Tag: Third Party NAS Devices

Preparing a Third-Party Storage System

Archiving must be done to a network resource that supports the hosting of SMB shares. By default, S-Series storage systems built by Exacq come with Samba installed. The following steps will need to be performed on a third-party Ubuntu system used in place of an ExacqVision S-Series system.

1. If you are using a software-only install on your own device running off-the-shelf Ubuntu Linux, you will first need to install/update Samba with the following commands in Terminal:
   
   &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;sudo apt-get update</br> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;sudo apt-get install samba

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2. Samba uses its own credentials, separate from those of the OS user. This Samba user account must also exist as an OS user account. If you do not already have an OS user account you wish to use, create an OS user account with command below. If you do already have an OS user you wish to use for this, you may skip to Step 3.
   
       sudo useradd username

• Now set this user’s OS password with the following:
  
      sudo passwd username

• After entering the command, you will be prompted to enter a password, then re-enter the password to confirm. Remember, in Linux, passwords do not appear as you type.

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3. You will need to create a username and set the user password for Samba. The ‘-a‘ parameter in the command below creates the Samba user account.
   
       sudo smbpasswd -a username

• After entering the command above, you will be prompted to enter a password, then re-enter the password to confirm. Remember, in Linux, passwords do not appear as you type.

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4. Next, create the directory to be shared. This is where your archived video will be placed.
   
       sudo mkdir /home/username/foldername

• Using the command above, if you wanted to place a folder called VideoArchive in your admin home directory, the command would be sudo mkdir /home/admin/VideoArchive.

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5. Change the permissions to the directory you just created to allow files to be written to it.
   
       sudo chown admin /home/username/foldername

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6. Next, enter the following command to edit the Samba configuration.
   
       sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

• Scroll to the end of the file and add the following lines:
  
  [<foldername>]
path = /home/<username>/<foldername>
valid users = <username>
read only = no

• You will replace ‘<foldername>‘ with that of the directory you created in Step 4 and replace ‘<username>‘ with the user created in Step 3.
  
  Press CTRL-X to exit the nano editor. It will ask if you want to overwrite the existing file, enter y and press Enter to return to the Terminal prompt.

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7. Restart Samba:
   
       sudo service smbd restart

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Preparing a Third-Party Client System

From the perspective of the SMB server, your recording ExacqVision NVR, where the ExacqVision Server software resides, acts as the SMB client. Therefore, if your recording NVR is also a third-party Ubuntu system, rather than one built-by Exacq, you will need to perform the following steps.

1. Open a Terminal window and enter each of the following commands:
   
   sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install smbclient

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2. Restart the client.

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Connecting to an Archive

1. In the ExacqVision Client navigate to the Archive Settings page.

Press the New button, then enter the Address of the share and the username and password you created earlier. The address will be the share path, i.e. – \\StorageIPaddress\foldername

Press the Apply button to connect to the share, then configure your Task Schedule.

NOTE: Archiving is a 1:1 relationship. Only one NVR may archive to a share. For multiple NVRs you will need multiple SMB archive targets.

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