Recommendation: Install Zoneminder on FreeNAS in Jail or Separate Box

[ericv]

All I am looking for is a recommendation from a few of the experts around here.

The main reason I built my FreeNAS box was to use as mass storage for my media. I also intended to install ZoneMinder and store 30-60 days worth of events. I doubt I'll store 24/7 video streams.

I've been reading up on installing Zoneminder on FreeBSD and also reading some of the FreeNAS specific information (https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/zoneminder-on-freenas.14463/)

Given I can spare ~$400 and build a separate box and do daily moves of data from the Ubuntu server to FreeNAS, is it even worth the trouble to build it on FreeNAS? My FreeNAS machine is pretty beefy, I'm not worried about the resources. I am more worried about three things: 1 - Spending hours and hours trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. 2 - Compromising my data. 3 - Power consumption.

I can mitigate #'s 1 & 2 by not mitigating #3 and just building a new machine.

Any advice?

 

[danb35]

What I've done (just in the last day or two, so I don't have any long-term data to share) is install a VirtualBox jail, set up a Ubuntu VM inside that, and install Zoneminder in the VM. There are up-to-date Ubuntu packages for Zoneminder and its dependencies, while there aren't for FreeBSD that I've found.

Having done that, I set up a dataset for zoneminder's storage, mounted it as storage for the VirtualBox jail, and used the VirtualBox shared folders feature to share that with the Ubuntu VM. That way, the data isn't locked away in the virtual disk file, and the virtual disk file only needs to accommodate the OS/apps, not the data. I could presumably share that dataset as well so I could access the raw data over the network (i.e., without the web interface), but I haven't messed with that so far.

Once I'm more certain it's all working OK, I plan to write up my process in the other Zoneminder thread you've found.

 

[ericv]

What I've done (just in the last day or two, so I don't have any long-term data to share) is install a VirtualBox jail, set up a Ubuntu VM inside that, and install Zoneminder in the VM. There are up-to-date Ubuntu packages for Zoneminder and its dependencies, while there aren't for FreeBSD that I've found.

Having done that, I set up a dataset for zoneminder's storage, mounted it as storage for the VirtualBox jail, and used the VirtualBox shared folders feature to share that with the Ubuntu VM. That way, the data isn't locked away in the virtual disk file, and the virtual disk file only needs to accommodate the OS/apps, not the data. I could presumably share that dataset as well so I could access the raw data over the network (i.e., without the web interface), but I haven't messed with that so far.

Once I'm more certain it's all working OK, I plan to write up my process in the other Zoneminder thread you've found.

I was also thinking about doing that. I don't have a test system to try it out in. I'd expect creating a jail and putting it there would be pretty low risk. I have a separate pool with mirrored SSDs for my jails apps.

 

[danb35]

Note that, by default, the shared folders don't support symlinks. Here's my description of the trouble I had, and how I solved it: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...k-support-vboxmanage-doesnt-see-my-vms.28978/

 

[ericv]

Thanks. I might get this up and running this weekend. It depends on if the weather is nice or not.