Semi-authenticated mode and scheduling

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rdmelin
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Location: Ellensburg, WA USA

Semi-authenticated mode and scheduling

Post by rdmelin »

Great package. Compliments and thanks for making this available as free software.

How about a mode where the console is presented in a low privileged mode,without login, and an option to login as a privileged user or admin?

Also perhaps a scheduler. For example a camera watching the supply room might be in monitor or record mode during business hours, then switch to modect after closing hours and weekends.
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fernando
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Re: Semi-authenticated mode and scheduling

Post by fernando »

non autentication can be a fail in security..

anda the other thing will be a great idea but at the time can be done with cron jobs so i think there is no hurry for that!


Fernando
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rdmelin
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Re: Semi-authenticated mode and scheduling

Post by rdmelin »

Hi Fernando,
Certainly I realize there are security implications to unauthenticated mode. But not all uses for the software require high security. Consider a friend of mine who runs a kennel, i.e. he boards dogs for people when they are away. He would like to install cameras in the kennel runs and serve the video over the Internet. That way his clients could check in on their puppy while they are on holiday. The important thing here would be convenience for the clients. But if ZoneMinder is running in unauthenticated mode, is there any easy way to perform administrator tasks? Maybe there is and I am not familiar enough with the package yet.
Comments?

About using cron for scheduling. Could you give me an example of how to do that? I can find my way around cron well enough. What I would like is an example of a shell command or script, or perl script that would change a monitor in ZoneMinder from record to modect, etc.
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zoneminder
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Re: Semi-authenticated mode and scheduling

Post by zoneminder »

Hi Ross,

Unauthenticated mode lets anyone do anything so I doubt that would really work in your scenario. I think you have two choices, either run in authenticated mode with low privilege users. In your kennel scenario there would be a user per camera and that user could just see the camera that was pointing at their dog. I would also think that even for a kennel having a username and password would be advantageous, they don't want to advertise their guests to dog rustlers!

The other option is just to write a custom front end page that contains the stream only, this should be pretty simple to do.

Your other point about cron. There's no simple one shot way to do what you want at the moment, though perhaps it should be added to zmu. But a simple script that basically executed some SQL to update the function of the monitor followed by the zmdc.pl command to restart the binary. I can come up with a more concrete example if you like.

Cheers,

Phil,
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rdmelin
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Joined: Wed Oct 29, 2003 2:23 pm
Location: Ellensburg, WA USA

Re: Semi-authenticated mode and scheduling

Post by rdmelin »

Hi Phil,
Yes, I would greatly appreciate an example that I could use as a template. I can find my way around shell scripting, but SQL is new to me. I just obtained a book on PHP, MySQL, and Apache, and am working to get up to speed.
Thanks :)

Ross
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rdmelin
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Joined: Wed Oct 29, 2003 2:23 pm
Location: Ellensburg, WA USA

Re: Semi-authenticated mode and scheduling

Post by rdmelin »

Hi all,
I have come up with a working example, a shell script that could be run from cron. Maybe someone will find this useful until there is a more elegant solution.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#!/bin/sh
# Set the monitor function in the ZoneMinder database
# and restart Zoneminder

mysql -u admin -psecret zm << EOF
UPDATE Monitors SET Function = 'modect' WHERE id = 1 ;
quit
;
EOF

/usr/local/bin/zmpkg.pl restart

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit to taste, try from the command line. It will take awhile before it returns the prompt.

Ross
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