage you set by removing older event files.

 

Are you doing event recording only (Modect) or recording continuously (Mocord)?  I am recording events only and don't see much storage being taken for that.

 

I did some quick research on the storage placement and it is not easy to move the events folder to another location.  They don't recommend that you do that.

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Thanks for the quick replies.

 

I am going to change to 5fps as that should be more than enough to just monitor the front of the house. Will lookk for the limit setting as that would, as you said, replace the need to do the manual cleaning and if that is the case no need to change the default location. I also read it was not so straight forward.

 

So now its just why i have 2 duplicate events folders seeming to come from the same monitor under differetn names and doubling everything that is generated - i have it set to modect as i only want it to record events and not act as a monitor to view all of the time

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Thanks dlandon. Reset now to 5fps and also found the filter and set so i dont get a file size overflow. I set it to a fairly low level as i need the disk space for other things, i can adjust as i go along as currently i am just setting this up and the camera is still inside - weekend job to mount it outside when i know it all talks together.

 

So now just need someone who has some idea about how this double entry in events is coming about. i did think about doing a removal of the docker, cleaning everything and starting again now i know the settings but i dont have confidence that i will not get the same things back. there must be a way to clear out the unused (and that i cannot find anywhere) reference that is making a single camera write to 2 different folders at the same time??

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The two folders are one and the same. One is a symbolic link to the other.

 

Do this test and you'll see. Create an empty text file in folder 1. Then navigate to the other and you'll see the same text file in there.

 

Your files appear twice but they exist only in one place on your drive.

 

I run this docker and store the events on a HDD outside of the array and mount it with the unassigned devices plugin.

 

 

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Thanks for the clarification, will give your test a try but i would not have found that myself, i was going round in circles trying to find where this other folder kept coming from - it makes looking at the files seem strange to see 2 of everything and not seen any notes about that anywhere.

 

Thanks again

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

first off, huge props and thanks to aptalca for creating and maintaining this docker. 

 

I had a similar dilemma to the OP's second question where I wanted to take advantage of the ssd cache drive with zoneminder running as a docker in unraid, but didn't want the zoneminder's camera recordings to fill up my docker img.

 

While this solution worked for me, I'm admitting I've only been using unraid/docker/zoneminder for little over a week and my exposure is limited, so there's likely a better way of achieving the results i did. 

 

Here is what i did to solve my dillema:

1. go to the share tab in the unraid gui and add a new share.  I called mine 'ipcams'.  ensure 'use cache disk' is set to yes.

2. open the zoneminder web gui and click options in the top right corner.

3. under zoneminder's options, click the paths tab. 

4. change the DIR_EVENTS value from events to /events 

5. click save, and exit the zoneminder gui

6. go to the docker tab, click on the zoneminder docker and click edit

7. under volume mappings, add a new mapping.  Container Volume:  '/events' and Host Path: '/mnt/user/ipcams'  (both without quotes)

8. (optional) open up a ssh shell to your unraid server , and move zoneminder's old events from the old to the new location.  (ie:  mv -R /mnt/cache/appdata/zoneminder/config/data/zoneminder/events/* /mnt/user/ipcams/ )

9. restart the zoneminder docker.

 

Voila! - now zoneminder records to my ssd cache drive, so no need for any spinning drives during recording.  The mover moves the zoneminder recordings off the cache drive to the array once a day, so zoneminder can still pull up old recordings from the array.

 

Hope this helps.

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