Debian 10 Buster with Zoneminder 1.36.x from ZM Repo

Debian 10 Buster with Zoneminder 1.32.3 from the Debian Multimedia Repository

Install Debian Buster. I used the net install CD and installed only web server, SSH server and standard system utilities from tasksel.

Login and become root. I have added sudo and permissions for my user and have omitted the use of sudo before each command.

sudo su

Install additional LAMP components

apt install php mariadb-server php-mysql libapache2-mod-php7.3

Secure Mariadb, create root password et. al.

mysql_secure_installation

Install Zoneminder

Add the Deb Multimedia repository. (instructions at: https://deb-multimedia.org/)

Edit sources.list

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add to the end of the file:

deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org buster main non-free

Ctrl+o Enter to save

Ctrl+x to exit

After you have added the necessary line in /etc/apt/sources.list the first package to install is deb-multimedia-keyring.

wget http://www.deb-multimedia.org/pool/main/d/deb-multimedia-keyring/deb-multimedia-keyring_2016.8.1_all.deb

dpkg -i deb-multimedia-keyring_2016.8.1_all.deb

apt update

Install Zoneminder

apt install zoneminder vlc-plugin-base 

Create Zoneminder database in MySQL (Note: this also creates the default Zoneminder user and permissions in MySQL)

mysql -uroot -p < /usr/share/zoneminder/db/zm_create.sql

mysql -uroot -p -e "grant all on zm.* to 'zmuser'@localhost identified by 'zmpass';"

mysqladmin -uroot -p reload

Set permissions

chmod 740 /etc/zm/zm.conf

chown root:www-data /etc/zm/zm.conf

chown -R www-data:www-data /usr/share/zoneminder/

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/cache/zoneminder/

Enable Zoneminder service to start at boot

systemctl enable zoneminder.service

Add www-data to the sudo group (to enable use of local video devices)

adduser www-data video

Start Zoneminder

systemctl start zoneminder.service

Check to see that Zoneminder is running

systemctl status zoneminder.service

Enable CGI and Zoneminder configuration in Apache.

a2enmod cgi

a2enmod rewrite

a2enconf zoneminder

Add timezone to PHP

nano /etc/php/7.3/apache2/php.ini

Search for [Date] (Ctrl + w then type Date and press Enter) and make changes as follows for your time zone

[Date]

Defines the default timezone used by the date functions

http://php.net/date.timezone

date.timezone = America/New_York

Ctrl+o Enter to save

CTRL+x to exit

To get the API working you need to create .htaccess in 3 places and add the code below. (Thanks Chimaera!)

nano /usr/share/zoneminder/www/api/.htaccess

nano /usr/share/zoneminder/www/api/app/.htaccess

nano /usr/share/zoneminder/www/api/app/webroot/.htaccess

Codefor .htaccess files:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
    RewriteBase /zm/api
</IfModule>

Ctrl+o Enter to save

CTRL+x to exit

Restart Apache

service apache2 restart

All done! Navigate to http://serverip/zm