ZM not starting processes to monitor cameras

ksattic · Post by **ksattic** » Fri Nov 27, 2009 8:53 am

I've had zm working fine on my Ubuntu 8.10 64bit system, but today I upgraded to 9.10 and hit a multitude of problems. After fixing a compilation error, I installed the package but was unable to start it using the script in scripts/zm. I used my old zoneminder script in /etc/init.d/zoneminder to start, and I can see that the following processes are running:

665 pts/1 00:00:00 zmdc.pl
703 pts/1 00:00:00 zmfilter.pl
707 pts/1 00:00:00 zmaudit.pl
709 pts/1 00:00:00 zmwatch.pl
711 pts/1 00:00:00 zmupdate.pl

Unfortunately, the cameras are not being monitored and no files are being written to the /var/www/zm/images directory. I can verify the cameras are working fine (IP cameras) but it appears that zm is not starting any processes to monitor them. "top" shows no zm processes using any significant CPU time.

Directories were created in the /var/www/events directory for my cameras when I set them up through the web interface. I'm just not sure why the cameras are not being monitored.

Any help would be appreciated - thanks.

Edit: using zm 1.24.2.

/tmp/zmdc.log says:

11/27/2009 01:59:05.011955 zmdc[2708].INF [Starting pending process, zmc -m 2]
11/27/2009 01:59:05.013497 zmdc[2708].INF ['zmc -m 2' starting at 09/11/27 01:59:05, pid = 3226]
11/27/2009 01:59:05.035069 zmdc[2708].ERR ['zmc -m 2' exited abnormally, exit status 255]

I've not found much info on this error

ksattic · Post by **ksattic** » Fri Nov 27, 2009 9:09 am

A warning to others - the problem is that when upgrading to a new Ubuntu distribution, by default it overwrites certain configuration files.

After going through all initial setup I originally did in 8.10, I found the problem:

/etc/sysctl.conf needed the following lines added back in:

kernel.shmall = 268435456
kernel.shmmax = 268435456