UniFi-Video Service failing to Start

Do note that the UniFi-Video software is no longer supported should be migrated to the UniFi Protect systems.

Running “systemctl status unifi-video” gives the following error.

(unifi-video) checking for system.properties and truststore files…
…fail!

It appears that the error is due to an unsupported version of Java. Installing an older version of Java resolves the issue.

You can check which versions of Java are available with

apt-cache show openjdk-8-jre

The versions that showed up for me were

8u282-b08-0ubuntu1
8u252-b09-1ubuntu1 

Installing the last one fixed the issue for now.

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jre-headless=8u252-b09-1ubuntu1

https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/l30jm5/unifi_video_31013_not_compatible_with_openjdk_180/

Unable to Remove Authorized SSH Keys from AirOS

For some reason I ran into an issue where I can not remove authorized SSH Keys in AirOS version 6.3. It redirects to a 404 page and then to the main page.

Attempting to remove SSH keys in AirOS
404 Error while attempting to remove SSH keys

Thankfully, we can still remove the authorized keys from the command line. For more information on making changes over SSH, refer to the following post.

SSH into radio. Replace username and IP address with your radios user and IP.

ssh ubnt@192.168.1.20

Open up config file

vi /tmp/system.cfg

Search for the lines that contain

the sshd.auth.key and remove them

Remove the sshd.auth.key lines

Save the file and write the configuration with

/usr/etc/rc.d/rc.softrestart save

Once the command completes, you should be good to go.

Ubiquiti U Installer Screenshots and Configuration Interface

By default the U Installer redirects you to a page asking you to download the app. You can get to the actual U Installer web page by going to https://169.254.169.169

Default U Installer Page
Access U Installer Certificate Error

It has the same interface as a regular Airmax M equipment.

U Installer main page

Notes on Migrating UniFi-Video NVR Disk

Recently upgraded a UniFi-Video VM by creating a new VM and restoring the backup from the previous one. There was a separate virtual disk used for storing all the videos. Although once I reattached it, I had to change the owner to the unifi-video user. lt was reporting that the owner/group was 127 and 134, looks like that was the user ID from the previous VM.

Example output from ls -hla command

drwxr-xr-x 3 127 134 4.0K Jan 16 2020 176de761-8399-3bed-8ceb-917cbe4d25bd
drwxr-xr-x 2 127 134 4.0K Sep 10 12:28 21d506ef-dded-31f2-baf8-c109a7e653b9
drwxr-xr-x 4 127 134 4.0K Jan 1 2020 1a3afc4c-a030-39a1-b139-857444c8b71c

Ended up changing the owner to the unifi-video owner with the chown command. /path/to/videos is the mount point of the video drive.

chown -R unifi-video:unifi-video /path/to/videos

Configuring UFW Firewall on Ubuntu for UniFi and UniFi-Video

You should be able to copy and paste all the following commands in. You can check the status of the commands after with

sudo ufw status

Allowing access to UniFi ports

sudo ufw allow 3478/UDP
sudo ufw allow 5514/UDP
sudo ufw allow 8080/TCP
sudo ufw allow 8443/TCP
sudo ufw allow 8880/TCP
sudo ufw allow 8843/TCP
sudo ufw allow 6789/TCP
sudo ufw allow 27117/TCP
sudo ufw allow 10001/UDP
sudo ufw allow 1900/UDP

UniFI Video ports

sudo ufw allow 7080/TCP
sudo ufw allow 7443/TCP
sudo ufw allow 7445/TCP
sudo ufw allow 7446/TCP
sudo ufw allow 7447/TCP
sudo ufw allow 10001/UDP
sudo ufw allow 6666/TCP
sudo ufw allow 7004/UDP
sudo ufw allow 7442/TCP

Helpful links

https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/217875218-UniFi-Video-Ports-Used
https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/218506997-UniFi-Ports-Used

Change UniFi Camera Password from Command Line

Basic steps are

  • Change password with passwd
  • Copy passwd hash to /tmp/system.cfg
  • Apply Changes

Changing Password with passwd

The passwd command is normally used for changing the password for a Linux user. We’ll use it to change our user password and then copy the hash out of the /etc/passwd file to use in the Ubiquiti config file.

UVC.v4.18.37.67# passwd
Changing password for admin
New password:
Retype password:
passwd: password for admin changed by admin
UVC.v4.18.37.67#

Copy passwd hash to /tmp/system.cfg

Using “cat /etc/passwd”, we can get what the new password hash is and can copy that into the /tmp/system.cfg file.

