I had a working install of Zoneminder (ver 1.23.3) on the same computer as Centos 5 and also running Aster*sk. I tried to upgrade to zm 1.24.2 and immediately ran into problems. Trying to open the web console I get a "Couldn't open config" message. Then I was getting camera opening errors in the logs, errors with access to /dev/video, and an error with the web console always showing the ZoneMinder status as "Stopped" even when it was running.
I tried to wipe all old zm files, install new from scratch, even tried to reinstall old version of zm and nothing was working.
Eventually I figured out the problem was with the apache (httpd) service user/group settings. Through the previous installation of the other program on the computer the apache service had been configured with a different user/group name than "apache".
All I had to do was install zm with the options --with-webuser=<existing apache user name> --with-webgroup=<existing apache group name> and then everything worked perfectly.
This would not be a solution to anybody with a fresh computer setup since in that case apache would still be configured as having the default name "apache" for the user and group; but if you have a preexisting program and experience problems with zm installation (upgrade or new install) it might be worthwhile to double check the user/group name of the apache service.
Hope this helps somebody.