ZoneMinder Forums

Hi,

I'm having a problem with zmfilter. It tries to create empty archives to upload to my ftp server. I've obviously missed a setting somewhere. Any ideas where?

Here's an extract from the log:

Deleting event 3476
Creating upload file '/tmp/Front Garden-3475.tar.gz'
Cowardly refusing to create empty archive! at /usr/local/bin/zmfilter.pl line 45
4
Tar error: Cowardly refusing to create empty archive!
Deleting event 3477
Deleting event 3478
Deleting event 3480
Creating upload file '/tmp/Front Garden-3479.tar.gz'
Cowardly refusing to create empty archive! at /usr/local/bin/zmfilter.pl line 45
4
Tar error: Cowardly refusing to create empty archive!
Deleting event 3481
Deleting event 3482
Deleting event 3483



Russell.

update.

I added a debug statement to the zmfilter.pl script to show the directory that it's reading the images from:

image path is Front Garden/3536/*.jpg
Creating upload file '/tmp/Front Garden-3536.tar.gz'
Cowardly refusing to create empty archive! at /usr/local/bin/zmfilter.pl line 45
5
Tar error: Cowardly refusing to create empty archive!
image path is Front Garden/3538/*.jpg
Creating upload file '/tmp/Front Garden-3538.tar.gz'
Cowardly refusing to create empty archive! at /usr/local/bin/zmfilter.pl line 45
5
Tar error: Cowardly refusing to create empty archive!
image path is Front Garden/3541/*.jpg
Creating upload file '/tmp/Front Garden-3541.tar.gz'
Cowardly refusing to create empty archive! at /usr/local/bin/zmfilter.pl line 45
5

It appears that it's using a relative path when it should be using an absolute path. I can't believe that this is a bug or else ftp upload would not work for anyone. So it must be something to do with my configuration.

Anyone got any ideas where to look?

Russell.

Hi Russell,

I've checked it here and the functionality still works so it's not a general bug. One thing I would check is to see if you get any more joy if you rename your monitor FrontGarden (no spaces) as I wonder if that is screwing up the globbing.

Phil,

Hi Phil,

thanks for the advice. I've tried taking the space out of the name of the monitor but I still get the same problem. I think the problem has something to do with directory path names. Clearly the zmfilter.pl script is expecting the images to be in a directory under the one that it is running in. However, I'm running ZM as a service and I have no idea which directory it's actually running in.

I'm sure I could get it to work if I added a change directory statement to the perl just before it tries to make the tar/zip achive. I'm not sure what effect that would have elsewhere in the system though.

Russell.