ZoneMinder Forums

OK I can see the Mandriva influence ... I'm slowly being converted

The wind got blown from y sails as I realized I'm not quite far enough along in learning linux to learn draklive without documentation. So ... while I'm still a diehard Mandriva fan for this project I concede that PCLOS is the way to go.

I have to admit I'm impressed with what I see so far. Now to learn the package system and how to install - I'm gonna miss urpmi!

Hey, everything went a lot easier than I thought. Made a quick wiki -
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... and_1.23.1

When I tried to remaster I got a simple error - "Something went wrong "

Not sure what I did wrong but I'll keep going at it. Looks simple enough.

Thanks for the nudge!

Now what packages do you think would be the 'necessary' list of packages to have installed?

For me, I need FireFox and K3B. A viewer for the video files and possibly a zip archiver for hading over exported video to MS users would be nice.

What else?

Well, last nite I did indeed get a minime remastered with ZM running. I get that 'Forbidden'error again when trying to access zm while booted from the cd, but it works great after install.

One thing worth mentioning isthe kernel only sees 880 mb ram. I run 1 or 2 gb in my systems, so I need to figure out the *right* one to replace it with.

So my stall point is ... what (of the dozens available) kernel would be most appropriate?

Also, the modeprobe.conf file is overwritten during install - where would one put a file to be included / appended to modprobe.conf?

Hey Tracy, several things I wanted to mention now that I have a few minutes. In no particular order.

First, nice entry in the wiki. Very clear and much easier to reference than sifting through these threads.

About the error when accessing zm from the livecd. Mklivecd uses a symlink stucture for the union filesystem when running live. Try doing "ls -l / " from the CD and you'll see what I mean. The default apache config doesn't allow symlinks in the path. So edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and change line 387 from
"Options -All -Multiviews" to
"Options -All -Multiviews FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch"
or copy the file from the ZMliveCD_1.22.3 if you like.

About what packages to install, I expect we might get some discussion here on that. In the past my approach has been to install everything a user might need. I especially wanted a complete build environment for zm so I can build update RPMs from the CD. But since pclos is so "remaster friendly" maybe it would be better to stick with a minimal system. A "ZMinime" so to speak. It would be nice if of the other CD creators would settle on customizing our project to their needs. This way their customers / users could benefit from the easy upgrade path when future zm versions come out.

About the kernel, the pclos project uses a "legacy" flavor kernel to at least boot up on the widest variety of hardware. But I don't think anyone really wants to run zm on a 66Mhz pentium. So just try the latest i686 kernel package. If that doesn't support all your RAM I'll take a look at building a custom kernel.

The one other big thing that will help the system is jpeg libraries patched for mmx optimization. I'll put up a set of RPMs for this in the next couple days or so.

the pclos project uses a "legacy" flavor kernel

Oops. I see that 2008 minime has a i686 kernel that claims to support 4 GB RAM. So I'm not sure what the problem is. It uses the whole 1GB on my test machine.

What utility are you using to check?

I have a tendency to add WebMin to my installations, it makes remote service much easier. On the splash of WebMin, it show system ram. After seeing that, I did some other probes and verified, then googling found that the kernel indeed only detects 880 mb ram.

On my mandriva machines I do a 'urpmi --update kernel' and it gives me a huge list, from which I (think I remember) usually choose something like 'desktop-latest' for i686.

I definitely need a better kernel So far PCLOS does not find the Gigabit network adapters on the motherboards I have available to me and it does not detect one of the sata controllers I use on the higher end (for me ...) systems.

The gigabit lan thing is weird - in PCLOS under the control center / hardware, it shows the Attansic L1 gigabit adapter, but when you go to set up the network it says there is no supported hardware found.

HOWEVER, that being said, I did remaster several times last night with extreme ease, and I think I'll have no problem documenting the steps (as we determine them lol) so that the production of a LiveCD is repeatable and next year all we'll have to do is edit a few lines I hope.

I do admit, the decoration of PCLOS is *nothing* like I would want to deliver to a customer, or even have in a technicians toolbox. So, as this whole thing goes, I think we should also have a "ZMLiveCD Beautification Project" that includes
bootsplash screen graphics
KDE bootsplash
Theme that makes sense for the application, including a desktop background with basic instructions for the use of the system
A ZM looking icon set
A disk label
A jewel case insert
A coffee cup (lol maybe?)

But for now, the kernel would be nice. If you could help me make that selection I'd be most appreciative.

BTW, thanks for the kompliment - I pride myself on documentation. Where my technical skills wane, I'll be able to make up to the group with documentation.

OK Tracy I'm wrestling with a little puzzle here. Would you please run the command "uname -a" on one of your remasters and post the results.
Thanks

I will do that tomorrow - I've been wrestling with a cobra that won - Mandriva 2008 and PCLOS minime will *not* run an Nvidia video card (any recent) using the TV out as a duplicate screen. It just can't seem to get the refresh rate or something right - all greek on the TV whilest everything is great on the monitor. I found like 50 forum posts on various sites with similar problems. Oddly, it worked great in 2007, but that won't find the sata or net cards. Version stuff drives me nuts! lol

Solution? After three days of hacking ... switch to ati video card ...

