Debian
Debian 12 (Bookworm)
This procedure will guide you through the installation of ZoneMinder on Debian 12 (Bookworm).
Step 1: Setup Sudo (optional but recommended)
By default Debian does not come with sudo, so you have to install it and configure it manually. This step is optional but recommended and the following instructions assume that you have setup sudo. If you prefer to setup ZoneMinder as root, do it at your own risk and adapt the following instructions accordingly.
apt install sudo
usermod -a -G sudo <username>
exit
Now your terminal session is back under your normal user. You can check that
you are now part of the sudo group with the command groups, “sudo” should
appear in the list. If not, run newgrp sudo and check again with groups.
Step 2: Update system
Run the following commands.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Step 3: Install MariaDB and do initial database configuration
Run the following commands.
sudo apt install mariadb-server
Switch into root user and create database and database user
sudo su
mariadb
CREATE DATABASE zm;
CREATE USER zmuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'zmpass';
GRANT ALL ON zm.* TO zmuser@localhost;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;
exit
By default MariaDB uses unix socket authentication, so no root user password is required (root MariaDB user access only available to local root Linux user). If you wish, you can set a root MariaDB password (and apply other security tweaks) by running mariadb-secure-installation.
Step 4: Install zoneminder
By default Debian will install the version published in Debian (stable). However there may be newer versions by using backports. At the time of this writing, bookworm (stable) ships with v.1.36.33.
To install the version in bookworm stable, just run the following command.
sudo apt install zoneminder
If instead you prefer to install the newer version using backports, run the following commands. The first line will add this bookworm-backports repository. The backports repository is deactivated by default, so with the second line we explicitly state we want the backported version of zoneminder.
sudo echo 'deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt -t bookworm-backports install zoneminder
Step 5: Configure database
mariadb -u zmuser -p zm < /usr/share/zoneminder/db/zm_create.sql
Step 6: Setup permissions for zm.conf
To make sure zoneminder can read the configuration file, run the following command.
sudo chgrp -c www-data /etc/zm/zm.conf
Step 7: Tweak Apache configuration
sudo a2enconf zoneminder
sudo a2enmod cgi
sudo systemctl reload apache2.service
sudo systemctl restart zoneminder.service
sudo systemctl status zoneminder.service
If the zoneminder.service show to be active and without any errors, you should be able to access zoneminder at http://yourhostname/zm
Debian 11 (Bullseye)
This procedure will guide you through the installation of ZoneMinder on Debian 11 (Bullseye).
Step 1: Setup Sudo (optional but recommended)
By default Debian does not come with sudo, so you have to install it and configure it manually. This step is optional but recommended and the following instructions assume that you have setup sudo. If you prefer to setup ZoneMinder as root, do it at your own risk and adapt the following instructions accordingly.
apt install sudo
usermod -a -G sudo <username>
exit
Now your terminal session is back under your normal user. You can check that
you are now part of the sudo group with the command groups, “sudo” should
appear in the list. If not, run newgrp sudo and check again with groups.
Step 2: Update system
Run the following commands.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Step 3: Install MariaDB and do initial database configuration
Run the following commands.
sudo apt install mariadb-server
Switch into root user and create database and database user
sudo su
mariadb
CREATE DATABASE zm;
CREATE USER zmuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'zmpass';
GRANT ALL ON zm.* TO zmuser@localhost;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;
exit
By default MariaDB uses unix socket authentication, so no root user password is required (root MariaDB user access only available to local root Linux user). If you wish, you can set a root MariaDB password (and apply other security tweaks) by running mariadb-secure-installation.
Step 4: Install zoneminder
By default Debian will install the version published in Debian (stable). However you also have the option to install a newer version using backports. For example, at the time of this writing, bullseye (stable) ships with v.1.34.x and bullseye-backports with v.1.36.x.
To install the version in bullseye stable, just run the following command.
sudo apt install zoneminder
If instead you prefer to install the newer version using backports, run the following commands. The first line will add bullseye-backports repository. The backports repository is deactivated by default, so with the second line we explicitly state we want the backported version of zoneminder.
sudo echo 'deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports main contrib' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt -t bullseye-backports install zoneminder
Step 5: Configure database
mariadb -u zmuser -p zm < /usr/share/zoneminder/db/zm_create.sql
Step 6: Setup permissions for zm.conf
To make sure zoneminder can read the configuration file, run the following command.
sudo chgrp -c www-data /etc/zm/zm.conf
Step 7: Tweak Apache configuration
sudo a2enconf zoneminder
sudo systemctl reload apache2.service
sudo systemctl restart zoneminder.service
sudo systemctl status zoneminder.service
If the zoneminder.service show to be active and without any errors, you should be able to access zoneminder at http://yourhostname/zm
Debian Buster
This procedure will guide you through the installation of ZoneMinder on Debian 10 (Buster).
Step 1: Make sure your system is up to date
Open a console and use su command to become root.
apt update
apt upgrade
Step 2: Setup Sudo (optional but recommended)
By default Debian does not come with sudo, so you have to install it and configure it manually. This step is optional but recommended and the following instructions assume that you have setup sudo. If you prefer to setup ZoneMinder as root, do it at your own risk and adapt the following instructions accordingly.
apt install sudo
usermod -a -G sudo <username>
exit
Now your terminal session is back under your normal user. You can check that
you are now part of the sudo group with the command groups, “sudo” should
appear in the list. If not, run newgrp sudo and check again with groups.
