ZoneMinder Forums

Hi All,

I just got delivery of my PV149 card from bluecherry and thought the setup of zoneminder would be a breeze. How wrong I have been....

So, my situation:

1. Im running Ubunto 9.04
2. I installed Zoneminder following the how to on howtoforge.
3. All seems fine, but when I try to view a camera i just get a black box.

Now, I know the card is working cause its fine with the livecd.

Here are my logs - PLEASE HELP :P

ZMDC.log

05/18/09 17:33:13.152492 zmdc[2579].INF [Server starting at 09/05/18 17:33:13]
05/18/09 17:33:16.346654 zmdc[2579].INF ['zmc -d /dev/video0' starting at 09/05/18 17:33:16, pid = 2601]
05/18/09 17:33:16.411461 zmdc[2579].INF ['zmc -d /dev/video0' crashed, signal 6]
05/18/09 17:33:16.411907 zmdc[2579].INF [Starting pending process, zmc -d /dev/video0]
05/18/09 17:33:16.445039 zmdc[2579].INF [Can't find child with pid of '2603']
05/18/09 17:33:16.445835 zmdc[2579].INF ['zmc -d /dev/video0' starting at 09/05/18 17:33:16, pid = 2603]
05/18/09 17:33:16.609061 zmdc[2579].INF ['zmfilter.pl' starting at 09/05/18 17:33:16, pid = 2604]
05/18/09 17:33:16.965090 zmdc[2579].INF ['zmaudit.pl -c' starting at 09/05/18 17:33:16, pid = 2606]
05/18/09 17:33:17.406869 zmdc[2579].INF ['zmwatch.pl' starting at 09/05/18 17:33:17, pid = 2609]
05/18/09 17:33:17.780036 zmdc[2579].INF ['zmupdate.pl -c' starting at 09/05/18 17:33:17, pid = 2612]
05/18/09 17:34:57.890526 zmdc[2579].WAR [Can't find process with command of 'zmc -d /dev/video1']
05/18/09 17:34:58.087853 zmdc[2579].INF [Can't find child with pid of '3699']
05/18/09 17:34:58.088514 zmdc[2579].INF ['zmc -d /dev/video1' starting at 09/05/18 17:34:58, pid = 3699]
05/18/09 17:34:58.264620 zmdc[2579].WAR [Can't find process with command of 'zma -m 3']


messages.log

May 18 17:34:43 smartbox-cctv zms[3686]: INF [Debug Level = 0, Debug Log = <none>]
May 18 17:34:43 smartbox-cctv zms[3686]: WAR [Shared data not initialised by capture daemon, some query functions may not be available or produce invalid results]
May 18 17:34:43 smartbox-cctv zms[3686]: WAR [Unable to store frame as shared memory invalid]
May 18 17:34:57 smartbox-cctv zmdc[2579]: WAR [Can't find process with command of 'zmc -d /dev/video1']
May 18 17:34:58 smartbox-cctv zmdc[3699]: INF ['zmc -d /dev/video1' started at 09/05/18 17:34:58]
May 18 17:34:58 smartbox-cctv zmc_dvideo1[3699]: INF [Debug Level = 0, Debug Log = <none>]
May 18 17:34:58 smartbox-cctv zmdc[2579]: INF [Can't find child with pid of '3699']
May 18 17:34:58 smartbox-cctv zmdc[2579]: INF ['zmc -d /dev/video1' starting at 09/05/18 17:34:58, pid = 3699]
May 18 17:34:58 smartbox-cctv zmdc[2579]: WAR [Can't find process with command of 'zma -m 3']
May 18 17:35:04 smartbox-cctv zms[3713]: INF [Debug Level = 0, Debug Log = <none>]
May 18 17:35:04 smartbox-cctv zms[3713]: WAR [Shared data not initialised by capture daemon, some query functions may not be available or produce invalid results]
May 18 17:35:04 smartbox-cctv zms[3713]: WAR [Unable to store frame as shared memory invalid]

No expert here, but when I see this

[Unable to store frame as shared memory invalid]

in the logs, I think I'd check the shared memory settings.

The other thing, I have several PV-149's and I had to work a bit till I found that my cameras wouldn't work because I had the wrong "Capture Pallette". I thought it should work with RGB24, but by trial and error I found most of the others worked, but not RGB24....

HTH, Keith

Thanks for that Keith,

I find this all very confusing - where do I check my shared memeory settings? I have read the Wiki documentation (def. not for a newbie to linux!) and see some info about shared memory settings (ie. adding some lines to a .conf file, which I did) but nothing else apart form that....

Ok, I have fixed the memory issues (I think), and have played with the video settings but not avail. The line that stands out to me is:

05/19/09 08:38:47.634771 zmdc[2578].WAR [Can't find process with command of 'zma -m 3']

Any ideas?

EDIT - if I try to run it manually, through terminal, I get an *Aborted* message....

Sorry, I don't have any more suggestions.

Since you said it works running the live CD can you see any differences in the setup between it and your current installation?

I think persistance is the name of the game here. Just keep looking and maybe someone else will chime in and give a helping hand.

Keith

Ok, I fixed the problem (thanks for the helpw Kwire).

