Read-Only motionEyeOS cameras

[Brad Burleson]

So I've got 4 cameras running motionEyeOS based on the Pi Zero W (using the official Raspberry Pi Zero case) and they talk to a Pi 3 running as a hub (running Raspbian "Jesse").

At $56 per HD surveillance camera ($30 camera, $10 Pi Zero W, $5 case, $11 microSD card) it's hard to complain (Ok I'm ignoring shipping costs and still need to add a power supply but still... great price).

As I look towards making something robust I can mount thru the house I wonder... how well will these boards handle power loss?  Currently I shut them down before disconnecting power but I wanted a better solution - something like a UPS.  I've spent quite a bit of time looking at the various solutions but there aren't many that properly handle power loss and if they do the cost is non-trivial.

I had decided to build my own solution but I wonder if it's possible to simply run the camera nodes read only?  Have the output directed to a server somewhere (SMB?)

Worst case I thought maybe I could do the setup and configuration as normal but then ssh into the node and change /etc/fstab to mount all the partitions as read only?  Ideally the application itself could support turning read only "on" or "off" based on user input.  Too much?

I wonder if anyone has tried to run motionEyeOS read only?

I'd say I'm worrying too much but just playing around I find it easy to corrupt my microSD cards (and they are Samsung EVO + cards, which I thought had a good reputation).

Regards,

Brad.

[Calin Crisan]

motionEyeOS runs in read-only mode by default: https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/wiki/Tweaks#partition-layout

[Brad Burleson]

On Monday, September 11, 2017 at 1:22:59 AM UTC-7, Calin Crisan wrote:

motionEyeOS runs in read-only mode by default: https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/wiki/Tweaks#partition-layout

Thanks for the link - I keep losing things these days.  But what about /data?  If I make some changes to the configuration and then pull the power plug, don't I risk corruption? 

I suppose I'm just being paranoid?

Thanks,

Brad.

[Calin Crisan]

Data partition is indeed writable, but:

• log files could easily go to ram: https://github.com/ccrisan/thingos/wiki/Logs#logs-in-ram
• config files could simply not be modified and thus writes to the data partition be minimal

Another idea is to use the sync command after each write so that buffers are flushed immediately to the disk, thus minimizing the risk of losing written data.

[Brad Burleson]

That will work, thanks!  That's exactly what I needed.  

Worst case I figure if I always reboot after I make any configuration changes I should minimize the risk as well - and I can easily do that remotely.

Thanks again,

Brad.