Viktor Petersson.com
ZoneMinder VA
Please read the updates at the bottom of the page first.
About the Virtual Appliance
This is a turn-key virtual appliance for the amazing Open Source video surveillance solution ZoneMinder. Compatible with VMware Server 2.0 / ESX / Fusion.
About ZoneMinder
[Copied from ZoneMinder.com] ZoneMinder is intended for use in single or multi-camera video security applications, including commercial or home CCTV, theft prevention and child, family member or home monitoring and other domestic care scenarios such as nanny cam installations. It supports capture, analysis, recording, and monitoring of video data coming from one or more video or network cameras attached to a Linux system. ZoneMinder also support web and semi-automatic control of Pan/Tilt/Zoom cameras using a variety of protocols. It is suitable for use as a DIY home video security system and for commercial or professional video security and surveillance. It can also be integrated into a home automation system via X.10 or other protocols. If you’re looking for a low cost CCTV system or a more flexible alternative to cheap DVR systems then why not give ZoneMinder a try?
How To Use
Point your browser to the IP address of the Virtual Appliance and you’re ready to start using ZoneMinder.
Download
- Version 0.1
- Version 0.2
- VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace listing
- Download (HTTP)
- Download (Bittorrent)
- Upgrade: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
- Upgrade: ZoneMinder 1.24.2
- Smaller footprint. The new version is ~1GB extracted and ~350MB compressed
- ‘memory_limit’ in PHP is now set to 128MB
- I can’t seem to add ZoneMinder VA 0.2 in VMware Server 2. What’s wrong?
- What is the ‘root’ password?
- Can you offer a non-Bittorrent download?
- Help! The network interface is not working properly.
- There are only 20GB available on the system. How can I expand it?
- Can this appliance be used with Video4Linux (V4L)-devices?
Screenshots
About the Virtual Appliance
This Virtual Appliance is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server. It uses 512MB of RAM and has a bridged network device with DHCP configured. For more details, see the README file in the package.
Changelog
Version 0.2
Frequently Asked Questions
A lot of you have contacted me with questions regarding various aspect of the VM. I’m sorry not getting back to all of you, but I simply don’t have the bandwidth to offer support for the VM. Because of this, I will post some frequently asked questions below.
Actually, I just realized this myself. As it turns out, VMware have made some changes to VMware Fusion (which I used to create the image) which med it incompatible with VMware server. A pretty major mistake from VMware’s side if you ask me. Luckily, there is a fairly easy work-around for the problem which I just confirmed that it works. Open up the folder where the image files reside and do the following
- Delete any vmdk.lck directries
- Delete any vmem.lck directories
- Delete the quicklook-cache.png file
- Edit the .vmx file and set to FALSE entries for USB, SOUND and SERIAL.
(Thanks to bosconet on VMware Communities for finding the solution.)
Sorry about that I didn’t realize this prior to launching it, but this will be resolved in the next release (whenever I find the time).
None. The VM is based on Ubuntu, and in Ubuntu there is no root password set by default. Instead use ‘sudo’ with the user provided in the attached documentation.
Unfortunately not. I don’t have the resources/bandwidth for that. However, If anyone is willing to host it, I can certainly upload it and share the link.
Yes, version 0.2 can now be downloaded without Bittorrent.
There could be a ton of reasons for this. I would recommend you to search the Ubuntu Forum, Wiki or ask on their IRC channel.
There are a few ways. Personally I prefer to use a network volume to store the ‘events’ on an NFS share. The reason for this is that the I/O performance is pretty poor under VMware even on a fast RAID array.
If you would like use the store your events within VMware, the easiest way is to create new hard drive within VMware with the desired size. You probably want to check the ‘allocate disks pace now’-option to make sure you do not run into issues down the road.
In theory yes, but I haven’t tried.
If you have a USB V4L-device, you should be able to use VMware’s ability to connect USB devices to a virtual machine.
If you do have a PCI-based V4L capturing device, you could configure the host (or a different computer) to use some kind of streaming software (perhaps VLC) to stream the video feed over the network to ZoneMinder.
That said, I haven’t done this myself, but as I said, it should work in theory.
Feedback and contribution
I greatly appreciate feedback and contributions to ZoneMinder VA. If you have any changes or feedback, please drop me a line with the changes, and I’m likely to include it in the next release.
Update: Please note that I’ve stopped the development of this virtual appliance, as I’ve switched to KISS-Surveillance.
Update 2: Michael Waldron just reached out to me and informed me that he recently released a more up-to-date version of the virtual appliance. While I haven’t tried his version myself, judging by his description, you should probably use his version over mine. Also, I have no intention of updating my version (since I no longer use Zoneminder), Michael is probably your best bet.