Blog Inforeseau.com – Alexandre Blanc Cyber Security

RTSP, Debian, VLC, not playing, IP Camera

This is a quick memo I did want to keep track of.

If you have home security cameras, or anything that support RTSP (network video streaming), AND you use Kali linux, Debian, or any derivatives such as ubuntu, you’ll face an issue as RTSP is not longer supported withing the system.

So if you need to open a network video stream, on Debian, Kali or whatever, you can use the snap package of VLC, so as it comes with all the needed resources.

Install snapd on your machine, and from there, you can install VLC : snap install vlc

Now you need to add the snap binary directory to your PATH variable, so as you can actually used the snap packages you installed as root (or using sudo).

On Kali / Debian, assuming you use BASH as shell, you can simply add the following to your .bashrc file in the root foldre of your home (usually /home/your-user/.bashrc) : export PATH=/snap/bin:$PATH

Then open a new terminal / console, and you should be able to start VLC by typing vlc.

And then you’ll magically be able to open your RTSP stream such as rtsp://ip_of_your_camera

Enjoy.