In particular, this was happening out of the box on Raspberry Pi OS Lite
20210304, as reported by ironoxidizer@gmail.com here:
https://groups.google.com/g/moonfire-nvr-users/c/2j9LvfFl2u8/m/tJcNS2WfCQAJ
* adjust main.rs to make the problem more obvious
* mention it in the troubleshooting guide
* sidestep it in the nvr docker wrapper script
also just use --networking=host rather than --publish (avoiding a proxy
process). I'm using Docker to simplify the build and deployment process,
not as a security boundary, so just do the simpler thing.
* in markdown files, use code fences rather than indented blocks.
This is harder to screw up (one of them was off by a space so didn't
render properly) and allows me to add info strings.
* uniformly use "useradd" to create the user and group in all three
places (install-manual.md, script-functions.sh, Dockerfile) rather
than addgroup + adduser. Create a full home dir, which I suspect was
the problem in #67. Don't allow customizing group name; it's always
the same as the user.
* install the sqlite3 package so that the "moonfire-nvr sql" command
works properly.
* remove "setup_db" function, which was out of place. Since the
creation of the "moonfire-nvr init" command, this has to happen
after installation of the binary. install.md gives instructions on
this part anyway so remove it from the script.
* give a proper command to create the db dir. It was creating it
within the current directory, not within /var/lib/moonfire-nvr.
Don't bother creating sample directory; "moonfire-nvr config"
will do this.
* when setting owners on a newly created directory, use a single
"install -d" command rather than "mkdir" + "chown".
* address confusion about whether sample file dirs need to be
precreated. (Only when Moonfire NVR doesn't have write permissions
on the parent.)
* always just install the packaged version of ffmpeg rather than
building our own. This has been usable since Debian/Raspbian 9
Stretch; Debian/Raspbian 10 Buster is out now so there's no excuse
for still running Debian/Raspbian 8 Jessie.
* don't chown the UI directory; it can be owned by root as with
the binary.
* in scripts/install.sh, don't enable/start the service yet. It hasn't
been configured.
The guide is not as quick to follow and amateur-friendly as I'd like. A
few things that might improve matters:
* complete #27 (built-in https+letsencrypt), so that when not sharing
the port, users don't need to use nginx or certbot.
* more ubiquitous IPv6 (out of my control but should happen over
time) to reduce need to share the port
* embed a dynamic DNS client
* support UPnP Internet Gateway Device Control Protocol (if common
routers have this enabled? probably not for security reasons.)
It's progress, though. Enough that I think I'll merge the auth branch
into master shortly.
* install.md, install-manual.md, and easy-install.md had a lot of
redundancy. Rework them so the common prefix and suffix are in
install.md and it's clear when to navigate back and forth. This
removes from very stale references to prep.sh and cameras.sql in
install-manual.md (which never should have mentioned these scripts
anyway).
* remove all the SAMPLE_MEDIA_DIR, SAMPLE_FILE_DIR, and
SAMPLE_FILE_PATH stuff from the scripts. This was too complicated
(one variable will suffice) and inconsistent in terminology (a
couple "samples dir" occurrences slipped through review; they
should have been "sample file dir"). It also wasn't really useful
enough because the procedure for a mount point is manual anyway,
and because some installs will have multiple sample file dirs
anyway.
* in the mount point procedure, fix the paths to be consistent. Also
describe the "nofail" and "Requires=" config I have on my machine.
* fix some incorrect info about how to use "moonfire-nvr config" and
describe "flush_if_sec".
This is still pretty basic support. There's no config UI support for
renaming/moving the sample file directories after they are created, and no
error checking that the files are still in the expected place. I can imagine
sysadmins getting into trouble trying to change things. I hope to address at
least some of that in a follow-up change to introduce a versioning/locking
scheme that ensures databases and sample file dirs match in some way.
A bonus change that kinda got pulled along for the ride: a dialog pops up in
the config UI while a stream is being tested. The experience was pretty bad
before; there was no indication the button worked at all until it was done,
sometimes many seconds later.
The Javascript is pretty amateurish I'm sure but at least it's something to
iterate from. It's already much more pleasant for browsing through videos in
several ways:
* more responsive to load only a day at a time rather than 90+ days
* much easier to see the same time segment on several cameras
* more pleasant to have the videos load as a popup rather than a link
that blows away your position in an enormous list
* exposes the fancier .mp4 generation options: splitting at lengths
other than the default, trimming to an arbitrary start and end time,
including a subtitle track with timestamps.
There's a slight regression in functionality: I didn't match the former
top-level page which showed how much camera used of its disk allocation and
the total duration of video. This is exposed in the JSON API, so it shouldn't
be too hard to add back.
I had an assert that fired in this case, dating back to when I hadn't plumbed
Result returns through much of .mp4 construction. Now I have, so there's no
excuse in having an assert here. Change to an error return, and tweak it to
not fire in the zero-duration case.
Also fix a problem in the test harness; I hadn't finished converting it for
multi-recording tests, and it was returning the wrong recording.
Because of that, I seem to have stumbled across a related problem in which
asking for zero duration of a non-zero duration recording will return a
recording::Segment with no frames, which will cause panics because its
corresponding .mp4 slices are zero-length. I just adjusted the panic message
here; I'll follow up with changes to address that.
Scott Lamb
Jack Challen
Dolf Starreveld