ZoneMinder is an integrated set of applications which provide a complete surveillance solution allowing capture, analysis, recording and monitoring of any CCTV or security cameras attached to a Linux based machine. It is designed to run on distributions which support the Video For Linux (V4L) interface and has been tested with video cameras attached to BTTV cards, various USB cameras and also supports most IP network cameras.
Historically, installing ZoneMinder onto your system required building from source code by issuing the traditional configure, make, make install commands. To get ZoneMinder to build, all of its dependencies had to be determined and installed beforehand. Init and logrotate scripts had to be manually copied into place following the build. Optional packages such as jscalendar and Cambozola had to be manually installed. Uninstalls could leave stale files around, which could cause problems during an upgrade. Speaking of upgrades, when it comes time to upgrade all these manual steps must be repeated again.
Better methods exist today that do much of this for you. The current development team, along with other volunteers, have taken great strides in providing the resources necessary to avoid building from source.
If a repository that hosts ZoneMinder packages is not available for your distro, then you are encouraged to build your own package, rather than build from source. While each distro is different in ways that set it apart from all the others, they are often similar enough to allow you to adapt another distro's package building instructions to your own.
### Building a ZoneMinder Package
Building ZoneMinder into a package is not any harder than building from source. As a matter of fact, if you have successfully built ZoneMinder from source in the past, then you may find these steps to be easier.
When building a package, it is best to do this work in a separate environment, dedicated to development purposes. This could be as simple as creating a virtual machine, using Docker, or using mock. All it takes is one “Oops” to regret doing this work on your production server.
Lastly, if you desire to build a development snapshot from the master branch, it is recommended you first build your package using an official release of ZoneMinder. This will help identify whether any problems you may encounter are caused by the build process or is a new issue in the master branch.
What follows are instructions for various distros to build ZoneMinder into a package.
### Package Maintainters
Many of the ZoneMinder configration variable default values are not configurable at build time through autotools or cmake. A new tool called *zmeditconfigdata.sh* has been added to allow package maintainers to manipulate any variable stored in ConfigData.pm without patching the source.
For example, let's say I have created a new ZoneMinder package that contains the cambolzola javascript file. However, by default cambozola support is turned off. To fix that, add this to the pacakging script:
```bash
./utils/zmeditconfigdata.sh ZM_OPT_CAMBOZOLA yes
```
Note that zmeditconfigdata.sh is intended to be called, from the root build folder, prior to running cmake or configure.
One level above you'll now find a deb package matching the architecture of the build host:
```bash
root@host:~# ls -1 ~/zoneminder*;
/root/zoneminder_1.26.4-1_amd64.changes
/root/zoneminder_1.26.4-1_amd64.deb
/root/zoneminder_1.26.4-1.dsc
/root/zoneminder_1.26.4-1.tar.gz
```
The dpkg command itself does not resolve dependencies. That's what high-level interfaces like aptitude and apt-get are normally for. Unfortunately, unlike RPM, there's no easy way to install a separate deb package not contained with any repository.
To overcome this "limitation" we'll use dpkg only to install the zoneminder package and apt-get to fetch all needed dependencies afterwards. Running dpkg-reconfigure in the end will ensure that the setup scripts e.g. for database provisioning were executed.
One level above you'll now find a deb package matching the architecture of the build host:
```bash
root@host:~# ls -1 ~/zoneminder*;
/root/zoneminder_1.26.4-1_amd64.changes
/root/zoneminder_1.26.4-1_amd64.deb
/root/zoneminder_1.26.4-1.dsc
/root/zoneminder_1.26.4-1.tar.gz
```
The dpkg command itself does not resolve dependencies. That's what high-level interfaces like aptitude and apt-get are normally for. Unfortunately, unlike RPM, there's no easy way to install a separate deb package not contained with any repository.
To overcome this "limitation" we'll use dpkg only to install the zoneminder package and apt-get to fetch all needed dependencies afterwards. Running dpkg-reconfigure in the end will ensure that the setup scripts e.g. for database provisioning were executed.
The following method documents how to build ZoneMinder into an RPM package, compatible with Fedora, Redhat, CentOS, and other compatible clones. This is exactly how the RPMS in zmrepo are built.
The build instructions below make use of a custom script called "buildzm.sh". Advanced users are encouraged to view the contents of this script. Notice that the script doesn't really do a whole lot. It's goal is simply to make the process a littel easier for the first time user. Once you become familar with the build process, you can issue the mock commands found in the buildzm.sh script yourself if you so desire.
Certain commands in these instructions require root privileges while other commands do not. Pay close attention to this. If the instructions below state to issue a command without a “sudo” prefix, then you should *not* be root while issuing the command. Getting this incorrect will result in a failed build.
Before you begin, set up an rpmbuild environment by following [this guide](http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/SetupRpmBuildEnvironment) by the CentOS developers.
To continue, you need a ZoneMinder SRPM. For starters, let's use one of the SRPMS from zmrepo. Go browse the [Zmrepo](http://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/) site and choose an appropriate SRPM and place it into the ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS folder.
Once the build completes, you will be presented with a folder containing the RPM's that were built. Copy the newly built ZoneMinder RPM to the desired system, enable zmrepo, and then install the rpm by issuing the appropriate yum install command.
Finally, you may want to consider editing the zmrepo repo file under /etc/yum.repos.d and placing an “exclude=zoneminder*” line into the config file. This will prevent your system from overwriting your manually built RPM with the ZoneMinder RPM found in the repo.
