nph-zms processes crashing PC

alanparsons · Post by **alanparsons** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 5:46 pm

Hi all!

I am having a strange problem with ZM on Ubuntu 6.06LTS. If I open the "montage" window, everything works fine when I connect from a remote machine (I have two cams).

If I login on the PC running ZM, run Firefox and open http://localhost/zm-index.php?view=montage&group=0, what I get is a window with two blank frames. Sometimes pressing F5 fixes the problem, sometimes you have to close/reload the montage window. Most of the times you get a new window with only one live frame showing (the other is blank), or perhaps with two frames showing, but frozen (no live images). The behaviour is definitely random.

Yes, I have followed the install instructions for Ubuntu and yes, I have cambozola and added the path in the ZM config. I tried installing on a second machine, same results.

Another thing: *only* when I open the montage from the PC running ZM, I notice top reporting two processes "nph-zms", which do not show up if I open the montage window from a remote machine.

What's worse is the fact that every time you hit the F5 button or close/reload the montage page, you get two more processes! And, even if you close all Firefox windows, the processes never die (you must restart ZM).

I found that, although I have 1Gb RAM installed, if you play around with the montage window you can quickly use up all the available RAM, start swapping and bring your machine to a halt in a matter of approx. 10 minutes.

Any explanations/suggestions are more than welcome! Thanks in advance.

alanparsons · Post by **alanparsons** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 5:52 pm

Correction: even if I connect to the montage window from a remote machine, I *always* get two instances of nph-zms.

The only difference is, when I close the window from the remote machine, the processes are killed. If I open/close the montage from the ZM box, the processes are *not* killed.

Post by **zoneminder** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:31 pm

If you have FireFox, you do not need Cambozola so that might remove one possible issue. Have you tried the FF config changes suggested in the Wiki->FAQ in case you are hitting an issue there?

I don't know why you should be getting two zms processes unless there is a problem with the cgi config but I would try the FF changes anyway and see if that makes a difference.

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 12:05 am

not sure if its relevant but i notice something similar on the live cd if using the server to view the server (ie through x) i stopped this by changing the path from nph-zms to just zms