Plugins are unavailable

What is the issue?

We had some reports about analytics plugins not loading, while the plugins do load on other devices of the same model and firmware. At this moment, the issue is known to occur in Dahua and Hikvision devices, but other Vendors might utilize the same design.

What is the cause of the issue?

Some devices have separate proprietary user accounts and ONVIF user accounts, each stored in its own database, and it's crucial that they share the same credentials. If the credentials are not synchronized, issues can arise, such as plugins failing to load or only partially working. 

The ONVIF account is restricted to ONVIF services, leading to authentication errors when attempting to access other functionalities. Similarly, proprietary Dahua accounts allow access to the device's web interface and API but do not work with ONVIF services. 

Using these accounts for capability checks may result in HTTP 403 errors, while accessing the device with the admin account produces the expected outcome.

Below, an example from the VMS Mediaserver logs how such HTTP 403 displays itself in the VERBOSE logs of the VMS:

VERBOSE nx::network::http::AsyncClient(0x2741cac3920): Response headers from http://admine@10.140.168.211:80/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=getConfig&name=General has been successfully read: HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden

VERBOSE nx::network::http::AsyncClient(0x2741cac3920): 98 message body bytes have been received from http://admine@10.140.168.211:80/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=getConfig&name=General

DEBUG nx::vms_server_plugins::analytics::dahua::Engine(0x2742c6515a0): Compatible API not found, device: DHI-TPC-BF5641 url: http://10.140.168.211:80/onvif/device_service

What is the solution?

Avoid using different credentials for the proprietary and ONVIF accounts on devices that support separate databases for regular and ONVIF accounts, like Dahua and Hikvision. To resolve issues related to mismatched credentials, delete all existing ONVIF accounts on the device and create a new ONVIF account with the same credentials as the default account. Alternatively, you can add a proprietary Dahua user account with the same credentials as the ONVIF account, then use these credentials to add and authorize the device within the VMS.