UVC.v4.18.37.67# cat /etc/passwd
admin:$6$K4VfN1jGcxaX63Eo$yMGBg7jgCCg.HorkmkQf9wnQcEko.1onZcAa6ua421LonYgfYr8FgHprrwkMqaTYzH0KqCtOEPqDlB3AvkvcW.:0:0:Administrator:/etc/persistent:/bin/sh
UVC.v4.18.37.67#

Open up the /tmp/system.cfg config file, find the section below and replace the hash part, i.e. the part that is in bold.

users.1.name=admin
users.1.password=$6$K4VfN1jGcxaX63Eo$yMGBg7jgCCg.HorkmkQf9wnQcEko.1onZcAa6ua421LonYgfYr8FgHprrwkMqaTYzH0KqCtOEPqDlB3AvkvcW.
users.1.status=1

As a side note, you can copy and past all of the “users.1.*” lines and change the 1 to 2 and have a second user.

Apply Changes

You can use the following command to write the changes and then reboot the camera.

cfgmtd -f /tmp/system.cfg -w && reboot

Long Example

[admin@localhost ~]$ ssh ubnt@10.96.1.91
ubnt@10.96.1.91's password:
BusyBox v1.29.2 () built-in shell (ash)
UVC.v4.18.37.67# passwd
Changing password for admin
New password:
Retype password:
passwd: password for admin changed by admin
UVC.v4.18.37.67# cat /etc/passwd
admin:$6$K4VfN1jGcxaX63Eo$yMGBg7jgCCg.HorkmkQf9wnQcEko.1onZcAa6ua421LonYgfYr8FgHprrwkMqaTYzH0KqCtOEPqDlB3AvkvcW.:0:0:Administrator:/etc/persistent:/bin/sh
UVC.v4.18.37.67# vi /tmp/system.cfg <- Edit the text file and replace the hash with the one from above
UVC.v4.18.37.67# cfgmtd -f /tmp/system.cfg -w && reboot

Upgrade AirFiber 11 to 4.1 from SSH

https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/204977444-airFiber-Updating-the-Firmware

Quick list of commands

ssh ubnt@192.168.1.20  <- Replace with username and IP address
cd /tmp
wget http://dl.ui.com/firmwares/airfiber11X/v4.1.0/AF11.v4.1.0.bin
mv AF11.v4.1.0.bin fwupdate.bin
/sbin/fwupdate -m
  1. Upload the firmware using FTP or SCP to the /tmp directory
  2. Rename the file from AF11…bin to fwupdate.bin
  3. Start the upgrade with
/sbin/fwupdate -m

Wait for it to finish upgrading

UNMS is starting… Repairing UNMS

UNMS is starting

Checking log files.

Log files are located in /home/unms/data/logs

larry@localhost:~$ sudo tail -f /home/unms/data/logs/unms.b5a3713b02f71e06fb3a84a3a9a75c558.log
{"msg":"setting permissions on /home/app/unms/data/control","name":"unknown","hostname":"unknown","pid":0,"v":0,"level":30,"tag":"unms","time":"2020-04-17T16:28:35+00:00"}
{"msg":"Linking /home/app/unms/public/site-images -> /home/app/unms/data/images","name":"unknown","hostname":"unknown","pid":0,"v":0,"level":30,"tag":"unms","time":"2020-04-17T16:28:35+00:00"}
{"msg":"Linking /home/app/unms/public/firmwares -> /home/app/unms/data/firmwares","name":"unknown","hostname":"unknown","pid":0,"v":0,"level":30,"tag":"unms","time":"2020-04-17T16:28:35+00:00"}
{"msg":"Stepping down from root: su-exec \"/usr/local/bin/docker-entrypoint.sh\" \"index.js\"","name":"unknown","hostname":"unknown","pid":0,"v":0,"level":30,"tag":"unms","time":"2020-04-17T16:28:35+00:00"}
{"msg":"Running docker-entrypoint index.js","name":"unknown","hostname":"unknown","pid":0,"v":0,"level":30,"tag":"unms","time":"2020-04-17T16:28:35+00:00"}
{"msg":"Version: 1.1.6+e6ec4747d.2020-03-13T10:52:14+01:00","name":"unknown","hostname":"unknown","pid":0,"v":0,"level":30,"tag":"unms","time":"2020-04-17T16:28:35+00:00"}
{"msg":"Waiting for database containers","name":"unknown","hostname":"unknown","pid":0,"v":0,"level":30,"tag":"unms","time":"2020-04-17T16:28:35+00:00"}
{"msg":"psql: fe_sendauth: no password supplied","name":"unknown","hostname":"unknown","pid":0,"v":0,"level":30,"tag":"unms","time":"2020-04-17T16:28:35+00:00"}
{"msg":"nc: bad address 'unms-redis'","name":"unknown","hostname":"unknown","pid":0,"v":0,"level":30,"tag":"unms","time":"2020-04-17T16:28:35+00:00"}

Stop UNMS

sudo ~unms/app/unms-cli stop

Start UNMS

sudo ~unms/app/unms-cli start

Fix Redis AOF

sudo ~unms/app/unms-cli fix-redis-aof

Running the above command resolved the problem and let UNMS start working.

