moonfire-nvr/guide/install-scripted.md

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Building and installing Moonfire NVR using provided scripts

This guide will walk you through building and installing Moonfire NVR with the provided scripts. You should have already downloaded the source code as mentioned in install.md, and after completing these instructions you should go back to that page to complete configuration.

There are no binary packages of Moonfire NVR available yet, so it must be built from source. This is made easy using a few scripts that will do the job for you unless you have very a different operating system. The scripts are written and tested under ubuntu and raspbian but should not be hard to modify if necessary.

Setting everything up

Start by executing the setup script:

$ cd moonfire-nvr
$ scripts/setup-ubuntu.sh

If this is the very first time you run this script, a file named prep.config will be created and the script will stop. This file is where you will set or change variables that describe the Moonfire installation you want. The initial execution will put default values in this value, but only for the most commonly changed variables. For a full list of variables, see below.

Once you modify this file (if desired), you run the setup script again. This time it will use the values in the file and proceed with the setup. The script will download and install any pre-requisites. Watch carefully for error messages. It may be you have conflicting installations. If that is the case you must either resolve those first, or go the manual route.

The script may be given the -f option. If you do, you are telling the script that you do not want any existing installation of ffmpeg to be overwritten with a newer one. This could be important to you. If you do use it, and the version you have installed is not compatible with Moonfire, you will be told through a message. If you have no ffmpeg installed, the option is effectively ignored and the necessary version of ffmpeg will be installed.

The setup script should only need to be run once (after prep.config has been created), although if you do a re-install of Moonfire, in particular a much newer version, it is a good idea to run it again as requirements and pre-requisites may have changed. Running the script multiple times should not have any negative effects.

Note: It is quite possible that during the running of the setup script, in particular during the building of libavutil you will see several compiler warnings. This, while undesirable, is a direct result of the original developers not cleaning up the cause(s) of these warnings. They are, however, just warnings and will not affect correct functioning of Moonfire.

Once the setup is complete, two steps remain: building and then installing. There is a script for each of these scenarios, but since generally you would want to install after a succesul build, the build script automatically invokes the install script, unless specifically told not to.

Building

The build script is involved like this:

$ scripts/build.sh

This script will perform all steps necessary to build a complete Moonfire setup. If there are no build errors, this script will then automatically invoke the install script (see below).

There are two options you may pass to this script. The first is -B which means "build only". In other words, this will stop the automatic invocation of the install script. The other option available is -t and causes the script to ignore the results of any tests. In other words, even if tests fail, the build phase will be considered successful. This can occasionally be useful if you are doing development, and have temporarily broken one or more test, but want to proceed anyway.

Installing

The install step is performed by the script that can be manually invoked like this:

$ scripts/install.sh

This script will copy various files resulting from the build to the correct locations. It will also create a "service configuration" for systemctl that can be used to control Moonfire. This service configuration can be prevented by using the -s option to this script. It will also prevent the automatic start of this configuration.

Configuration variables

Although not all listed in the default prep.config file, these are the available configuration variable and their defaults.

NVR_USER=moonfire-nvr
NVR_GROUP=$NVR_USER
NVR_PORT=8080
NVR_HOME_BASE=/var/lib
DB_NAME=db
DB_DIR=$NVR_HOME/$DB_NAME
SERVICE_NAME=moonfire-nvr
SERVICE_DESC="Moonfire NVR"
SERVICE_BIN=/usr/local/bin/$SERVICE_NAME

Completing installation

After the steps on this page, go back to Downloading, installing, and configuring Moonfire NVR to set up the sample file directory and configure the system.