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Installing Moonfire NVR

This document describes how to install Moonfire NVR on a Linux system.

Downloading

See the github page (in case you're not reading this text there already). You can download the bleeding edge version from the command line via git:

$ git clone https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-nvr.git

Building from source

There are no binary packages of Moonfire NVR available yet, so it must be built from source.

Moonfire NVR is written in the Rust Programming Language. In the long term, I expect this will result in a more secure, full-featured, easy-to-install software. In the short term, there will be growing pains. Rust is a new programming language. Moonfire NVR's primary author is new to Rust. And Moonfire NVR is a young project.

You will need the following C libraries installed:

ffmpeg version 2.x or 3.x, including libavutil, libavcodec (to inspect H.264 frames), and libavformat (to connect to RTSP servers and write .mp4 files).

Note ffmpeg library versions older than 55.1.101, along with all versions of the competing project libav, don't not support socket timeouts for RTSP. For reliable reconnections on error, it's strongly recommended to use ffmpeg library versions >= 55.1.101.
SQLite3.
ncursesw, the UTF-8 version of the ncurses library.

On recent Ubuntu or Raspbian, the following command will install all non-Rust dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install \
               build-essential \
               libavcodec-dev \
               libavformat-dev \
               libavutil-dev \
               libncurses5-dev \
               libncursesw5-dev \
               libsqlite3-dev \
               libssl-dev \
               pkgconf

Next, you need Rust 1.17+ and Cargo. The easiest way to install them is by following the instructions at rustup.rs.

You can continue to follow the build/install instructions below for a manual build and install, or alternatively you can run the prep script called prep.sh.

$ cd moonfire-nvr
$ ./prep.sh

The script will take the following command line options, should you need them:

-S: Skip updating and installing dependencies through apt-get. This too can be useful on repeated builds.

You can edit variables at the start of the script to influence names and directories, but defaults should suffice in most cases. For details refer to the script itself. We will mention just one option, needed when you follow the suggestion to separate database and samples between flash storage and a hard disk. If you have the hard disk mounted on, lets say /media/nvr, and you want to store the video samples inside a directory named samples there, you would set:

SAMPLES_DIR=/media/nvr/samples

The script will perform all necessary steps to leave you with a fully built, installed moonfire-nvr binary. The only thing you'll have to do manually is add your camera configuration(s) to the database. Alternatively, before running the script, you can create a file named cameras.sql in the same directory as the prep.sh script and it will be automatically included for you. For instructions, you can skip to "Camera configuration and hard disk mounting".

Once prerequisites are installed, Moonfire NVR can be built as follows:

$ cargo test
$ cargo build --release
$ sudo install -m 755 target/release/moonfire-nvr /usr/local/bin

Further configuration

Moonfire NVR should be run under a dedicated user. It keeps two kinds of state:

a SQLite database, typically <1 GiB. It should be stored on flash if available.
the "sample file directory", which holds the actual samples/frames of H.264 video. This should be quite large and typically is stored on a hard drive.

(See schema.md for more information.)

Both kinds of state are intended to be accessed only by Moonfire NVR itself. However, the interface for adding new cameras is not yet written, so you will have to manually insert cameras with the sqlite3 command line tool prior to starting Moonfire NVR.

Manual commands would look something like this:

$ sudo addgroup --system moonfire-nvr
$ sudo adduser --system moonfire-nvr --home /var/lib/moonfire-nvr
$ sudo mkdir /var/lib/moonfire-nvr
$ sudo -u moonfire-nvr -H mkdir db sample
$ sudo -u moonfire-nvr moonfire-nvr init

Camera configuration and hard drive mounting

If a dedicated hard drive is available, set up the mount point:

$ sudo vim /etc/fstab
$ sudo mount /var/lib/moonfire-nvr/sample

Once setup is complete, it is time to add camera configurations to the database. If the daemon is running, you will need to stop it temporarily:

$ sudo systemctl stop moonfire-nvr

You can configure the system through a text-based user interface:

$ sudo -u moonfire-nvr moonfire-nvr config 2>debug-log

In the user interface, add your cameras under the "Edit cameras" dialog. There's a "Test" button to verify your settings directly from the dialog.

After the cameras look correct, go to "Edit retention" to assign disk space to each camera. Leave a little slack (at least 100 MB per camera) between the total limit and the filesystem capacity, even if you store nothing else on the disk. There are several reasons this is needed:

The limit currently controls fully-written files only. There will be up to two minutes of video per camera of additional video.
The rotation happens after the limit is exceeded, not proactively.
Moonfire NVR currently doesn't account for the unused space in the final filesystem block at the end of each file.
Moonfire NVR doesn't account for the space used for directory listings.
If a file is open when it is deleted (such as if a HTTP client is downloading it), it stays around until the file is closed. Moonfire NVR currently doesn't account for this.

When finished, start the daemon:

$ sudo systemctl start moonfire-nvr

System Service

Moonfire NVR can be run as a systemd service. If you used prep.sh this has been done for you. If not, Create /etc/systemd/system/moonfire-nvr.service:

[Unit]
Description=Moonfire NVR
After=network-online.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/moonfire-nvr run \
    --sample-file-dir=/var/lib/moonfire-nvr/sample \
    --db-dir=/var/lib/moonfire-nvr/db \
    --http-addr=0.0.0.0:8080
Environment=TZ=:/etc/localtime
Environment=MOONFIRE_FORMAT=google-systemd
Environment=MOONFIRE_LOG=info
Environment=RUST_BACKTRACE=1
Type=simple
User=moonfire-nvr
Nice=-20
Restart=on-abnormal
CPUAccounting=true
MemoryAccounting=true
BlockIOAccounting=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note that the HTTP port currently has no authentication, encryption, or logging; it should not be directly exposed to the Internet.

Complete the installation through systemctl commands:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl start moonfire-nvr
$ sudo systemctl status moonfire-nvr
$ sudo systemctl enable moonfire-nvr

See the systemd documentation for more information. The manual pages for systemd.service and systemctl may be of particular interest.

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