System Settings

The Settings page is the central administration hub for Meridian VMS. It provides a sidebar navigation with grouped sections for all configuration, monitoring, and management tasks.

The Settings page is accessible from the main navigation bar. Access requires the settings page permission or the admin role.

Sidebar Navigation

The Settings sidebar organises all administrative functions into four groups:

General

Section	Description	Details
System	Service health, recording server management, failover	See below
Storage	Retention period, segment duration, disk full strategy	Storage & Retention
Logs	View and manage service logs	See below

Cameras & Sites

Section	Description	Details
Cameras	Camera CRUD, ONVIF discovery, detection zones, time sync	Camera Management
Locations	Location hierarchy tree management	Location Hierarchy

Access Control

Section	Description	Details
Users	User accounts, profile, active/disabled toggle	Users & Roles
Roles	Role definitions with page, action, and location permissions	Users & Roles

Detection & Alarms

Section	Description	Details
AI Detection	Model training, training data management, training schedules	Detection training docs
Alarm Rules	Alarm definitions, triggers, SOPs, escalation	Alarm management docs
Notifications	Notification channels (Telegram, Discord, email, webhook)	Notification docs

System Health Monitoring

The System section (Settings > General > System) is the primary operational monitoring page. It displays real-time health information for the management server and all recording servers.

Management Server Health

A health card at the top of the System page shows the management server’s status:

• Memory usage — RAM consumed by the management process
• CPU usage — percentage of CPU used by the management process
• Background services — a list of internal background tasks with alive/dead indicators:
  • Heartbeat monitor
  • Retention scheduler
  • Time sync loop
  • MQTT listener
  • Alarm processor
  • Failover monitor

Each background service shows a green (alive) or red (dead) indicator.

Local Services

A table of systemd services running on the management server:

Service	Description
Management Server	The management application (meridian-management)
MediaMTX (Management)	Stream relay on the management server (meridian-mediamtx)
Recorder (local)	Local recorder daemon if the management server also records (meridian-recorder)

Each row shows:

• Status — active (green) or inactive (red)
• Since — how long the service has been in its current state
• Restart button — triggers a systemctl restart for the service

Recording Server Overview

Below local services, a table lists all registered recording servers:

Column	Description
Name	Server name (editable)
Server Status	online/offline badge
Recorder	Recorder daemon health (ok/unreachable)
Cameras	Number of cameras assigned
Object Detection	Whether AI detection is running (active/off)
API URL	The recorder’s local API endpoint

Each row is clickable and opens a detailed Recorder Health Modal showing:

• Disk usage with progress bar
• CPU and memory with per-service breakdown (recorder, recording processes, stream relay)
• Camera counts (total, recording, events today)
• GPU information (model, CUDA version, utilisation, VRAM, temperature)
• Object detection status (model, FPS, confidence, frames processed, events emitted)
• Service threads with alive/dead indicators

Auto-refresh

The System page auto-refreshes server data every 15 seconds. The health modals refresh every 5-10 seconds depending on the view.

Server Stats Modal

The Server Stats button in the top-right opens a modal showing the management server’s detailed system statistics:

• CPU percentage and core count with load averages
• Memory usage with progress bar
• Recording disk usage with progress bar
• Camera recording ratio
• Active recording process count
• Total recording storage size
• Stream engine (MediaMTX) CPU usage

Server Failover

The System page includes a Server Failover configuration card:

• Enable failover — master toggle for the failover monitoring system
• Auto-rebalance on recovery — whether to automatically redistribute cameras when an offline server comes back
• Offline threshold — how many seconds without a heartbeat before a server is considered offline (30-600 seconds)
• Rebalance cooldown — minimum time between rebalance operations (60-3600 seconds)
• Rebalance Now — manual trigger for camera redistribution

The failover status shows:

• Number of servers online and offline
• Last failover event and timestamp
• Remaining cooldown time if applicable

Service Logs

The Logs section (Settings > General > Logs) provides a log viewer for systemd journal logs from both local and remote services.

Available Log Sources

Local services:

• Management Server (meridian-management)
• MediaMTX on the management host (meridian-mediamtx)
• Local Recorder (meridian-recorder)

Remote recording servers (one entry per server):

• {Server Name} -- Recorder — the recorder daemon logs
• {Server Name} -- MediaMTX — the MediaMTX stream engine logs

Remote logs are fetched by proxying the request through the management server to the recording server’s local API.

Log Viewer Features

• Service selector — dropdown to choose which service’s logs to view
• Line count — select how many lines to display (100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000)
• Refresh — manually reload the current log view
• Auto-scroll — toggle to automatically scroll to the latest log entries
• Purge All Logs — clear all journal logs on the server (affects all services, not just the selected one)

Purge affects all services

The Purge All Logs button clears the entire systemd journal, not just the selected service’s logs. Use with caution.

The log viewer renders output in a monospace terminal-style display with syntax highlighting.

Service Restart

Administrators can restart services directly from the UI:

Local Services

From the System page’s Local Services table, click Restart on any service row. This executes a systemctl restart command on the management server.

Remote Recording Services

From the Recording Servers table, click Restart on any server row. This:

1. Sends a POST /api/servers/{id}/restart to the management server.
2. The management server proxies the request to the recorder’s local API.
3. The recorder daemon gracefully stops all recording processes and restarts.
4. The UI polls the server status every 3 seconds until the recorder reports back as healthy (up to 90 seconds).

During restart, the server row shows a “restarting” badge.

Detection changes auto-restart

Saving any detection setting (model, FPS, confidence, classes) on a recording server automatically triggers a restart. There is no need to manually restart after changing detection configuration.

API Reference

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/settings	Get all system settings
PATCH	/api/settings	Update system settings
GET	/api/settings/services	Get status of local and remote services
GET	/api/settings/services/stats	Get management server detailed stats
GET	/api/settings/services/recorder/{id}	Get detailed recorder health
POST	/api/settings/services/{name}/restart	Restart a local systemd service
GET	/api/settings/logs/{service}	Get local service logs
GET	/api/settings/logs/recorder/{id}	Get remote recorder logs
DELETE	/api/settings/logs/{service}	Purge all journal logs
GET	/api/settings/management/health	Get management server health
GET	/api/settings/failover	Get failover configuration and status
PUT	/api/settings/failover	Update failover configuration
POST	/api/settings/failover/rebalance	Trigger manual rebalance
GET	/api/settings/time-sync	Get time sync status
POST	/api/settings/time-sync/toggle	Enable/disable daily time sync
POST	/api/settings/time-sync/run	Trigger immediate time sync