ZoneMinder Forums

I've f.. reinstalled zm last 10 times and cannot find source of the trouble. It just stopes streaming at some point. Initially it works for a few days, and than I can't see any of the pics, just like there is a broken link to the pic. After fresh reinstallation it now even does not start streaming. But making events, and thumbnails, and I can see .jpg files and theys are OK. Debian 3.1 with custom 2.6.14 kernel. 12 channels 8 active.
No problems in logs at all! Everything seems works, capturing, analysing. and so on - but cannot see live strams.

CVS ffmpeg
mysql 4.1 from debian standard package

Guys, please do some more logging - i'm becoming crasy on this instability

zirav,
If you would like help you are more than welcome to ask.
I would ask that you please edit your post and remove the vulgar language and give us some better detail on the problem and more info on your setup as this would help us to better help you. This being your fist post does not set a very good impression, nor does it make anyone sympathetic to respond to your problem.
You make no referance to the version of ZM. Knowing what the client is that you are trying to stream to (assuming IE at this point) and what you have done so far would be helpful.
I am also assuming that you are trying to stream mpeg since there is referance to ffmpeg cvs in your post.
Have you tried bumping up the debug output?

Regards,
Cordel

Sorry for the vulgar lang folks, just after having a night of hardcore love with ZM I was unable to another expressions
ZM is latest - 1.21.4
Mysql 4.1

Logs... just look at your logs whe everything works fine No errors, no warniongs, NOTHING suspicious. So bumping logs here is just waste of time.
Just now have recompilled and reinstalled it from scratch - WORKS AGAIN!
Now 8 cameras attached. Now after a while of it work I afraid to add more monitors - since most of the last streaming problems were occured after I added another monitor. One time it started to work again after restart of MYSQL.
Yes, one thing - when it does not stream - it does not show camera properties (brightness, contrast, hue, color) - like cannot get it from DB, but the same time, I can have any other settings from DB.

BTW: ZM LIVECD 1.21.3 (Mandrake) is totally useless - since hangs after a day or a few hours more - hangs totally (linux box just stops responding) - screen is blank - so no idea is there any crashes or so - tried on totally different hardware (P4 2800 and C2400 ) - so the hardware problem is excluded. Reinstalled several times on different hardware as said. On the same hardware my own build works. But with different Linux (debian 3.1) but the same customized kernel 2.6.14... Oh yes, it hangs with native kernel too on a liveCD:)

I'm glad you got it working. Streaming is dependant mostly on ffmpeg and your viewer and is not really intended to run for days or hours on end, especially as viewers like WMP tend to lag anyway so if you run for a few hours you'll probably be half an hour behind. Jpeg streaming is usually much simpler to set up and more reliable but even then browsers sometimes just peg out after a while. You might prefer to try James's windows viewer for long term streaming if that fits with how you want to use ZM.

I also echo Corey's comments about language on the forums and I'm pleased to see that you edited the post before anyone else needed to. I would also like to remind everyone that everything on the site including the LiveCD is contributed by people who don't get paid for doing any of this so please bear that in mind when posting criticisms. Don't forget that one of the benefits of open source is that if you don't like how something works (or doesn't work) you can make modifications to correct it yourself and post them back here for the benefit of everyone. Open source works best when everybodys gives a little and takes a little rather than just doing one or the other.

Phil

Sorry, I did not correctly explained the problem -
I use JPEG streaming
The problem happens with ANY streaming - so after some time you find that you cant see live streams or view events. Instead the picture you see a box - like a broken picture link. But there are thumbnails (you can see them) and record works - if you see at the event directiry - there are correct jpegs there - but you can't see them via ZM

I saw post like that somewhere in the forums - but problem remain unresolved there.

What are you using to view the streams? A browser directly or Cambozola? It may be worth trying to alternative method for comparison. Also are you referring to live streaming or event replays?

The live streaming does not use the jpeg files themselves as it just takes the images from memory usually before they are even written to disk. Another thing to check is if the zms process is still running on your ZM box when the broken images are displayed. If so then that would suggest something broken between the ZM box and the viewer or in the browser.

Phil

JUst my 2 pence
I have used rosses live cd to great success on most hardware, and if it works it stays working, I also have to say that i have had an issue on a new 64 bit build and my distro (pclinux os) woundlnt work (some x problem and my tft) but rosses booted first time.
I have found that Corey distro CTU zm is quite forgiving on its hardware use so maybe you would have more luck with that,
There are lots of things that can cause it to stop working and in my case i barely understand most of what is going on, so for me live cd and ctu zm are god sends. I couldnt have got strated with zm without them.

James

Some thing that often gets overlooked is that while many refer to ZM as the whole shebang, it is several different components that ZoneMinder requires to function so that errors may be logged in several different log files depending on what the issue might be.

