I have a Zoneminder system running 1.24.2, and it has been up around 1 year. It seems to be working fine without any errors.
For the last 6 months, I thought something was broken with the display of video, as I would click a link that should display video, and the video would not appear. It was recording images, so I had other more important things to work on so I left it alone.
Today I did some testing, and I have determined that the system is working fine, but it is taking a long time to begin streaming video. I'm using cameras attached to a capture card, so this is not an IP camera issue. It did not do this for the first 5 months, it started after it had been up several months. It does it even when there is no video being recorded.
After a fresh reboot, it takes 15 seconds to start displaying video from the live camera links on the control panel. After it has been up for a couple months, it takes closer to 2 minutes.
If I try to display video from a recorded event, it takes 5.5 minutes (regardless of whether the machine has been up for a while, or10 minutes after a fresh boot).
I'm expecting that this issue is a tuning issue.
The machine is a 2.4ghz desktop-class system, so it is a fairly slow system to begin with. The load average hovers around .5 (except after a boot, where it homers around 2 for the first few minutes). It is an ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS system. It has a 75gig filesystem, and I keep it trimmed to less than 85% full using the built in purge when full filter. I tried turning the filter off andrunning on a nearly empty filesystem, and that didn't see to help.
I know that directories can grow too large, and I haven't tried deleting my storage folders and re-creating them to see if that speeds anything up... I suppose that could be an issue, but I wouldn't think that would affect viewing the live camera.
I don't expect screaming speed, but it would be nice to know how to tune the system, as I know it used to be able to run a lot faster.
Thanks!
George