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Installing Moonfire NVR

Downloading, installing, and configuring Moonfire NVR with Docker

Downloading, installing, and configuring Moonfire NVR with Docker

This document describes how to download, install, and configure Moonfire NVR via the prebuilt Docker images available for x86-64, arm64, and arm. If you instead want to build Moonfire NVR yourself, see the Build instructions.

First, install Docker if you haven't already, and verify sudo docker run --rm hello-world works.

sudo or not?

If you prefer to save typing by not prefixing all docker and nvr commands with sudo, see Docker docs: Manage Docker as a non-root user. Note docker access is equivalent to root access security-wise.

Next, you'll need to set up your filesystem and the Moonfire NVR user.

Moonfire NVR keeps two kinds of state:

a SQLite database, typically <1 GiB. It should be stored on flash if available. In most cases your root filesystem is on flash, so the default location of /var/lib/moonfire-nvr/db will be fine.
the "sample file directories", which hold the actual samples/frames of H.264 video. These should be quite large and are typically stored on hard drives. More below.

(See schema.md for more information.)

On most Linux systems, you can create the user as follows:

$ sudo useradd --user-group --create-home --home /var/lib/moonfire-nvr moonfire-nvr

and create a script called nvr to run Moonfire NVR as the intended host user. This script supports running Moonfire NVR's various administrative commands interactively and managing a long-lived Docker container for its web interface.

As you set up this script, adjust the tz variable as appropriate for your time zone.

Use your favorite editor to create /usr/local/bin/nvr, starting from the configuration below:

$ sudo nano /usr/local/bin/nvr
(see below for contents)
$ sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/nvr

/usr/local/bin/nvr:

#!/bin/bash -e

# Set your timezone here.
tz="America/Los_Angeles"

# or eg "scottlamb/moonfire-nvr:v0.6.5" to specify a particular version.
image_name="scottlamb/moonfire-nvr:latest"
container_name="moonfire-nvr"
common_docker_run_args=(
        --mount=type=bind,source=/var/lib/moonfire-nvr,destination=/var/lib/moonfire-nvr

        # Add additional mount lines here for each sample file directory
        # outside of /var/lib/moonfire-nvr, eg:
        # --mount=type=bind,source=/media/nvr/sample,destination=/media/nvr/sample

        --user="$(id -u moonfire-nvr):$(id -g moonfire-nvr)"

        # This avoids errors with broken seccomp on Raspberry Pi OS.
        --security-opt=seccomp:unconfined

        # docker's default log driver won't rotate logs properly, and will throw
        # away logs when you destroy and recreate the container. Using journald
        # solves these problems.
        # https://docs.docker.com/config/containers/logging/configure/
        --log-driver=journald
        --log-opt="tag=moonfire-nvr"

        --env=RUST_BACKTRACE=1
        --env=TZ=":${tz}"
)

case "$1" in
run)
        shift
        exec docker run \
                --detach=true \
                --restart=unless-stopped \
                "${common_docker_run_args[@]}" \

                # This is the simplest way of configuring networking, although
                # you can use eg --publish=8080:8080 if you prefer.
                --network=host \

                --name="${container_name}" \
                "${image_name}" \
                run \

                # Add any additional `moonfire-nvr run` arguments here, eg
                # "--rtsp-library=ffmpeg" if the default "--rtsp-library=retina"
                # isn't working.
                --allow-unauthenticated-permissions='view_video: true' \

                "$@"
        ;;
start|stop|logs|rm)
        exec docker "$@" "${container_name}"
        ;;
pull)
        exec docker pull "${image_name}"
        ;;
*)
        exec docker run \
                --interactive=true \
                --tty \
                --rm \
                "${common_docker_run_args[@]}" \
                "${image_name}" \
                "$@"
        ;;
esac

then try it out by initializing the database:

$ sudo nvr init

This will create a directory /var/lib/moonfire-nvr/db with a SQLite3 database within it.

Dedicated hard drive setup

If a dedicated hard drive is available, set it up now.

If you haven't yet created the filesystem, consider using mkfs.ext4 -T largefile -m 1, as described in more detail on the wiki. If you're using a USB SATA bridge, this is also a good time to ensure you're not using UAS, as described there. UAS has been linked to filesystem corruption.

