Debian 11 Bullseye with Zoneminder 1.36.x

Updated 18OCT22 for Zoneminder 1.36.31

Debian 11 Bullseye is being released with Zoneminder 1.34.23 and as usual for Debian the zm database needs to be created manually. This is not user friendly and 1.34 is considered old and unsupported. So we will be using the packages provided by the ZoneMinder development team hosted at zmrepo.zoneminder.com.

Note: We currently only package for amd64 and armhf so if your are running something else this won't work.

Debian, unlike Ubuntu, does not install sudo with the initial setup. While you can log in as root, a user with sudo authority is recommended.

To enable sudo: In a terminal,become root with su. Enter your root password. Install sudo with:

apt install sudo

Add the user account to the group sudo with:

/sbin/adduser username sudo 

where username is your user account. Exit root then log out and then log in with the same user.

Timezone: it is recommended you set your specific timesone with:

sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York

Of course use your timezone in place of America/New_York.

1. Install Debian 11 (Bullseye), desktop or server version, along with Apache2, PHP and your favorite database (Mariadb recommended). A quick way to install LAMP is:

sudo apt install apache2 mariadb-server php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql lsb-release gnupg2

Secure MySQL or Mariadb, create root password et. al.

mysql_secure_installation

Mariadb additional settings The default values for the database are adequate for initial setup. However, I recommend you make these changes before installing Zoneminder. Note: If you have sufficient memory double the values below. Edit the Mariadb config file:

sudo nano /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf

Add the following in the [mysql] area:

innodb_file_per_table = ON
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 256M
innodb_log_file_size = 64M

CTRL+o then [Enter] to save

CTRL+x to exit

Reatart Mariadb:

sudo service mysql restart

I recommend you install mysqltuner and run it from time to time and adjust the database settings as the number of saved events grows.

2. Add Zoneminder's repo to your APT configuration:

echo "deb https://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/debian/release-1.36 "`lsb_release  -c -s`"/" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zoneminder.list

3. Add Zoneminder's GPG signing key:

wget -O - https://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/debian/archive-keyring.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

4. Update package indexes and install the package

sudo apt update 

sudo apt install zoneminder=1.36.31-bullseye1

5. Enable the systemd service and apache configuration

sudo systemctl enable zoneminder.service
sudo systemctl start zoneminder
sudo a2enconf zoneminder
sudo a2enmod rewrite headers expires
sudo service apache2 reload

6. Open Zoneminder http://(IP-Address)/zm

7. Change the Timezone in Options-Timezone