Troubleshooting
Start with the visible error, Alarms, and Settings → This recorder. Check whether the issue affects live video, recording, detection, or delivery; one can fail while the others continue.
| Symptom | First checks |
|---|---|
| Cannot reach the recorder | Host power, LAN address, firewall, service status; use https:// and port 3099. A certificate warning means the device does not trust the recorder's CA yet: install it from Trust this recorder on the login page |
| Download certificate fails, or the phone says to check the internet connection | The login page fetches the CA over plain http:// on the same port, so the download works before the CA is trusted. If it still fails, type the http://…/trust/ca.crt address shown under the download buttons into the browser; see trusting the certificate |
| Chrome on Linux asks for a password when importing the CA | The file went under Your certificates, which is for client certificates. Import it beside Trusted certificates under Installed by you (the Authorities tab on older versions) |
| New staff account sees no cameras | Camera grants in Settings → Access; new Operators and Viewers have none |
| A camera on Add cameras reads Rejected every saved password | Add that camera's login under Camera passwords; it is tried at once on the cameras still locked. Devices with no camera service, such as routers, are listed separately and cannot be added |
| Tile or camera list reads All connections reserved | The camera's Connection limit (optional) is no higher than its Reserved connections. Under Streams & connections, enter the limit from the camera's documentation or leave it empty for one connection; do not lower reservations the existing recorder needs |
| Camera will not start | Credentials, connection limit and reservations, and verified stream facts. A stream address the camera offers is opened only if it is rtsp:// or rtsps://, carries no credentials of its own, and points at the camera's own address; the refusal names the address it offered |
| Adding a camera, or switching on the AI agent, recognition or MQTT, is refused as not covered by the license | Settings → License shows the status, the cameras covered and the features included. Cameras and features already set up keep working; enter or move a key, or choose Check now if the recorder has been offline; see license |
| Live picture works but no footage | Recording mode, policy, mounted storage, write access, free space, and recorder alarms |
| Tile reads Recording paused: storage full | The volume is within 100 MB or half a percent of full; retention runs at once and recording resumes by itself when room appears. Shorten retention or add storage; see full storage |
| Events, alarms, or settings changes stop being saved | The recorder's system disk is full: free space on the system disk (old backups and logs first) or move the backup folder; recording to the footage drive continues meanwhile |
| Every time shown looks off by hours | The page shows the recorder's time zone, not the browser's; Settings → This recorder names both when they differ. Set the recorder's under Recorder clock, or pin one with EVERNVR_TZ |
| A camera's burned-in time is wrong, or clock keeps drifting is open | Keep camera clocks correct under Settings → This recorder → Camera clocks, the camera's Overview tab for its drift and Correct the clock, and History → Camera changes for what the recorder set and whether the camera kept it; a camera on NTP that will not hold the time has an NTP server it cannot reach. The recorder is the cameras' NTP server: check that UDP port 123 is open from the camera network and that the recorder log does not say not serving NTP to cameras, which means another time service on the host holds the port |
| Footage plays several times too fast, live view arrives in bursts, or stream timestamps ran at appears in recorder health | The camera's stream timestamps stopped keeping time, most often after its clock was corrected while the stream was open. The recorder reconnects the stream by itself, and after a second fault within 15 minutes records that camera with its own timestamps until restart. Check History → Recorder health and History → Camera changes for a Clock corrected entry at the same time; footage recorded before the reconnect keeps its wrong timing; see camera clocks |
| Browser cannot play a camera | Codec support, automatic snapshot fallback, and another intended client device |
| The Picture-in-picture window shows the camera unstyled or not filling the window | Releases before 0.1.69 lost the page's styles in the floating window under the recorder's security policy. Update to 0.1.69 or later; see picture-in-picture |
| Hold to talk is missing, or talking fails | The button appears only for a camera whose Setup → Deterrence says talk is available; Look again there asks the camera. The browser needs microphone permission and a trusted HTTPS connection to the recorder. A camera with no free connection refuses while another viewer holds one; History → Camera changes lists each attempt as Talked through the speaker with the camera's answer. See talking through a camera |
| Deterrence on a camera's Setup tab finds nothing, or a light or siren does not switch | The camera must be added over ONVIF with a working camera account; Look again after fixing it. A Tapo camera answers only to the Tapo account password entered there, not the camera account. History → Camera changes lists every attempt as Output switched with the camera's answer when it refused; see deterrence outputs |
| Auto tracking cannot be switched on, or a PTZ camera never follows anything | The tab says what the camera lacks: its PTZ geometry must be calibrated or trained on Privacy masks, and the camera must take absolute positions over ONVIF. A camera that has both follows only something it sees travel; a parked car or a person standing still is left alone, and so is a camera an operator drove in the last minute (the wait set on the tab). The PTZ panel reads Auto tracking paused with the time it resumes, and clears by itself when it does; see PTZ auto tracking |
| A follow loses a person who stops or turns back, or chases something else | After a step lands the camera waits for the person to move again before leading them, goes back once to where they were last seen if the new view is empty, and ignores detections of the wrong size. journalctl -u evernvr has one line per step with the step's size, where the object was and how fast it moved, and where it was expected to land; read it back against the footage. Cameras → Auto tracking shows how the last follow ended; see PTZ auto tracking |
| No events for visible activity | Detection backend, detection schedule, confidence/size floors, and zone/rule scope |
| Search misses an event | Time and camera filters, indexing backlog, semantic fallback, and result truncation |
| Notifications do not arrive | Provider configuration, recorder address, recipient channels, snooze, rule schedule, and History delivery status |
| NAS is not responding | Network and share health, mount unit state, and credentials |
| Hailo selection uses CPU | Displayed fallback reason, host OS, runtime/driver installation, and pending reboot |
| Installing the update stays on screen for more than a few minutes | The page reloads by itself once a different version answers or the restart has signed you out; Try now or Reload page forces the check. If it still does not return, see update a recorder and read /var/log/evernvr/update-*.log on the host before touching anything |
| A saved Settings link opens a different page than expected | Settings pages moved to /settings/<page>; an old ?tab= address opens the page that took over that content (the delivery services are on Notifications, commissioning on Setup) |
| Privacy masks warns that the detector runtime is not installed, and a masked camera's picture is withheld, although Settings → Detection reads Ready | Release 0.1.43 looked for the shaped-mask helper in the wrong place on installed recorders, so every shaped mask tripped this warning. Update to 0.1.44 or later. If the warning persists on a newer release, the detector setup has not completed; see privacy masks |
Host diagnostics
On an installed recorder:
sudo systemctl status evernvr
sudo journalctl -u evernvr -n 100 --no-pager
evernvr-update status
For NAS mount failures, also inspect the mount units:
systemctl status 'mnt-evernvr\x2dnas-*.mount'. Install, update and rollback
logs are in /var/log/evernvr/. For a failed
Hailo setup, the host log is /var/log/evernvr-hailo-install.log. Hailo and
NAS setup started from Settings each run in a system unit of their own, so
journalctl -u evernvr-install-hailo and journalctl -u evernvr-install-nas
hold their output, including a unit that never got going.
After an update failure, read failed and interrupted updates before changing files. Do not erase the data directory, alter the migration ledger, or clear an update marker to get past a startup error.
Collect useful evidence
Record the software version, affected camera and operation, timestamp, visible message, and whether recording continued. Use the logs and redacted support bundle for diagnosis. Share a configuration backup only through an appropriate recovery channel: it includes the key that decrypts stored credentials.
Use the full recovery guide for lost owner access, missing storage, and an unreachable recorder. Current qualification gaps are listed in support and limits.