Set up the mount point and sample file directory:

$ sudo vim /etc/fstab
$ sudo mkdir /media/nvr
$ sudo mount /media/nvr
$ sudo install -d -o moonfire-nvr -g moonfire-nvr -m 700 /media/nvr/sample

In /etc/fstab, add a line similar to this:

UUID=23d550bc-0e38-4825-acac-1cac8a7e091f    /media/nvr   ext4    nofail,noatime,lazytime,data=writeback,journal_async_commit  0       2

You can look up the correct uuid for your disk via blkid.

If you use the nofail attribute in /etc/fstab as described above, your system will boot successfully even when the hard drive is unavailable (such as when your external USB storage is unmounted). This can be helpful when recovering from problems.

Create the sample directory.

$ sudo mkdir /media/nvr/sample
$ sudo chown -R moonfire-nvr:moonfire-nvr /media/nvr

Add a new --mount line to your Docker wrapper script /usr/local/bin/nvr to expose this new volume to the Docker container, right where a comment mentions "Additional mount lines".

Completing configuration through the UI

Once your system is set up, it's time to initialize an empty database and add the cameras and sample directories. You can do this by using the moonfire-nvr binary's text-based configuration tool.

$ sudo nvr config 2>debug-log

Did it return without doing anything?

If nvr config returns you to the console prompt right away, look in the debug-log file for why. One common reason is that you have Moonfire NVR running; you'll need to shut it down first. Try nvr stop before nvr config and nvr start afterward.

In the user interface,

add your sample file dir(s) under "Directories and retention". (Many streams can share a directory. It's recommended to have just one directory per hard drive.)

If you used a dedicated hard drive, use the directory you precreated (eg /media/nvr/sample). Otherwise, try /var/lib/moonfire-nvr/sample. Moonfire NVR will create the directory as long as it has the required permissions on the parent directory.
add cameras under "Cameras and streams".
- See the wiki for notes about specific camera models. The Configuring cameras page mentions a couple tools that can autodetect RTSP URLs.
- There's a "Test" button to verify your settings directly from the add/edit camera dialog.
- Be sure to assign each stream you want to capture to a sample file directory and check the "record" box.
- flush_if_sec should typically be 120 seconds. This causes the database to be flushed when the first instant of one of this stream's completed recordings is 2 minutes old. A "recording" is a segment of a video stream that is 60–120 seconds when first establishing the stream, about 60 seconds midstream, and shorter when an error or server shutdown terminates the stream. Thus, a value just below 60 will cause the database to be flushed once per minute per stream in the steady state. A value around 180 will cause the database to be once every 3 minutes per stream, or less frequently if other streams cause flushes first. Lower values cause less video to be lost on power loss. Higher values reduce wear on the SSD holding the SQLite database, particularly when you have many cameras and when you record both the "main" and "sub" streams of each camera.
Assign disk space to your cameras back in "Directories and retention". Leave a little slack between the total limit and the filesystem capacity, even if you store nothing else on the disk. 1 GiB of slack per camera should be plenty. This is needed for a few reasons:
- Up to max(120, flush_if_sec) seconds of video can be written before being counted toward the usage because the recording doesn't count until it's fully written, and old recordings can't be deleted until the next database flush. So a 8 Mbps video stream with flush_if_sec=300 will take up to (8 Mbps * 300 sec / 8 bits/byte) = 300 MB ~= 286 MiB of extra disk space.
- 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.
- Smaller factors: deletion isn't instantaneous, and directories themselves take up some disk space.
Add a user for yourself (and optionally others) under "Users". You'll need this to access the web UI once you enable authentication.

Starting it up

Note that at this stage, Moonfire NVR's web interface is insecure: it doesn't use https and doesn't require you to authenticate to it. You might be comfortable starting it in this configuration to try it out, particularly if the machine it's running on is behind a home router's firewall. You might not; in that case read through secure the system first.

This command will start a detached Docker container for the web interface. It will automatically restart when your system does.

$ sudo nvr run

You can temporarily disable the service via nvr stop and restart it later via nvr start. You'll need to do this before and after using nvr config.

The HTTP interface is accessible on port 8080; if your web browser is running on the same machine, you can access it at http://localhost:8080/.

If the system isn't working, see the Troubleshooting guide.

See also the system setup guide on the wiki, which has additional advice on configuring a Linux system which runs Moonfire NVR.

Once the web interface seems to be working, read through securing Moonfire NVR.

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