ZoneMinder Forums

Hi,

First of all I'd like to say what a fantastic product Zoneminder is.
I'm trying to set up a Zoneminder installation on a dedicated PC

ASROCK 880 MB
AMD Athon XP 1600+
256 DDR Memory
ATI 9200 Graphics
200Gb HD

Each time I run the live CD the installation process will freeze and lock the machine out usally during the installation of files Step 4 i think.

I have made 3 Partions using diskdrake
4Gb /
500mb Swap
Whatever is left /var

I have run the MD5 test on the cd image and it's fine, I have also installed a working system using the same CD on a differant machine which also works fine.

I used the following command to boot the livecd

livecd noscsi nousb nopcmcia nocows xres=800x600 safex

To test the PC I've had a copy of Windoze XP working.

What else can I try?

Many thanks

Nick

Try disabling the screen saver before starting the installation. You will find this in the KDE settings. This has caused problems on some machines and will be disabled by default on future versions.

Best regards,

Ross

OK Will do, I'll let you know what happens.

Nick

Hi,

The system still locks with the screen saver disabled, this time it happened whilst formatting the drive. The system seems to locks anytime during the installation.

I forgot to mention I have a 8 Channel DVR card installed (8x878)

Is there anything else I could Try?

Thanks In Advance.

Nick

Discovering if the problem is the DVR card is easy. Simply remove it and try the installation without it. If that gets you past the installation you can replace the card and see if the problem returns.

Other than that it becomes a matter of sleuthing. Examine the output of dmesg for anything suspicious. Google for any linux compatability problems with your MB, hard drive, CD drive, etc.

I'm guessing you assembled this machine yourself? If you have any spare parts or machines try a different CD drive, hard drive, memory, etc, one at a time, until the problem disappears. I am loath to replace anything with new hardware until I have nailed down the problem with some certainty.

You could also try another livecd, such as a recent knoppix and see if the problem shows up with it. This will help establish if its a hardware bug or a bug/incompatability with ZMliveCD. Another thought that comes to mind is to run the ZMliveCD for awhile without starting the installation. You can even config some monitors in ZM. If the machine doesn't lock until you start the installer, I would suspect the hard drive, or IDE cable.

Best regards,

Ross

Tried a whole bunch of differant hardware configurations :

New Hard Disk
New Graphic card
New IDE cable
It seems like the IDE interface on the motherboard isn't compatable, its a ASROCK K7 Upgrade 600, not a 880 as previously stated.

Installed LiveCD onto a Celeron 2.6ghz machine with no problems.
The 8 channel DVR card causes problems: the machine freezes on startup this card is a 8800 type. We installed a 4 channel card and this works fine.

Testing on the Celeron machine for now, however this belongs to someone else

Will post a new Subject on hardware forum.

Thanks for the help

Nick