ZoneMinder Forums

Hello all.
I ordered a basic PCI 4channel card from bluecherry and am waiting for UPS to bring it. Wile im waiting im trying to get a host PC put together.

I have 2 to work with here.

My brother who is a gamer gave me a AMD 64 2x system with some crazy vid card and tons of fans. This thing is loud and draws tons of power. I have this running the latest 64bit Ubuntu and i know it works well with linux. The power consumption and sound are a major downer with this PC. Its also very large.

My 2nd option is this very small 1.7Gz P4 system that used to be used for P.O.S. It makes almost no sound and draws very little power. It only has 256megs of ram (problem?) and I have a 160Gig drive to put in it. It has onboard video that shares the ram.

Would the little P4 system have the power to run ZM on a stripped down linux distro well? My goes is to eventually have the ZM system headless and hidden in my home after the bugs are worked out.

Any input is welcome.
Thanks.

From what I had read and seen, I think the P4 should work for 4 cameras. I have run a P4 1.8 with 2 cameras and had no problems at all. I did beef up the RAM though. I'd recommend at least a gig, as with anything in computers, RAM is cheap so max it out.

I would pull the graphics card from the big machine, under clock the processor, and remove as many of the fans as you can, including possibly a smaller power supply.


The older machine, will do fine. Maybe struggle recording 4 (640) cameras at full speed, but I think 2 (640) would be okay at your spec... as cralt says, put as much RAM as you can in there. Even from 265mb > 512mb will make a lot of difference.

Do you want to record in Colour? 640x480 or 320x240?

640 takes x4 the processing of 320...


The older machine will also run a bit better if you don't load a heavy GUI based linux distro (Ubuntu). You could use Ubuntu Server and not install X(org) on it if you want to stay with Ubuntu.

The card should be here tomorrow so i guess im gona try with the lower machine 1st..

I have never run ZM before so this is all new to me.

My understanding of ZM is that I don't even need X on the server...i could just admin/watch the CCTV system from another PC via the webbrowser.

My "plan A" is going to be to try and get a X'less install of Slackware 13 going.