SMS Notifications
These instructions are to assist with email or text message setup.
For SMS, You setup email to point to a text gateway. Setup a filter that monitors the cameras for alarms, and when an alarm is set off you have it send an email to the text gateway (or email address). Simple.
You can get images from the alarm embedded in the text (covered in install steps).
The following is tested for 1.30, and 1.34.
Installation
Follow How to get ssmtp working with Zoneminder.
There are two ways to send emails in options - email. One is sending a short email, and one is designed for longer messages. In the code (as of 1.30 lines 818 and 918), in zmfilter.pl these are correspondingly sub SendEmail and sub SendMessage. They are distinct functions. SSMTP/MSMTP support is in SendEmail but not in SendMessage.
MSMTP Specific Install
Debian 10 and newer should use MSMTP.
apt-get install msmtp msmtp-mta mutt
Testing the email
First test via terminal outside of ZM. Confirm it is working there. Example configurations and calls can be found at: https://wiki.debian.org/msmtp and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MSMTP (for msmtp).
Once you get a working /etc/msmtprc configuration, try:
echo "hello" | msmtp -a default user@email.com
Watch out for the following:
- Make sure app-armor is disabled for msmtp. The following commands will help: apt install apparmor-utils and then aa-disable /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.msmtp
Testing the email in Zoneminder
Then:
- run a filter in the background (see tips below) or execute.
- Enable logging on /var/log/zm folder.
- tail the ZMFilter log and syslog.
- to initiate an alarm (if alarms are used to test emails), use 'force alarm' on the monitor screen. That is, view a camera, and click force alarm.
You should see SSMTP send an email on the syslog (or try) and the zmfilter log will report the trigger.
Tips
- Free email services limit how many emails you are allowed to send through SMTP. It helps to disable cron emails.
- Always make filters for 1 (or low number) results. If you fail to do this, you could try to send dozens of emails.
- When you make the filter you want the 'current' alarms. You don't want old events. This is accomplished with a Date/Time greater than or equal to -1 minute.
- If when testing the filter execute, the 'execute' button becomes unclickable, uncheck then recheck the email option.
#watch "tail -n 30000 /var/log/syslog | grep sSMTP | tail"
- When testing use a background filter, and watch the logs. Filters run every 60 seconds by default.
- If you send email as someone other than root, make sure he is in /etc/ssmtp/revaliases
- test emails with
cat file | mail -s "subject" destination@email.com OR echo "some text" | mail -s "subject destination@email.com FOR ATTACHMENTS: echo hello | mail -A /dir/to/attachment.log -s "email with file" destination@email.com OR Also try mutt (slightly different) mutt -a /dir/to/attachment.log -s "email with file" -- destination@email.com
- make sure email is checked off in filters. It gets unchecked easily.
- service zoneminder restart after changes (NOTE: this wasn't required for just setting email settings in ZM options 07/2020).
- test setting off alarms by clicking 'force alarm' in the monitor view, then unclick to remove alarm.
- make one dedicated email alert account if you want multiple users to receive alerts. There is a patch in the forums to add multiple recipients.
- It's tough to use Motion detection for alerts with IR active.. You might be best off using a device with ZMTrigger, or the cameras built in motion detection if night IR is used... False alerts appear when a camera switches from Day lens to IR.
- Always double check the filters are right, AFTER you save them.
- Once an email has been sent for an event, that event is marked and an email for it won't be sent again[1].
SSMTP Specific Tips
Deleted. See archive if you need these tips for Debian < 10.
MSMTP Specific Tips
- MSMTP has been tested to work as an alternative to SSMTP (but configured identically) in Debian Buster / Devuan 3.
- Apparmor can impede msmtp logging on Buster (07/2020).
- Cron may require setting an environment variable of EMAIL=sendingaddress@email.com in the crontab
- msmtp can use mutt to send attachments. (ssmtp above was setup with mailutils). See below:
Compare these cronjobs
ssmtp/mailutils:
0 1 1 * * echo hello | mail -A /cameras/report.log -s "ZM Report Log" user@email.com
msmtp/mutt :
0 1 1 * * echo hello | mutt -a /cameras/report.log -s "ZM Report Log" -- user@email.com
Example Filter
See Filters
Send email if only on a certain runstate (Filter on Run States)
Notifications are easy if you want alarms emailed between a static time, for example between 12AM and 6AM. If you have a situation where you may not want the alarms to send you text messages on occasion, you can filter on run states.
Starting from (ZM > 1.30.4) you can set filters based on run states, which means you can change the run state at any desired time (using Cron, or manually), and only if a runstate matches the filter will SMS be sent.
Note that in the author's opinion, run states can become unwieldy for large installations. It's best used with smaller setups only.
Send email if a part of ZM goes offline
For any serious deployment you will want to monitor ZM in case it goes offline, or a hdd fails. While it's possible to use a separate system for this (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_network_monitoring_systems), you can also simply have email alerts in cron. Here is an example script that can watch two hdds (adjust as needed) and the status of ZM and Mysql.
#!/bin/bash /etc/init.d/zoneminder status > /root/zm_up_log echo "" >> /root/zm_up_log /etc/init.d/mysql status >> /root/zm_up_log ps -Ao user,fname,pmem | grep -e zmc -e zma | grep -v zmaudit >> /root/zm_up_log echo "" >> /root/zm_up_log echo "" >> /root/zm_up_log lsblk >> /root/zm_up_log echo "" >> /root/zm_up_log echo "" >> /root/zm_up_log dmesg | grep -e sda -e sdb >> /root/zm_up_log echo "ZM_Status" | mutt -s "ZM Status" destination@email.com -a /root/zm_up_log
This script can be run in crontab as often as you wish. It should also be easy to filter the script to email only if something is out of the ordinary. In fact, let's do that next.
Send email if HDD Fails
#!/bin/bash # 20 * * * * root /root/hdderror.sh (this script) # must run as root for access to dmesg in debian # chmod +x LOGFILE=/root/file.log SUBJECT="e.g. Home Camera System HDD Error" echo "" > $LOGFILE # any text of "error" with regards to sda,sdb, etc that isn't a remount dmesg | grep -e sda -e sdb -e sdc -e sdd -e sde | grep -i error | grep -v remount >> $LOGFILE #returns 1 if nothing if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then #send email echo "HDD Error..." | mutt -s $SUBJECT destination@email.com -a $LOGFILE else echo "do nothing" fi
