ZoneMinder Forums

Hello there!
I'm plan to equip zoneminder server with four Axis 207W.
I've purchased 2 of them and placed them via AP. Right now I experiance weird problem: one camera attaches to zoneminder ok - i can capture images and see live stream.
the second one behave itself differnly - zoneminder can see on the first part of day, and no camera on the second half of day for example.
I can ping, log in, watch video from both cameras at any time, but zoneminder cannot connect to one camera at any time.
I've tried to search the answers by myself, but it seems to me it's time to ask for some help.
What I do wrong?

Description of my system and logs here below:
Gentoo x86-32, Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 430 @ 1.80GHz, 1GB RAM.
kernel - gentoo-sources 2.6.23-r9.
Zoneminder version 1.23.3
Zoneminder was installed via gentoo portage system
----/etc/sysctl.conf---
kernel.shmall = 2048000
kernel.shmmax = 4194304000
--- /var/log/messages/ ---
Jul 17 01:13:03 localhost zma_m8[10774]: WAR [Waiting for capture daemon]
Jul 17 01:13:06 localhost zmc_m8[11069]: ERR [Can't connect to remote camera: No route to host]
Jul 17 01:13:06 localhost zmc_m8[11069]: ERR [Unable to connect to camera]
Jul 17 01:13:06 localhost zmc_m8[11069]: ERR [Failed to pre-capture monitor 0]
Jul 17 01:13:06 localhost zmdc[10739]: ERR ['zmc -m 8' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
Jul 17 01:13:06 localhost zma_m8[10774]: WAR [Waiting for capture daemon]
-- /var/log/apache2/error.log
[Thu Jul 17 00:10:36 2008] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down
[Thu Jul 17 00:10:37 2008] [notice] suEXEC mechanism enabled (wrapper: /usr/sbin/suexec)
[Thu Jul 17 00:10:39 2008] [notice] Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8g PHP/5.2.6-pl2-gentoo configured -- resuming normal operations
[Thu Jul 17 00:38:33 2008] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down
[Thu Jul 17 00:38:47 2008] [notice] suEXEC mechanism enabled (wrapper: /usr/sbin/suexec)
[Thu Jul 17 00:38:49 2008] [notice] Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8g PHP/5.2.6-pl2-gentoo configured -- resuming normal operations
--- /var/log/mysql/mysqld.err --
080717 0:38:34 InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
080717 0:38:36 InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 0 43655
080717 0:38:36 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete

080717 0:38:45 [Warning] No argument was provided to --log-bin, and --log-bin-index was not used; so replication may break when this MySQL server acts as a master and has his hostname changed!! Please use '--log-bin=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld-bin' to avoid this problem.
080717 0:38:45 InnoDB: Started; log sequence number 0 43655
080717 0:38:45 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: ready for connections.
Version: '5.0.38-log' socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' port: 3306 Gentoo Linux mysql-5.0.38

--zmdc.log--
07/17/08 01:05:33.553009 zmdc[10739].INF ['zmc -m 9' stopping at 08/07/17 01:05:33]
07/17/08 01:05:33.555027 zmdc[10739].ERR ['zmc -m 9' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
07/17/08 01:05:33.656022 zmdc[10739].INF [Starting pending process, zmc -m 9]
07/17/08 01:05:33.660138 zmdc[10739].INF ['zmc -m 9' starting at 08/07/17 01:05:33, pid = 11002]
07/17/08 01:13:03.064323 zmdc[10739].INF [Starting pending process, zmc -m 8]
07/17/08 01:13:03.068454 zmdc[10739].INF ['zmc -m 8' starting at 08/07/17 01:13:03, pid = 11069]
07/17/08 01:13:06.151298 zmdc[10739].ERR ['zmc -m 8' exited abnormally, exit status 255]

Mine do that sometimes. Usually a restart of the camera solves the problem. Sometimes a restart of zoneminder solves the problem. I have a cron script that reboots the cameras, will probably eventually add one to restart zoneminder.

If I felt like looking at the man page on wget, I could probably make it just lose the CGI files and not delete them, but it's not high on my list of priorities.
They've been working pretty great since I implemented this.

Also a good idea for them to have their own dedicated AP (not each camera, that would get expensive and silly). I have 5 207Ws on one WRT54GS and it works great. When they were sharing the regular office AP with a few laptops, not so much.

