(Install On Ubuntu (19.10 or Earlier)

Before Proceeding

• Read the general Installation page first.
• These instructions apply to Ubuntu distributions. They may work for other Ubuntu derivatives (such as Linux Mint) but they haven't been tested.
• All commands require root; use sudo before each command or become root using sudo -i.
• Instruction sequence confirmed as of 1 March 2021, Python 2.7 and pip2 install confirmed.
• If doing a Fresh Install of 19.10 or older, you may need to update the repository source(s) from http://us.archive... (or similar) to http://old-releases... as the old repositories no longer work.
• Update: Confirmed install instructions on Ubuntu 18.04, 26 Feb 2022

Instructions

1. Install Ubuntu 19.10 or older image (Desktop or Server, 32bit or 64bit) and update.

    apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y
   

2. Install motion, ffmpeg and v4l-utils:

    apt-get install motion ffmpeg v4l-utils
   

   note: Precompiled binaries of motion can be found here.

3. Install the dependencies from the repositories:

    apt-get install python-pip python-dev curl libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libjpeg-dev
   

4. Install motioneye, which will automatically pull Python dependencies (tornado, jinja2, pillow and pycurl):

    pip install motioneye
   

   note: If pillow installation fails, you can try installing it from official repos using apt-get install python-pillow.

5. Prepare the configuration directory:

    mkdir -p /etc/motioneye
    cp /usr/local/share/motioneye/extra/motioneye.conf.sample /etc/motioneye/motioneye.conf
   

6. Prepare the media directory:

    mkdir -p /var/lib/motioneye
   

7. Add an init script, configure it to run at startup and start the motionEye server:

   • Ubuntu 14.10 or earlier, upstart-based:

       cp /usr/local/share/motioneye/extra/motioneye.init-debian /etc/init.d/motioneye
       chmod +x /etc/init.d/motioneye
       update-rc.d -f motioneye defaults
       /etc/init.d/motioneye start
     

   • Ubuntu 15.04 or later, systemd-based:

       cp /usr/local/share/motioneye/extra/motioneye.systemd-unit-local /etc/systemd/system/motioneye.service
       systemctl daemon-reload
       systemctl enable motioneye
       systemctl start motioneye
     

8. To upgrade to the newest version of motionEye, just issue:

        pip install motioneye --upgrade
   

   • Ubuntu 14.10 or earlier:

       service motioneye restart
     

   • Ubuntu 15.04 or later:

       systemctl restart motioneye