I run into this a majority of the time when someone tells me they have no errors yet zm don't work (not saying that this is necessarily the case here). Then when I ssh into a persons machine, I have as best as I can recall have always found an error in one of the logs.
Once explained it makes since but I have always either explained in a email or via a phone call, and haven't done so on the forum, so my bad there.

Things to look at are:
/var/log/messages (most system type errors will appear here)
apaches error_log (any thing related to apache having issues. permissions, or something not configured quite right)
mysqld.log (any thing related to mysql, but I find most errors are apache side of things and only once found any relevant errors here when someone decided that there first week in Linux was a good time to build mysql from source. eerrr)
zmdc.log (anything related to any of the actual zm processes show up here)
zmvideo.log (most anything relating to ffmpeg will show up here)

also of coarse dmesg to check for any hardware type issues.
Hopefully this helps a bit and I know it can be somewhat overwhelming at first. But thats what the forum is for and you will find that there is always someone here to help.

Regards,
Cordel

cordel wrote:Some thing that often gets overlooked is that while many refer to ZM as the whole shebang, it is several different components that ZoneMinder requires to function so that errors may be logged in several different log files depending on what the issue might be.

Is there a list somewhere of all of the programs that make the logs such that I can pass it to metalog as a regex right now but it may catch programs that aren't zm related:

A couple of us but together a depenancies list under the hints and tips topic and that might give you some ideas.
For the most part I just listed most if not all the logs above and can't think of any other relevent log files.

Regards,
Cordel

Basically ZM writes directly to any log files that start with 'zm and /var/log/messages (or the equivalent depending on your syslog.conf). Additionally some applications (e..g ffmpeg) can generate errors that end up in your webserver error log, e.g. /var/log/httpd/error_log.

Phil

cordel wrote:Some thing that often gets overlooked is that while many refer to ZM as the whole shebang

#!/usr/local/bin/zmc




From my experience, problems of this sort are indicative of some type of intermittent hardware problem. Linux is very stable and if it locks up, there's a reason for it - it's not like windoze where it's just an accepted part of using a computer. You might want to download MemTest86, burn it to a CD, then boot from that and let it run for a few days. It'll test your system and if there's a problem, it'll most likely uncover it. (I do this for all the servers I put in place. MUCH better than spending a lot of time installing and configuring, only to discover that one minor part of the system is flaky. It's saved me more than once.)

I'll also mirror the comment that criticizing the people here is not a very bright idea. As stated above, they do this stuff for free. I can tell you from my own experience, that zoneminder is a solid piece of software. I've installed and monitor several systems spanning from 1.19.5 through 1.21.3 and apart from hardware problems (damn those drive makers! ), they don't crash. They shut themselves down for power failures and start up after power is restored, but I've got one that's been running almost three months without so much as a hiccup.

Please don't get me wrong folks, I do not criticize any of you I'm just a little emotional I'm fan of open source myself and do use almost only linux everywhere, including all of the servers and most WS. ZM a cool stuff, just, somehow, and quite unusual too much problematic since beginning And I was unable to find prepacked ZM .debs in the net. That means I probably should post one here If ZM admin will accept one to post on after all my vulgar behavior

I can say that I do use linux for more than 7 years in quite hardcore way (all ISP services) excluding CISCO binded, like VOIP. Just having so much stuff in the forum and so strange behave in my own build made me even more emotional

I'll watch behaviour of my system with 12 monitors ONLINE and IF that will happen again - will try to debug a problem and post the reason myself here. Since I'm sure that I'm not the only one met that problem, but many of just giveup, and that's it. I'm myself not very keen to write in forums, so this poema is quite rare case. I just don't have time for that, unfortunatelly.

long shot, but there's no chance it's something to do w/ insufficient inodes or something similar/related ?

times i've seen weirdness all center around disk problems.

Hi zirav,
If you would like you may send any packaged deb's to me and I can post them up on my ftp server. I have yet to setup apt but will try in the near future if that helps any one. My only concern would be that since I am not yet packaging debs I have no control over any issues that might arise in the packages. It might just be better to provide the location and maybe we could put up a link pointing in the general direction.

I'll be setting up a virtual machine host on a AMD64 here fairly soon using xen. If I can learn all the tools to automate the build a bit I should be able to package for several distro's. I know RH products pretty good so RHEL/CentOS, FC, Mandrake, and Suse I should have very few problems. Debian while things are done a bit different doesn't look to be too problematic and I believe I should be able to adjust quickly.

To all Please:
As far as the first comments made, it is and should be now behind us so I don't think anyone has a need to comment any more about it. It's over with and amends have been made and we're on to constructive/productive things now. Thank you all.

Regards,
Cordel

PS zirav, Welcome to Zoneminder.