For anyone else having torubles, this is what I did:

- Got rid of Ubuntu 9.04, put on Kubunto 8.10
- Used 1.23x instead of 1.24
- Installed as per the howtoforge guide


When I initially setup I was still having simialr problems. Thoguh it was memory etc. It turned out that my plugs had come loose (ahhh!). Anyways, plugged everyhting in again and still having strange problems (small images, green images etc). THen realised that this damn Zoneminder business works a whole lot better when you change settings, stop the server, and restart it. Now running perfectly - nice litte pakcage, just really damn difficult to setup!!!

I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 server with 1.24.2 ZM. I have the /dev/Video0 card working and it brings up 2 cameras just fine. Now I'm trying to add some trendnet ip cameras (110w, 312w & 410) but I get this error:


Aug 20 16:12:34 tarheel zms[22613]: INF [Debug Level = 0, Debug Log = <none>]
Aug 20 16:12:34 tarheel zms[22613]: INF [Authenticated user 'admin']
Aug 20 16:12:34 tarheel zms[22613]: WAR [Shared data not initialised by capture daemon, some query functions may not be available or produce invalid results]
Aug 20 16:12:40 tarheel zmu[22615]: WAR [Shared data not initialised by capture daemon, some query functions may not be available or produce invalid results]
Aug 20 16:12:40 tarheel zmu[22617]: WAR [Shared data not initialised by capture daemon, some query functions may not be available or produce invalid results]

Any ideas other than reinstalling like smartbox did?
[/b]

Here's what I experienced below with Trendnet tv-ip100w-n and Airlink 101 aic250w. I was thinking of buying 110w cameras since they are pretty cheap, and have read on the net that people were successful configuring it but had to tweak some scripts in zoneminder, sounded like an arduous process. Were you successful at all configuring your 110w cameras with zoneminder?

After troubles and tribulations, here's what I had to do to get my tvip100w-n wireless camera working. Using Zoneminder 1.24.2 with Debian Lenny.

1. First thing is first, memory settings are important, I have a P4 3.ghz machine with 2 gb of memory. I am running virtual box and install Debian Lenny, and dedicated 1gb of memory to this vm. I tried so many settings in /etc/sysctl.conf, then finally found a number that works well, which is kernel.shmmax = 256000000, I did not put in kernel.shmall in the sysctl.conf file. Previously, I had set kernel.shmmax to 128000000, which worked fine for the camera at resolution 320x240, but when I bumped it up to 640x480, it displayed a black screen or a blank screen. Make sure you restart your machine when making any memory changes.

2. Since this is a wireless camera, interference plays a great deal. I had the camera set outside the house where there was a lot more interference and the camera would stop responding after a while, I had to hard reset it. I also experience lots of camera crashes when tweaking the settings constantly, once you get settings that work for you, you should not need to tweak it much. Basically plan out your wireless channels configurations so that you get the least amount of interference with your neighbors Access Points. I brought the camera inside the house and is looking out of a window, and reconfigured my wireless channels (1,6 or 11) are the ones you should use, the wireless has been pretty flawless, getting a 70-80 percent strength signal on it. What also helped is using the tomato router firmware on my wt54g router, where I could increase the power of the antennae.

3. Here are my camera settings:
640x480
medium compression
auto frame rate
With these settings, I get a decent 5-12 fps

320x240
medium compression
auto frame rate
With these settings, I get a pretty solid 15-27 fps

4. The zoneminder camera settings were quite tricky, but I found something that eluded me for awhile. Here are the key settings below.

Source Tab/remote host path:/video/cgi
Buffers Tab/Image buffer size: 150
Buffers Tab/Warmup frames: 30
Buffers Tab/Stream image replay image buffer: 20000

One of these settings makes the viewing stable, and got rid of memory issue messages in the /var/log/messages. Not sure which one did the trick, and I might have these settings bloated, but I left these alone anyways, it may eat up memory, but at least it's stable, you can tweak these til you find a happy medium.

5. One last thing I did was to tweak the Options/Network setting in Zoneminder. I upped the http_timeout setting to 100000. Probably don't need a number that high, not exactly sure what it really does, but a setting to be experimented with. The combination of the source/buffers/options/network configurations have left my system very stable.

6. I also bought a airlink101 aic250w camera, and is basically the same camera as the tvip100w-n, but the image in lowlight is very fuzzy, but the cost was less than half ($69) of what the tvip100w-n was ($140). Configurations were the exact same, except the frame rate at 640x480 isn't as good as the tvip100w-n. Overall though, it is as stable as the tvip100w-n.

This is the link i found to work with other software. I'm just now installing zone minder. I was also looking at software webcam looker for windows. It didn't work but i emailed the author and fixed it in a beta he sent me. he said the problem was that the camera was very strick about accepting passwords. don't know if that helps are not i'm going to try it with zoneminder later today.

the link i'm using is.

http://username:password@ipaddress/cgi/jpg/image.cgi

NM i see there is another post for the cam. looks like /cgi/mjpg/mjpg.cgi will work. I haven't been able to try it yet. I was trying with /cgi/jpg/image.cgi