Installing Obseron GUI on CentOS 6 (Deprecated)

CentOS has discontinued support for version 6 of its operating systems as of November 30, 2020.

These instructions will not be valid as the official CentOS mirrors are no longer available. It is advicable to not to install on CentOS 6 anymore.

These instructions will help in installing Obseron with a GUI on a CentOS 6 platform. Obseron with a GUI will work as a viewing client and as a recorder. Installation may differ from the instructions due to different hardware used for servers. There are only a few mandatory steps, but all the suggested steps are very useful. These instructions should not be followed blindly but adjusted to fit your hardware (such as GPU and drivers for it).

1. Requirements

CentOS 6 Minimal Desktop (64-bit suggested)

2. CentOS partitions and installation

The following partition table is a suggestion on how to partition your system when you have a single 1TB hard disk.

Mountpoint	Size (GB)	Type	Description
/	25	ext4	(OS root directory)
swap	2	swap	(Swap partition)
/home	50	ext4	(Users home directory, Gallery and configs will be stored here)
/var/lib/obseron/capture/d	100	ext4	(This partition is for the database)
/var/lib/obseron/capture/e	"Use all remaining space"	ext4	(This is for the actual recordings)

After the CentOS installation, add a new user (for example "obseron") and log in.

3. Installing Obseron

To install Obseron, open up a terminal and elevate your privileges to root.

[obseron@localhost ~]$ su -
Password:

#(Install Obseron repository)
rpm -Uvh http://packages.ksenos.fi/centos/6/x86_64/ksenos-release-0.1-3.noarch.rpm

#(Install Obseron)
yum -y install obseron-gui obseron-gallery

#(Set privileges for recording space for user "obseron")
chown -R obseron:obseron /var/lib/obseron/capture

After the installation is completed, you can close the terminal and open Obseron. Next, all you need to do is enter a product key, configure recording spaces from the Obseron settings, and start adding cameras. These are all described in the Obseron Quickstart Guide.

4. Suggested configurations and additional software

4.1 Update all packages. (root access required)

yum -y update

4.2 Install additional repository for the packages in later suggestions. (root access required)

rpm --import http://elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org
rpm -Uvh http://elrepo.org/elrepo-release-6-8.el6.elrepo.noarch.rpm

4.3 Install additional programs. (root access required)

yum -y install kmod-joydev nano wget gedit evince eog vlc gnome-system-monitor

kmod-joydev	Joystick driver
gedit	GUI text editor
nano	CLI text editor
wget	CLI download utility
evince	Document reader to open PDF manuals
eog	Image viewer for GNOME
vlc	Video player to watch exported video clips
gnome-system-monitor	Basic system monitoring tools to see memory usage and system loads

4.4 If your system has an NVIDIA GPU, you need to install NVIDIA drivers. We do not suggest using Intel integrated GPU on CentOS with Obseron as the driver has caused problems in the past. The following command will first detect the correct driver and then install it. (root access required)

yum -y install nvidia-detect && yum -y install $(nvidia-detect)

4.5 Set automatic OS login for your user (in this example "obseron"). (root access required)

gedit /etc/gdm/custom.conf

Edit or add the following lines under [daemon] section.

AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=obseron

4.6 Disable some selected system services. (root access required)

#(Automated bug reporting system for OS)
chkconfig abrtd off

#(Firewall for IPv4 traffic, keep it on if you plan on configuring it)
chkconfig iptables off

#(kdump is for creating crash dump from kernel crashes)
chkconfig kdump off

4.7 Increase the maximum number of open file handles. Too many open file handles have caused some systems to malfunction when the default lower value is used. (root access required)

gedit /etc/security/limits.conf

Add the following lines at the end of the file.

obseron soft nofile 10000
obseron hard nofile 10000

4.8 Set desktop attributes like the screensaver and automatic locking for the user.

First exit from elevated privileges.

[root@localhost ~]# exit

Then type the following commands as a normal user.

#(Removes computer, home and trash icons from desktop)
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/computer_icon_visible "false"
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/home_icon_visible "false"
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/trash_icon_visible "false"

#(Use browser style view on file explorer)
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser "true"

#(Disable system hibernate and suspend)
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/can_hibernate "false"
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/can_suspend "false"

#(Disable screensaver and locking)
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_enabled "false"
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/gnome-screensaver/idle_activation_enabled "false"

#(Disable monitor and computer sleep)
gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/timeout/sleep_computer_ac "0"
gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/timeout/sleep_display_ac "0"

#(Set solid black background)
gconftool-2 --type string --set /desktop/gnome/background/color_shading_type "solid"
gconftool-2 --type string --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename ""
gconftool-2 --type string --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_options "none"
gconftool-2 --type string --set /desktop/gnome/background/primary_color "#000000"

Reboot is also suggested after all of these changes. Before rebooting, make sure to doublecheck your NVIDIA driver (if you installed it) is the correct one.

Obseron can be manually started from the Applications -> Video menu.

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