Best non-expert install

[deadpixel]

Dear zm-folks,

zoneminder has been useful for the surveillance of my parent's house which is a long distance away from my home. It adds a lot to my peace of mind to know there is no water leak in the basement etc.

After the current tenants left I had a reason to make a new install but found it difficult to find a non-expert way. It does not run on the latest Ubuntu version anymore. If something like e.g., the database fails and you don't know much about databases, the install process quickly becomes a dead end.

So I tried to better understand docker but even the docker image is fairly deprecated. The final solution was to dig out an old version of Ubuntu and use that for a new install.

It also seems that development of zoneminder has significantly slowed down. Well, from my perspective it does everything I ever wanted from video surveillance, so there might not be so much need for improvements. But it breaks my heart to see that one of the best video surveillance systems is increasingly aging in the sense, that is does not keep up with the latest OS anymore. I do admit that I though about moving to something else but see no suitable alternative to zm. So it is likely that other people might make the same experience. As a consequence, there must be a market for something like zm which makes me wonder why it is slowly dying?

Or is my perspective wrong and current newbies to zm know how to install and use it with up-to date systems?

Thomas

[adam.robertson]

I am running the latest ZM installed on Debian 12 (bookworm). It took me a couple of tries, but once I got it installed and tweaked my cameras it is working fine.
I left Ubuntu behind a few years ago when they started pushing snap for everything. I only use Debian now for my various desktops and servers.

[bbunge]

Guide for Ubuntu: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Ubuntu_Serv ... der_1.36.x

Guide for Debian:https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Debian_12_B ... and_1.37.x

Both procedures have been tested on recent releases and do work. Both are best installed on a server version via command prompt or remote terminal. Note for Debian 12 that you may need to increase the swap size. I also add Webmin to manage the server.