The guide was written from a verified build and install, but the steps
past that point were derived from the Debian packaging rather than run.
Working through them on Apple Silicon to a running system turned up
three things that were wrong or missing.
mysql -u root does not work. A Homebrew MariaDB authenticates root with
the unix_socket plugin, so only the operating system's root matches it;
your own account gets the administrative account, which is what plain
mariadb uses.
Nothing said ZoneMinder has to be started as ZM_WEB_USER. zmpkg.pl
compares the current user against it and tries sudo -u and two forms of
su to become it, all of which fail for an ordinary user, and stops with
"Unable to find valid su syntax". systemd hides this on Linux by
starting the unit as the web user. Now says so, and gives the
workstation alternative of running everything as one account.
The web server section did not mention that zms is a CGI binary. Apache
runs those with mod_cgi; nginx needs a wrapper such as fcgiwrap, which
Homebrew does not package, so with nginx alone the console works and
live streams do not. Also noted that the generated samples reference
/etc/pki, /etc/nginx and /run/fcgiwrap.sock, none of which exist here.
Added the hardcoded taint-safe PATH to the known gaps, since it is what
breaks zmupdate.pl on Apple Silicon: seventeen scripts pin
/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin, so the database client in the Homebrew
prefix cannot be found. Worth making configurable - it would equally
affect a --prefix=/opt install on Linux. Sys::CPU is listed too; it has
been removed from CPAN and only zmtelemetry.pl uses it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01B5KL9Xbi7K5aGsauLtd8tG
ZoneMinder now builds and installs on macOS, but the steps that make it
work existed nowhere. The installation guide has pages for Debian,
Ubuntu, Redhat and WSL, and nothing for macOS.
Covers the parts that are not guessable, each one walked through on a
real machine rather than reasoned about:
- Sys::Mmap, Date::Manip and a DBD driver are missing from the Perl Apple
ships, and configure only warns, so it is easy to get a clean build and
a system whose Perl daemons cannot read monitor state at all. A
Homebrew Perl additionally needs DBI and LWP::UserAgent, since it has
none of the extras Apple bundles.
- DBD::MariaDB does not install without help. mysql_config hands its
configure step -lzstd -lssl -lcrypto, but a Homebrew Perl's ldflags
carry no -L for the Homebrew prefix, so it fails with "Can't
link/include C library 'zstd', 'ssl', 'crypto', aborting". The guide
gives the --libs and --cflags that get it through.
- ZoneMinder's Perl modules land in vendorlib and survive Perl upgrades;
the CPAN modules land in sitelib, which resolves into the Cellar and
does not. Worth knowing before an upgrade quietly breaks the daemons.
- ZM_NO_MMAP is not a way around Sys::Mmap. macOS caps SysV shared memory
at 4 MiB per segment across 8 segments, and a 1080p RGB frame does not
fit in one.
- mysql-client is keg-only, so the build needs an explicit -I or it stops
at "'mysql/mysql.h' file not found".
- Nothing creates the runtime directories. On Linux the package does it.
- The test binary has to run from build/tests, because zm_font.cpp loads
its fixtures by relative path.
- zmpkg.pl falls back to zmdc.pl without systemd, so there is a way to
start ZoneMinder before a launchd plist exists.
Honest about what is missing rather than papering over it: no plist, no
Homebrew formula, no log rotation, no local cameras, and the arp-scan and
ip warnings configure emits. Also separates Homebrew's prefix from
ZoneMinder's install prefix, which differ on Apple Silicon and are easy
to conflate.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01B5KL9Xbi7K5aGsauLtd8tG
Document the need to add www-data to the video group for local camera
access. The package postinst now does this automatically, but source
installs still require the manual step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Failing to install apache2 results in subsequent calls to a2enconf and a2enmod failing because they might not have been installed. (in my case, I was using a minimal Debian 12 install which doesn't install apache2)
As written, you can't redirect sudo output as desired. Wrapping the "echo deb..." in quotes will permit a regular user to redirect stdout to /etc/apt/sources.list
