How to add a remote monitor (Axis IP camera)

myusernameisunique · Post by **myusernameisunique** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 9:53 pm

Hi,

I'm having trouble creating a remote monitor for an Axis 212 PTZ network camera. It doesn't work - no image (not even a black window) when I try to open the live feed from ZM console. I configured it according to http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Axis, no success. Tried selecting different presets for Axis, same thing. The camera is set to 640x480 motion JPEG.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thank you!

kingofkya · Post by **kingofkya** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 10:11 pm

Check the logs my guess is you didn't read the part about shared memory

myusernameisunique · Post by **myusernameisunique** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 10:58 pm

kingofkya wrote:Check the logs my guess is you didn't read the part about shared memory

For every attempt to open the monitor feed, zmdc.log says:

03/22/2010 16:59:07.071464 zmdc[2757].INF [Starting pending process, zmc -m 3]
03/22/2010 16:59:07.087446 zmdc[2757].INF ['zmc -m 3' starting at 10/03/22 16:59:07, pid = 7187]
03/22/2010 16:59:07.103025 zmdc[2757].ERR ['zmc -m 3' exited abnormally, exit status 255]

I did configure kernel.shmmin and kernel.shmmax. Is that what you're referring to, and what values do you recommend for a computer with 1GB of RAM?

On ZM console, Remote monitor Mode is shown in orange color and Source in red, whereas a working local monitor is all green. Does it have any significance?

Thanks!

kingofkya · Post by **kingofkya** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 12:03 am

ok does the url you have in the camera output the resolution you have set in in zm

In my axis cams i have the RemoteHostPath like this

/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?resolution=800x600

and Capture Width and Height are
800 600

they must match

myusernameisunique · Post by **myusernameisunique** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 3:25 am

kingofkya wrote:ok does the url you have in the camera output the resolution you have set in in zm

they must match

Yes, they are the same. I copy-paste the URL from ZM settings to Firefox and it works no problem there - I see an mJPEG video stream from the camera.

whatboy · Post by **whatboy** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 3:35 am

I did configure kernel.shmmin and kernel.shmmax

It ain't SHMMIN... it is...

kernel.shmall
kernel.shmmax

myusernameisunique · Post by **myusernameisunique** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 3:40 pm

whatboy wrote:
I did configure kernel.shmmin and kernel.shmmax
It ain't SHMMIN... it is...

kernel.shmall
kernel.shmmax

My bad, thanks for the correction! The mistake is just in the post, not in the actual config file.

kingofkya · Post by **kingofkya** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:38 pm

I cant think of anything off hand that might be the problem. You an send me a link to your ZM server and I can take a look for you.

myusernameisunique · Post by **myusernameisunique** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 9:50 pm

kingofkya wrote:I cant think of anything off hand that might be the problem. You an send me a link to your ZM server and I can take a look for you.

Thanks so much kingofkya again for your time to fix my problem. You're a king of ZM for sure!

I got the camera live feed working after reboot.

So, it was my mistake in shared mem configuration: in /etc/sysctl.conf, I entered kernel.shmall and kernel.shmmax parameters in one line instead of two different lines in the file.

that is, instead of:

kernel.shmall = 134217728
kernel.shmmax = 134217728

it was:

kernel.shmall = 134217728 kernel.shmmax = 134217728

So simple, I'm feeling ashamed...

But from my experience, many problems are caused by most simple mistakes....