Kernel 2.6.25 incompatible with ZM

[gasmasher]

I just wanted to provide some info on my findings.

I am using a PV-981 (4 BT878 chips on PCI express bus) from Bluecherry.net (great service there) and ran into some problems with kernel 2.6.25. It seems that v4l1 has been removed from kernel 2.6.25 and only the v4l2 to v4l compatibility layer remains. This layer has proven buggy in many situations and this is just one of those. Some devices may still work with ZoneMinder using the compatibility layer, but bt878 cards do not. I know that v4l2 support is being added to ZM and will be released soon, but in the meantime I recommend kernel 2.6.24 and earlier.

I verified this using mplayer with v4l and v4l2 drivers. The v4l2 drivers work perfect with my card and displays a good picture with the capture card. Switching to the v4l driver causes the same uninterruptible sleep state that happened to ZoneMinder's zmc. zmc is the program that accesses the /dev/v4l/video* and grabs frames.

I picked up a Rocket Raid PCI card to run my sata drives and was able to downgrade to kernel 2.6.24. This kernel still includes the v4l (version 1) API required by Zoneminder. Now mplayer displays the same picture with v4l and v4l2 drivers. ZM works great with 2.6.24.

I am very happy to have the new hardware working with ZM. This is a Gigabyte GA-MZ790FX-DS5, AMD 9850 Quad core, 4 GB of ram, and 4 Seagate 1 TB hard drives. The load average with 3 cams on the PV-981 at 40 fps is 0.38 and 91.5% Idle. This includes running X and firefox to test the images. I plan to expand this system with more cams and think the hardware is overkill for anything less than 24 analog cams.

Here are some of the commands I used while testing.

mplayer using v4l2 driver

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mplayer -tv driver=v4l2:noaudio:width=640:height=480:norm=ntsc:device=/dev/video0 tv://

mplayer using v4l driver resulting in sleep state

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mplayer -tv driver=v4l:noaudio:width=640:height=480:norm=ntsc:device=/dev/video0 tv://

Checking the state of a process. If the state column shows 'D' or 'D+' then you may be experiencing a similar situation.

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ps ax -o pid,state,command

[PeterHoward]

Anyone else got any reports on trying to run with a 2.6.25 kernel?

PJH

[jarmo]

Anyone else got any reports on trying to run with a 2.6.25 kernel?

PJH

Yes, we have. Just another day compiled 2.6.25.4 kernel and got it running.
Today I was trying to login zm, but zm was not responsing. All day looked some hints, but nothing in logs. So just went back into 2.6.24.2 kernel and everything is back into normal. With 2.6.25 zm seemed to work ok, except service zm stop command didn't work, had to use chkconfig zm of, that worked.
So something peculiar with that new kernel.

Jarmo

[tippyturtle]

Check 2.6.25.7

It seems fixed on my machine now. Check the 4th commit on the changelog:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ ... g-2.6.25.7

Life is good again!

[jarmo]

Check 2.6.25.7

It seems fixed on my machine now. Check the 4th commit on the changelog:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ ... g-2.6.25.7

Life is good again!

Yes, seems to work. Compiled new one and rebooted.
After quick test, everything seems to be ok.

Jarmo

[kevin_robson]

Cool. I'm hoping to get this working on fedora 9 or suse 11 (out tomorrow)

Does anyone know how long it generally takes for the new kernels to filter down to the distro updates? Both of these have lower release nos in their update channels at present.

I realise I could compile my own but I'd prefer to stick with the one supplied by the distros for the sake of compatibility with other apps.

[sck_nogas]

Any update on this? I have a Fedora Core 8 ZM host running kernel-2.6.25.4-10.fc8 and I also have this problem.

Though I already ruled out hardware, I then re-installed ZM from scratch to ensure I didn't have a bad config, I then found this thread as I was about to submit the uber bug report...

So, I know I can upgrade and compile my own kernel, but... Would prefer to stay running a "supported" kernel rather than be the rogue kernel guy.

So, has anyone gotten a feedback from Fedora & Others on this?

Or is there any further update on upgrading ZoneMinder to support V4lv2?

Scott
PS> Edited to link to the Dev thread on v4Lv2

[forkd]

I am running Fedora 9 and my ZM quit working. I finally figured out that it was the result of a kernel upgrade. When you see the grub menu while booting up press ESC key and select the older kernel. If it works while running the old kernel just edit grub to boot that kernel by default.

I have not edited my grub to default to the older kernel because of time constraints but I only reboot the machine a few times a year anyway. Perhaps next time I reboot I will....or perhaps the next time I reboot the v4l2 will support my bt878 card

[sck_nogas]

Which is the newest Older kernel that works? I need to re-install the kernel since I typically remove the older ones from my machine after updating.

Scott

[ptast]

I tried with Fedora 8 and that did not work either so I reverted to FC 4.

That is a small neat "thing" when cameras only need to be controlled.

[sck_nogas]

Since I've been tracking this thread for a while, I decided to check to see whether the kernel-2.6.25.11-60.fc8 that is part of Fedora Core 8 works correctly with ZM.

Yup, so my issue has been fixed and I can once again run the latest versions of the kernel.

Scott