A second vote for periodic restarts;

I did it a different way (removes need to delete files)

05 15 * * * curl -u root:PASSWORD http://10.0.0.107/axis-cgi/admin/restart.cgi &>/dev/null

Been doing that for all my axis cams for about two years now, downtime is very very low. Obviously vary the times so not more than 1 cam is out at any one time, but restart times are fairly quick, <1min

However! IME, when they crash they crash completely, not half as you're describing. So whilst the restarts are a good idea, they may not fix your actual problem, but may allow you to use the cams anyway.

As for fixing, double-check that the settings in ZM are identical for both (bar the IP ), and that you are specifying resolution in the url. With Axis you can change the default resolution and if ZM is expecting one size and you or someone else has changed to another, it'll break. Post your ZM camera settings here and we'll take a look.

And - upgrade to the latest firmware.

And if you have another AP handy, might be worth swapping that, or running cat5 to the 207 and seeing if the problem is wireless.

The 207 is not Axis' best camera ime, but not a lot of choice for proper mjpeg wireless cams that I've seen. the audio seems to be bad and my first edition was very badly bugged. The second 207w I got is much better but the audio is still shockingly bad (whine, buzz etc) and I had problems with one which would drop out a lot when talking to a linksys AP. Changed to a netgear and it was much better, and since using a zyxel and that's been ok too.

Aside from occasional amusement, I've avoided the audio features anyway, especially since ZM ignores them. But thanks for the "curl" line, I was planning to go that direction eventually.

As for firmware, I believe 4.40.1 is the latest for 207 and 207W. The 207's I received in november had it, as did the 207W's I got a couple of months ago.

Ok, so what if you can't even get to the restart.cgi because the camera dropped it's wireless connection? Well, the nice folks at Axis apparently have a rather nice API that I just noticed the documentation for. Highly recommended reading. I like these cameras more and more every day.

http://www.axis.com/techsup/cam_servers ... _2_1_8.pdf

I put this together this morning on one of my cameras for testing, seems to be working so far. Steps follow. Obviously your camera IPs will be different.

http://192.168.1.201/admin-bin/editcgi. ... tc/inittab
Uncomment the telnet line and save the file.

Telnet and login to the camera.
http://192.168.1.201/admin-bin/editcgi. ... testreboot
http://192.168.1.201/admin-bin/editcgi. ... .task.list Save file, probably reboot the camera for it to take effect (don't know if it's necessary, but I did.)

Mine runs every 10 minutes 24/7, but the scheduler looks pretty flexible in the documentation.

Apparently it's also possible to have it do something to the equivalent of a wget, so if one wanted (and I might eventually), it could send a command off to the server after the camera has rebooted to do a ZM restart.

Axis recommends you re-disable telnet when you're done mucking about for security purposes, your paranoia level may vary.

[Late night update]
Ok, I changed the value it was looking at. I was checking to see if the wireless interface was active, and that didn't help, because it's active whenever the ethernet's not plugged in, even if it's not connected. I revised it to check whether or not it had the correct IP (if it's not connected it goes to a default). Since this afternoon, it hasn't actually rebooted itself. I should probably stop the cron job running on the server that's also rebooting it, and see how often it occurs. When shell scripting's less rusty in my brain I'll probably have it check a wildcard, since they're all in the 192.168.1.x range, and use the same script on all of them.

Wow, that's excellent - great work coke!

Worth putting that on the wiki, I think.

Thanks. I think I got something wrong on the timing line, because at one point I used a "=" where I should have used a "!=", and it rebooted itself like mad. Had to get the command to move the file to something that wouldn't execute into the clipboard so I could get it in fast enough. Which is weird, because if you look at the messages log, it runs every 10 minutes as expected. I think part of the problem on that is that my NTP isn't setup correctly, and it thinks it's midnight every time it reboots. I should probably fix that.

Hello

I have used telnet to connect to the Axis camera but upon attempting to create the directory, it states:

"Read-only file system"

Am I missing something?

Thanks

J

Jason_Bassett wrote:Hello

I have used telnet to connect to the Axis camera but upon attempting to create the directory, it states:

"Read-only file system"

Am I missing something?

Thanks

J

Most likely the hard drive has errors and was mounted as read only. You need to fix this problem fix.

Unfortunately getting the "Read-only file system" both on Axis 207W and M1011W.
Anyone got around this?

IMO, contact Axis tech support and ask them. They've always been helpful when I've needed it. If it's out of warrantee and requires repairing though, don't expect it to be free.