Upgrades issues

[BiloxiGeek]

This morning my zm setup got updated via yum and I've lost access to all my monitors. Can't view any of the defined monitors. The events that are showing can't be viewed as well, they also can't be deleted. I'm betting I just need to refresh something in the setup but it's eluding me at the moment. I'm running on Scientific Linux 7.5, which is up to date for all packages. I get the zoneminder package via rpmfusion-free. The attached screenshot is one of my monitors, no display at all and that's what I get for every monitor. Similar results when trying to view events.

broken-monitor.png (55.94 KiB) Viewed 5559 times

[rockedge]

Hello ! looks like a minor problem.....make sure the new zoneminder.conf is enabled for Apache

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a2enconf zoneminder

restart Apache

the CSS is not being accessed so the page is displaying incompletely ...the alias or symlink for /usr/share/zoneminder/www/cache is missing and probably not configured...hence the new zoneminder.conf

[knight-of-ni]

See the README included with the package.
The new apache config file no longer installs automatically.

[BiloxiGeek]

Read through /usr/share/doc/zoneminder-1.23.0/README.

It does not mention needing to move /etc/zm/www/zoneminder.conf into /etc/httpd/conf.d/ so apache can read it upon startup. Once I copied that file over things started looking much better.

[knight-of-ni]

It most certainly does:
https://github.com/ZoneMinder/zoneminde ... Redhat7#L7

[rockedge]

so BiloxiGeek you were able to get a quick resolution and ZM is working now?

[patmansf]

It most certainly does:
https://github.com/ZoneMinder/zoneminde ... Redhat7#L7

This tripped me up - the new install step 6 explicitly mentions the required symlink, but upgrade step 3 doesn't

I'm now trying to figure out what I need in the zoneminder.conf - I'm not sure if my upgrade (dnf / rpm) removed the previous version or not.

I'm on Fedora 28, using the rpmfusion repo so upgrading from 1.30 to 1.32. I don't know if I missed 1.31 or if rpmfusion never had it.

-- Patrick

[knight-of-ni]

2. The contents of the ZoneMinder Apache config file have changed. In
addition, this ZoneMinder package now requires you to manually symlink the
ZoneMinder Apache config file. See new install step 6 and upgrade step 3
below for details.

What this is saying is that previously, the Apache config file was placed directly into Apache's config file folder.

I changed the behavior due to this bug report:
https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4861

The act of installing the ZoneMinder Apache config file is now a manual process. With the latest 1.32.0 rpm, the config file gets placed into /etc/zm/www and it's up to you to install it into Apache's config folder.

Don't make this harder than it is. If you only use Apache for zoneminder, you are not familiar with writing your own apache configs, or you are otherwise unsure, then just symlink the file e.g.

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sudo ln -s /etc/zm/www/zoneminder.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/

That will work in the default case, but it may not work for you if you've got a more complicated configuration with other web based applications on the same server.

[BiloxiGeek]

so BiloxiGeek you were able to get a quick resolution and ZM is working now?

Yes, the web interface is working once I got the config file issue figured out. Working through some API issues now that seem to be affecting zmNinja. But I haven't gotten the problem figured out much less a solution yet.

[johnnytaco]

This tripped me up too, upgrading from 1.31.x. After the upgrade, https://server/zm wasn't pulling anything. I ended up deleting /etc/httpd/conf.d/zoneminder.conf and making the symbolic link to /etc/zm/www/zoneminder.conf per the new install section of the README. Seeing both zoneminder.conf files and similar timestamps, I incorrectly assumed they were the same.

The README does say you should merge the changes but when I saw the same filename in both locations with what looked like the same date, I incorrectly assumed the file was the same. Once I created the link and restarted apache, all was well again. Maybe a bit more elaboration on this section would help. Or maybe I'm the only dumb one here:

Upgrade step 3:
The contents of this file must be merged into your Apache configuration. See step 6 of the installation section if you have not already done this during a previous upgrade.

change to:
Any existing Zoneminder configuration file in the Apache configuration folder /etc/httpd/conf.d/ will need to be merged or replaced with this newer file. Alternatively, a symbolic link can be created. Failure to do this may result in the web interface not working post-upgrade.

See step 6 of the installation section if you have not already done this during a previous upgrade.


Just my $.02 after spending 20 mins troubleshooting/reading/re-reading.

jt

[knight-of-ni]

I've added the warning about the web console being corrupted or mostly empty post-upgrade if step 3 is not performed correctly.

HERE IS THE LONG ANSWER EXPLAINING WHAT IS GOING ON
Remember that, if you have ever modified a config file installed by any package, rpm will leave that file hanging around when you uninstall the package. This is an intentional design of rpm.

In our case, an upgrade was run, but the newer package no longer owns the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/zoneminder.conf so the new package does not rename the old zoneminder.conf with an "rpmnew" extension. As counter intuitive as it may sound, this really is working the way it is supposed to.

TL;DR - At one point you made a change to that config file. You might have forgotten about it, but rpm did not forget. It left that file there because of the change. Happens to all of us, by the way.

Perhaps knowing why this happens will help the reader anticipate future problems and thus avoid them... or at least fix them more quickly.

ALERT: MORE CHANGES AHEAD
Because I don't want the next package to cause the same kind of confusion, I need to mention that I have split zoneminder into subpackages:
zoneminder
zoneminder-common
zoneminder-httpd
zoneminder-nginx

Our build system is currently cranking these packages out. They will appear in rpmfusion for the next 1.32.3 release.

As the names imply, you will have the option to use nginx if you want.

As you can probably guess, this has caused me to rearrange the README's again, and that's really why I am mentioning this here.

You can view them right now:
https://github.com/ZoneMinder/zoneminde ... hat/readme

Hopefully this will create an opportunity to get feedback before you are left staring at a blank screen, rather than after.