pod-motion

A containerized deployment of the Motion video surveillance software using Podman and Kubernetes-style YAML definitions. It turns a local webcam into a DVR: motion events are detected and recorded straight to the host filesystem, with a web control panel and live stream exposed on the host network.

• Codec/resolution: MJPG at 1280x720, 30 fps
• Recording: 60-second MKV chunks written directly to the host
• Deployment model: single podman play kube command, no manual podman run flags

• Podman installed and running on the host machine.
• Hardware: a V4L2-compatible webcam connected to the host (default device path: /dev/video0).
• SELinux: on an enforcing system (e.g. Fedora), the host directories need the container_file_t context or Motion won't be able to read its config or write recordings.

Only config/ and container/ are tracked in this repo. storage/ is runtime output and needs to be created locally — it holds your recordings, so you don't want it in version control.

~/motion/
├── config/
│   └── motion.conf       # Motion configuration file
├── container/
│   └── motion-pod.yaml   # Kubernetes-style Podman deployment file
└── storage/              # Recordings land here (create this — not in the repo)

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/sancliffe/pod-motion.git ~/motion
cd ~/motion
mkdir -p storage

2. Match the volume paths to your host

container/motion-pod.yaml hard-codes its hostPath volumes to /home/steve/motion/.... If your home directory isn't /home/steve, update both hostPath.path entries (for motion-storage-vol and motion-config-vol) to match your actual clone location, e.g.:

sed -i "s#/home/steve/motion#${HOME}/motion#g" container/motion-pod.yaml

3. Apply SELinux context (if applicable)

chcon -Rt container_file_t ~/motion/config ~/motion/storage ~/motion/container

4. Deploy the pod

podman play kube ~/motion/container/motion-pod.yaml

This creates the pod (motion-deployment-pod), mounts the config/storage volumes, maps the ports, and pulls docker.io/motionproject/motion:latest if it isn't already present.

5. Confirm it's running

podman pod ps
podman logs motion-deployment-motion

Then open http://<host-ip>:7999 for the web control panel and http://<host-ip>:8081 for the live stream.

webcontrol_localhost and stream_localhost are set to off in motion.conf — required for either port to be reachable from outside the pod's network namespace. If you only want local access, flip these back to on and drop the hostPort mappings.

If your webcam isn't at /dev/video0, update both the webcam-device volume and video_device in motion.conf to match (check with v4l2-ctl --list-devices or ls /dev/video*).

podman pod rm -f motion-deployment-pod

This stops and removes the pod and its containers. Recordings in ~/motion/storage are left untouched.

• podman play kube succeeds but the pod restarts / camera not found: check the container has access to the device — you may need --security-opt label=disable or to confirm the /dev/video0 path exists on the host before deploying.
• Web control panel or stream unreachable from another machine: double-check webcontrol_localhost off and stream_localhost off are actually set in motion.conf (a stale mount from an old path will silently use Motion's built-in defaults instead).
• Permission denied writing recordings, or Motion can't read motion.conf: almost always a missed chcon -Rt container_file_t on an SELinux-enforcing host — re-run step 3 above.
• Port already in use: something else on the host is bound to 7999 or 8081; change the hostPort values in motion-pod.yaml and the corresponding Service ports.

MIT — see LICENSE.