Step 3: Install Apache and MySQL
These are not dependencies for the ZoneMinder package as they could be installed elsewhere. If they are not installed yet in your system, you have to trigger their installation manually.
sudo apt install apache2 default-mysql-server
Step 4: Add ZoneMinder’s Package repository to your apt sources
ZoneMinder’s Debian packages are not included in Debian’s official package repositories. To be able to install ZoneMinder with APT, you have to edit the list of apt sources and add ZoneMinder’s repository.
Add the following to the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zoneminder.list file
# ZoneMinder repository
deb https://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/debian/release-1.36 buster/
You can do this using:
echo "deb https://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/debian/release-1.36 buster/" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zoneminder.list
Because ZoneMinder’s package repository provides a secure connection through HTTPS, apt must be enabled for HTTPS.
sudo apt install apt-transport-https
Ensure you have gnupg installed before importing the apt key in the following step.
sudo apt install gnupg
Finally, download the GPG key for ZoneMinder’s repository:
wget -O - https://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/debian/archive-keyring.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
Step 5: Install ZoneMinder
sudo apt update
sudo apt install zoneminder
Step 6: Read the Readme
The rest of the install process is covered in the README.Debian, so feel free to have a read.
zcat /usr/share/doc/zoneminder/README.Debian.gz
Step 7: Enable ZoneMinder service
sudo systemctl enable zoneminder.service
Step 8: Configure Apache
The following commands will setup the default /zm virtual directory and configure required apache modules.
sudo a2enconf zoneminder
sudo a2enmod rewrite # this is enabled by default
sudo a2enmod cgi # this is done automatically when installing the package. Redo this command manually only for troubleshooting.
Step 9: Edit Timezone in PHP
Automated way:
sudo sed -i "s/;date.timezone =/date.timezone = $(sed 's/\//\\\//' /etc/timezone)/g" /etc/php/7.*/apache2/php.ini
Manual way
sudo nano /etc/php/7.*/apache2/php.ini
Search for [Date] (Ctrl + w then type Date and press Enter) and change date.timezone for your time zone. Don’t forget to remove the ; from in front of date.timezone.
[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone = America/New_York
CTRL+o then [Enter] to save
CTRL+x to exit
Step 10: Start ZoneMinder
Reload Apache to enable your changes and then start ZoneMinder.
sudo systemctl reload apache2
sudo systemctl start zoneminder
You are now ready to go with ZoneMinder. Open a browser and type either localhost/zm one the local machine or {IP-OF-ZM-SERVER}/zm if you connect from a remote computer.
Debian Stretch
This procedure will guide you through the installation of ZoneMinder on Debian 9 (Stretch). This section has been tested with ZoneMinder 1.36 on Debian 9.8.
Step 1: Make sure your system is up to date
Open a console and use su command to become Root.
apt update
apt upgrade
Step 2: Setup Sudo (optional but recommended)
By default Debian does not come with sudo, so you have to install it and configure it manually. This step is optional but recommended and the following instructions assume that you have setup sudo. If you prefer to setup ZoneMinder as root, do it at your own risk and adapt the following instructions accordingly.
apt install sudo
usermod -a -G sudo <username>
exit
Now your terminal session is back under your normal user. You can check that you are now part of the sudo group with the command groups, “sudo” should appear in the list. If not, run newgrp sudo and check again with groups.
Step 3: Install Apache and MySQL
These are not dependencies for the ZoneMinder package as they could be installed elsewhere. If they are not installed yet in your system, you have to trigger their installation manually.
sudo apt install apache2 mysql-server
Step 4: Add ZoneMinder’s Package repository to your apt sources
ZoneMinder’s Debian packages are not included in Debian’s official package repositories. To be able to install ZoneMinder with APT, you have to edit the list of apt sources and add ZoneMinder’s repository.
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the following to the bottom of the file
# ZoneMinder repository
deb https://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/debian/release-1.36 stretch/
CTRL+o and <Enter> to save CTRL+x to exit
Because ZoneMinder’s package repository provides a secure connection through HTTPS, apt must be enabled for HTTPS.
sudo apt install apt-transport-https
Finally, download the GPG key for ZoneMinder’s repository:
wget -O - https://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/debian/archive-keyring.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
Step 5: Install ZoneMinder
sudo apt update
sudo apt install zoneminder
Step 6: Read the Readme
The rest of the install process is covered in the README.Debian, so feel free to have a read.
zcat /usr/share/doc/zoneminder/README.Debian.gz
Step 7: Enable ZoneMinder service
sudo systemctl enable zoneminder.service
Step 8: Configure Apache
The following commands will setup the default /zm virtual directory and configure required apache modules.
sudo a2enconf zoneminder
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod cgi # this is done automatically when installing the package. Redo this command manually only for troubleshooting.
Step 9: Edit Timezone in PHP
Automated way:
sudo sed -i "s/;date.timezone =/date.timezone = $(sed 's/\//\\\//' /etc/timezone)/g" /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini
Manual way
sudo nano /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini
Search for [Date] (Ctrl + w then type Date and press Enter) and change date.timezone for your time zone. Don’t forget to remove the ; from in front of date.timezone.
[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone = America/New_York
CTRL+o then [Enter] to save
CTRL+x to exit
Step 10: Start ZoneMinder
Reload Apache to enable your changes and then start ZoneMinder.
sudo systemctl reload apache2
sudo systemctl start zoneminder
You are now ready to go with ZoneMinder. Open a browser and type either localhost/zm one the local machine or {IP-OF-ZM-SERVER}/zm if you connect from a remote computer.