How to get started?

[tristpost]

I am not a Linux expert but rather a regular (reasonably computer savy) person that happen to own a Grandtec 9-port card and really would love to set up a video supervision solution around my home.

It seems like ZM is a really nice program IF I JUST COULD MAKE IT RUN...

I tried (and failed) to make zone-minder work on an existing Fedora-3 system (tried both SRC and some RPM I found somewere and got into different problems).

I have a few questions about the options I have:

1. RPM - is there some instruction about what needs to be downloaded (what parts of the FTP-server directory structure is relevant) and how to make the thing work once the RPM is installerd?
I have for instance no idea if my Linux box has an HTTP server installed and enabled or not etc (I do in general not know a lot about how http works behind the scenes with CGI etc) so I would need some step-by-step instructions covering everything from pre-install req, installation, post-install configuration and perhaps some simple troble shooting...

2. I have seen that there is a ready made distro with ZM-included. What displays / ethernet HW / video capture cards does it work with? Are there any documetation (similar to what I asked for in previous question - ie fairly detailed) that describe how to use / install it? If runing from the CD (I belive this is one option) can one still capturer video to disk, store info about cameras etc to disk or is it not possible to use hard disk in the computer for anything...

I really hope somebody can give me some advice - I would so much like to get this software runing and has already spent a lot of time trying ...

Best Regards
- Trist

[jameswilson]

I see you have 3 choices
1 the hard way pick your distro, build zm from source solve dependancies drinkl lots of coffee!
2 CTU Linux. This Coreys zm distro build on fedora core 3. This will support anything that fedora core 3 will.
3 the new live cd this is probably the easist to start with as you need not install it to test it, but i would.
the live cd is based on a 2.6.16 kernel. ctu is based on a 2.6.12, so the live cd will support the newer hardware. The install of ctu is probably smoother as there is an issue with the updating of the installer progress.
I persoanlly use the live cd, so feel free to try both. Corey hosts his own update server for ctu. but i believ ctu v2 isnt far away based on fc5 so the choice is yours.

BTW dont pick option 1

[tristpost]

I first tried the live-CD but it did not work with my graphic card (I suspect the CD tried to use the VGA connector but I have my monitor connected through DVI - the only way to connect my flatpanel).

After that I tried to install the ZoneMinder distro and that worked after some fiddling about.

When I have performed the post-install steps propsed in the forum thread about the distro (starting some services, editing the zm config file etc) zone minder starts but when I have defined my monitor and try to look at it I just get a black square with the time logging at the top.

To test zm I use my DV video camera (that I have connected to my TV using the same cable producing a picture). I was not sure what capture size to specify in ZM so I tried with the DV standard resolution (720x576).

I specified video and channel 0 (also tried one) with the same result...

My capture card i a 9-port Grandtec that I have tested under Windows (with the rather bad software suplied by Grandtec) together with my DV video camera (I did not have to specify a video resolution there so that gave no clue to what to specify with zm).

I can also add that zm log file contain nothing that I can interpret as an error message.

Anybody have some sugestions for what I can try next?

Best Regards
Trist

[jameswilson]

You need to check you logs but i reakon your getting a 'cannot shmget' error
first drop the res to 320x240 that should work, when/if you want to increase the resolution see the faq re shmget

[tristpost]

I found another tread were it was proposed that one may need to override the card info and it tried adding:

options bttv card=103 tuner=4

to the modprobe.conf and this got zone minder working!

I got the same message in the linux logs as was mentioned in the other thread (using tuner = -1) so it seems the Grandtec cards need an override to set how many channels they have... (and the card type?).

The card was both before and after I added the override detected as Grandtec though...

My last problem has to do with the color palette. The only palette I managed to get to work with my Sony PC-9 DV camcorder was grayscale. With all the others the defined camera line turned from yellow to red...

Now the camera worked with the grayscale setting but of course I did not get color picture (the camera is 24 bit color)

I keep my fingers crossed this will not be a problem with my CCD cameras (they are also color and of course I would like to take advantage of that)...

Thanks for helping out - I am now very happy and will continue playing with my Grandtec XGuard and zone minder!

- Trist