Oh, just as a note, found another archive program that looks cool -
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php? ... _id=408762

But I digress ...

Tomorrow I will be able to put some time into working on this again. I spent the week working on video issues from upgraded sites. Yikes!!

Again, I'll reinstall and provide you that output. I had used my devel machine to try to hack this video.

I'll reinstall and provide you that output.

From the CD would be fine if you don't want to install.
Thanks

BTW I keep meaning to comment on your posts regarding mondo rescue. Several years back when I was looking for an installer solution for ZoneMinder I tried for a couple weeks to get mondo working with mandrake 9.2. I never could make it work even though their docs claimed mandrake was well supported. It would create backups but when trying to restore it would bail with errors regarding no kernel support for file system (ext3 !?). So I gave up and started playing with mklivecd
I have read several good reviews of mondo since then so it may be a solid alternative approach today. You never really know til you try

About the error when accessing zm from the livecd. Mklivecd uses a symlink stucture for the union filesystem when running live. Try doing "ls -l / " from the CD and you'll see what I mean. The default apache config doesn't allow symlinks in the path. So edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and change line 387 from
"Options -All -Multiviews" to
"Options -All -Multiviews FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch"
or copy the file from the ZMliveCD_1.22.3 if you like.

Thanks, this solves the problem that ZM under Pclinux did not run from cd. Now it runs form the iso of a Livecd under Vmplayer. So it must run from a cd burned with this iso.
I had post this http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11150
and rdmelin inform me about this post.

I have a real installation running under PClinux and ZM 1.23.1-3 since 2 days with 16 cameras and 2 boards. One is a Kodicom 8 port (8 chips) and the second a LMLBT44 that has 4 chips and 8 ports. There has not been any problem yet.

from a stabilty point of view, i have run one of my old livecd's based on pclos 0.83 i think for over 2 years now.

I think we need some structure here. ie who is solving what else we are all gonna make a live cd our own way, and thats not what we need.

how we organise this im unsure.

I am just a regular user of Linux with limited experience. You are the experts. I was happy with Mandriva 2007 installed from zoneminder livecd until someone break into my computer and change the passwords. So i had to reinstall but recently discovered Pclinux and like it so decided to try to install ZM on it. I was just sharing my experience. This live CD is for my own use.

how we organise this im unsure.

Maybe the first thing you should do is choose the Linux distribution that would be used.

jameswilson wrote: I think we need some structure here. ie who is solving what

I agree.

Sorry I've been gone a while, I had been taking care of my mother (81) since she fell ill last year and her last week was very difficult for her. She passed last week and Ive been taking care of the affairs here.

It's time tho to get back on track and get some work done, both on my biz front locally and here on this forum. I'm committed to documenting a detailed sequence of how exactly to build the 'official' live cd and make the project easier to revisit each year.

I would love to just use the older (darn sure stable! thanks Ross!) live cd's but they just don't find the new hardware that is available to me so I'm forced down this lane.

Definitions? My thoughts -

1) RPM team
Ross has made excellent RPM's for MDV and PCLOS. It's obvious he would be the leader here. This team would also do things like MMX optimizations, etc.

2) App selection team
someone to decide finally what apps are to be included in the 'release' and optimise them for the package - ice? kde? etc

3) Compilation team
set the sequence of installation for mastering the livecd - each and every step in detail

4) Beautification team
make the 'decorations' like splash, boot, desktop, disk label, manual, perhaps icon and theme for ice or kde, etc.

5) Documentation team
document step by step the sequence of producing the livecd - making the manual, and any instructions / corrections to the package / product

6) Distribution team
someone / somewhere to host the iso of the final product

I am quite willing to do the documentation. I really enjoy stepping out my sequences so that I can reproduce them exactly time after time. I would also be willing to help with the beautification team but I'm not an artist I have some ideas for instructional desktops that would help people use the system.

I've never organized a group project, so I don't really know what to do there but I'm all for it and ready to go. Let me know where your strength is. I'll set up a series of wiki's and we can begin to edit and mature them so that the end result is a complete set of instructions that will live on, even if any or all of us leave. The main wiki will simply be a list of links to each of the sub wikis, making it easy to edit and follow.

What say ye?

rdmelin wrote:
BTW I keep meaning to comment on your posts regarding mondo rescue.

So far Mondo has been a savior - it works wonderfully with MDV 2008. Haven't tried PCLOS, but I've successfully restored several test systems here and now it's standard op for me to do a Mondo backup *after* I've set all the client location settings such as zones, cam names, etc. It's a lifesaver and marvelous to hand to an end user for disaster recovery.

rdmelin wrote:OK Tracy I'm wrestling with a little puzzle here. Would you please run the command "uname -a" on one of your remasters and post the results.
Thanks

My mom passed before I could get to this. I'l reproduce this in a couple of days as I have a little catching up to do