larry@localhost:~$ sudo ~unms/app/unms-cli stop
larry@localhost:~$ sudo ~unms/app/unms-cli fix-redis-aof
Creating network "unms_internal" with the default driver
Creating network "unms_public" with the default driver
Creating unms-fluentd
The AOF appears to start with an RDB preamble.
Checking the RDB preamble to start:
[offset 0] Checking RDB file --fix
[offset 26] AUX FIELD redis-ver = '5.0.5'
[offset 40] AUX FIELD redis-bits = '64'
[offset 52] AUX FIELD ctime = '1587130996'
[offset 67] AUX FIELD used-mem = '276217328'
[offset 83] AUX FIELD aof-preamble = '1'
[offset 85] Selecting DB ID 0
[offset 80304063] Checksum OK
[offset 80304063] \o/ RDB looks OK! \o/
[info] 3307 keys read
[info] 0 expires
[info] 0 already expired
RDB preamble is OK, proceeding with AOF tail…
0x 79b7264: Expected prefix '*', got: '
AOF analyzed: size=127631360, ok_up_to=127627876, diff=3484
This will shrink the AOF from 127631360 bytes, with 3484 bytes, to 127627876 bytes
Continue? [y/N]: Successfully truncated AOF
larry@localhost:~$ sudo ~unms/app/unms-cli start

On the forums they seemed to recommend stopping the service and running

sudo ~unms/app/unms-cli rewrite-redis-aof

I was getting the following error when trying to run this command. Running the above command worked though.

larry@localhost:~$ sudo ~unms/app/unms-cli stop
larry@localhost:~$ sudo redis-check-aof --fix ~unms/data/redis/appendonly.aof
The AOF appears to start with an RDB preamble.
Checking the RDB preamble to start:
[offset 0] Checking RDB file --fix
--- RDB ERROR DETECTED ---
[offset 9] Can't handle RDB format version 9
[additional info] While doing: start
[additional info] Reading type 0 (string)
[info] 0 keys read
[info] 0 expires
[info] 0 already expired
RDB preamble of AOF file is not sane, aborting.
larry@localhost:~$ 

https://community.ui.com/questions/ERROR-UNMS-is-starting-This-should-not-take-more-than-a-minute-/1010b107-dfd4-4c0f-b667-2f3cf4ef713b
https://community.ui.com/questions/UNMS-is-broken-after-upgrade-from-13-x-to-14-x/411ec85e-7a1b-4d17-bb12-34e449b4ae5a

MongoDB – dpkg-deb: error: paste subprocess was killed by signal (Broken pipe)

Ran into an issue when trying to figure out some problems with UniFi and UniFi-Video. Upgrading both to the latest version was causing problems, because they both needed different versions of MongoDB.

Was getting the following error when trying to install MongoDB. Think I was trying to install Mongo following the instructions on their site and then it caused issues with apt.

dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/mongodb-org-server_4.2.5_amd64.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite '/usr/bin/mongod', which is also in package mongodb-server-core 1:3.6.3-0ubuntu1.1
dpkg-deb: error: paste subprocess was killed by signal (Broken pipe)

Removed the following file

rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list

and was able to use apt again to install MongoDB. Didn’t end up solving my problem because I technically needed two versions, but at least apt was being nice again. Ended up installing the UniFi controller docker container and can run both on the same server that way.

Installing UniFi controller in Docker Container

Instructions followed from here. Some changes were made
Commands work on Ubuntu 16.04

Install Docker

sudo apt install -y docker docker.io
systemctl enable docker
systemctl start docker

Install UniFi

sudo docker pull jacobalberty/unifi:latest

Setup Docker Image

The following command sets up a container which we can later manipulate to start and stop the “service”
You can specify where you want the UniFi files to reside if desired.

sudo docker run -d --init --restart=unless-stopped --name=unifi-controller --net=host --volume=/docker/unifi:/var/lib/unifi -p 8080:8080/tcp -p 8081:8081/tcp -p 8443:8443/tcp -p 8843:8843/tcp -p 8880:8880/tcp -p 8883:8883/tcp -p 3478:3478/udp jacobalberty/unifi:latest

Docker commands

List docker containers

sudo docker container list
367c7a1465ec        jacobalberty/unifi:latest   "/usr/loca/bin/dock…" 15 minutes ago      Up 14 minutes (healthy) unifi-controller

List docker images on system

sudo docker images
jacobalberty/unifi latest baebbe301633 9 days ago 711MB

Stop container. Also stops the UniFi service. Change the ID to your container ID.

sudo docker stop 367c7a1465ec

Other notes

When setting up the Docker image, the directory specified was “/docker/unifi” so all the UniFi files are in there and it looks like if you manipulate the files, it makes the changes fine. At least for setting up the SSL certificates.