I'm working on a video surveillance project right now and it is based on ZM software.
The system uses headless configuration (no monitor and X), it is based on Slackware 10.1 and is supposed to run from a flash DiskOnModule. A hard disk can be used for recording purposes, but it also can function without it (as a remote camera source for a central ZM server).
If it will be interesting for ZM community I can create a distro based on my project with ability to boot from CD and some ncurses based installation wizard.
The only problem is that I have quite limited bandwidth and can not put it for direct download from my site.
Any need for another ZM distribution?
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zoneminder
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Yes, I did. Unfortunately I had no time to polish it and upload for others.
I can offer you some hints on building the system on flash by yourself.
First of all the best distro for building such a system is Devil Linux (www.devil-linux.org). It was created with small foot-print and embedding in mind and is based on the LFS (Linux From Scratch) core. You can download the ISO image of the last release which already has HUGE amount of software and tools for routing, accounting, firewalling, runinng SQL databases, web or file servers like Samba or NFS etc. And it fits in about 190MB. The idea behind is that you start the system from CD or Flash drive, it loads the configuration from the same media or from additional floppy/hdd/USB device, then it can initialize your hard drives for storage purposes if you have such. The distro is ready for RAID arrays (either hardware or software) and LVM (including LVM2) as well.
Another interesting thing is that Devil Linux already has Motion surveillance software built in together with some codecs, compression tools and supoprt for video cameras.
And the best thing is that you can customize the image yourself, adding or removing software by your own wish and even by using the configuration menu! The Devil Linux site has quite informative documentation for doing this.
So for building the image with ZM preinstalled you will need to follow the instructions on site, download the build environment, configure and compile the distro. The structure of distribution is not hard to understand and quite easy for patching.
The latest stable release of Devil linux is 1.2.8 and it is based on linux kernel 2.4.31. The build environment is downloaded through CVS, so you can choose between stable/release version, less tested 1.2.9 version (has some things to patch before it can be built correctly, but nothing serious) or you can even grab the latest 1.3.x beta on 2.6.x kernels and experiment with that.
For now I have built several different images for different purposes: routing and firewalling, file and mail server, video surveillance etc. Of course everything works fine from Flash disks.
Just give it a try, it is very good starting point for almost any embedded system.
P.S. Just one more important thing to mention:
I first tried to build ZM-embedded on Slackware distro, but it was difficult to maintain the small size of image and to initialize the system from read-only media. There are several ways on how such semi-embedded distributions load the initial filesystem. Some of them copy the whole filesystem into RAM and then work with RAMfs, others use a kind of LOOP image and work directly from that. In first case you need additional amount of RAM to keep the whole filesystem, and in second case your LOOP image may become too big to fit on a small flash media.
The Devil Linux utilizes compressed ISO as the filesystem image, so you can store much more software on a small flash drive. This is extremely actual when you intend to put together large PERL libraries, PHP and PERL scripts as required for Zone Minder.
I can offer you some hints on building the system on flash by yourself.
First of all the best distro for building such a system is Devil Linux (www.devil-linux.org). It was created with small foot-print and embedding in mind and is based on the LFS (Linux From Scratch) core. You can download the ISO image of the last release which already has HUGE amount of software and tools for routing, accounting, firewalling, runinng SQL databases, web or file servers like Samba or NFS etc. And it fits in about 190MB. The idea behind is that you start the system from CD or Flash drive, it loads the configuration from the same media or from additional floppy/hdd/USB device, then it can initialize your hard drives for storage purposes if you have such. The distro is ready for RAID arrays (either hardware or software) and LVM (including LVM2) as well.
Another interesting thing is that Devil Linux already has Motion surveillance software built in together with some codecs, compression tools and supoprt for video cameras.
And the best thing is that you can customize the image yourself, adding or removing software by your own wish and even by using the configuration menu! The Devil Linux site has quite informative documentation for doing this.
So for building the image with ZM preinstalled you will need to follow the instructions on site, download the build environment, configure and compile the distro. The structure of distribution is not hard to understand and quite easy for patching.
The latest stable release of Devil linux is 1.2.8 and it is based on linux kernel 2.4.31. The build environment is downloaded through CVS, so you can choose between stable/release version, less tested 1.2.9 version (has some things to patch before it can be built correctly, but nothing serious) or you can even grab the latest 1.3.x beta on 2.6.x kernels and experiment with that.
For now I have built several different images for different purposes: routing and firewalling, file and mail server, video surveillance etc. Of course everything works fine from Flash disks.
Just give it a try, it is very good starting point for almost any embedded system.
P.S. Just one more important thing to mention:
I first tried to build ZM-embedded on Slackware distro, but it was difficult to maintain the small size of image and to initialize the system from read-only media. There are several ways on how such semi-embedded distributions load the initial filesystem. Some of them copy the whole filesystem into RAM and then work with RAMfs, others use a kind of LOOP image and work directly from that. In first case you need additional amount of RAM to keep the whole filesystem, and in second case your LOOP image may become too big to fit on a small flash media.
The Devil Linux utilizes compressed ISO as the filesystem image, so you can store much more software on a small flash drive. This is extremely actual when you intend to put together large PERL libraries, PHP and PERL scripts as required for Zone Minder.
Thanks, I'll check Devil-linux.
Unfortunately, I am not a Linux guru. I am more like a just-passed-the-newbie-zone
Also, I only know a few things about some big distros and also IpCop. I know nothing about LFS.
Anyway, I saw that they offer support for booting from a Usb flash disk, but I need more like a boot from hard disk (I have a flash disk in an adapter that's reported by the BIOS as secondary master IDE drive).
I'll try to copy everything on the flash disk and see if it's starting.
Thanks,
grasomega
P.S. Devil LInux it's a really impressive distro.
Unfortunately, I am not a Linux guru. I am more like a just-passed-the-newbie-zone
Also, I only know a few things about some big distros and also IpCop. I know nothing about LFS.Anyway, I saw that they offer support for booting from a Usb flash disk, but I need more like a boot from hard disk (I have a flash disk in an adapter that's reported by the BIOS as secondary master IDE drive).
I'll try to copy everything on the flash disk and see if it's starting.
Thanks,
grasomega
P.S. Devil LInux it's a really impressive distro.
Damn small linux
take a look over Damn small linux I think that it si more goot than other small linuxes