ZoneMinder Wiki - User contributions [en]

FAQ

2010-11-01T22:51:30Z

Jusfixit: /* My load is too high, how can I reduce it? */

== ZoneMinder Frequently Asked Questions ==

This is the new FAQ page. I will be migrating the existing FAQs here as soon as possible. In the meantime the old FAQ page is available [http://www.zoneminder.com/faq.html here].

Feel free to contribute any FAQs that you think are missing.

===How can I stop ZoneMinder filling up my disk?===

Recent versions of ZoneMinder come with a filter you can use for this purpose already included. However '''by default it is not enabled for event deletion'''.

The filter is called ''PurgeWhenFull'' and to find it, choose one of the event counts from the console page, for instance events in the last hour, for one of your monitors.

This will bring up an event listing and a filter window.

In the filter window there is a drop down select box labeled 'Use Filter', that lets your select a saved filter. Select 'PurgeWhenFull' and it will load that filter.

Make any modifications you might want, such as the percentage full you want it to kick in, or how many events to delete at a time (it will repeat the filter as many times as needed to clear the space, but will only delete this many events each time to get there).

Then click on 'Save' which will bring up a new window. Make sure the 'Automatically delete' box is checked and press save to save your filter. This will then run in the background to keep your disk within those limits.

After you've done that, you changes will automatically be loaded into zmfilter within a few minutes.

Check the <tt>zmfilter.log</tt> file to make sure it is running as sometimes missing perl modules mean that it never runs but people don't always realize.

There are two methods for ZM to remove files when they are deleted that can be found in Options under the System tab ZM_OPT_FAST_DELETE and ZM_RUN_AUDIT.

ZM_OPT_FAST_DELETE:

Normally an event created as the result of an alarm consists of entries in one or more database tables plus the various files associated with it. When deleting events in the browser it can take a long time to remove all of this if your are trying to do a lot of events at once. It is recommended that you set this option which means that the browser client only deletes the key entries in the events table, which means the events will no longer appear in the listing, and leaves the zmaudit daemon to clear up the rest later.

ZM_RUN_AUDIT:

The zmaudit daemon exists to check that the saved information in the database and on the file system match and are consistent with each other. If an error occurs or if you are using 'fast deletes' it may be that database records are deleted but files remain. In this case, and similar, zmaudit will remove redundant information to synchronize the two data stores. This option controls whether zmaudit is run in the background and performs these checks and fixes continuously. This is recommended for most systems however if you have a very large number of events the process of scanning the database and file system may take a long time and impact performance. In this case you may prefer to not have zmaudit running unconditionally and schedule occasional checks at other, more convenient, times.

ZM_AUDIT_CHECK_INTERVAL:

The zmaudit daemon exists to check that the saved information in the database and on the files system match and are consistent with each other. If an error occurs or if you are using 'fast deletes' it may be that database records are deleted but files remain. In this case, and similar, zmaudit will remove redundant information to synchronize the two data stores. The default check interval of 900 seconds (15 minutes) is fine for most systems however if you have a very large number of events the process of scanning the database and file system may take a long time and impact performance. In this case you may prefer to make this interval much larger to reduce the impact on your system. This option determines how often these checks are performed.

===What does a 'Can't shmget: Invalid argument' error in my logs mean? and my cameras won't display video at higher resolutions.===

This error is discussed in the README in the following excerpt:-
''...this is caused by an attempt to allocate an amount of shared memory greater than your system can handle. The size it requests is based on the following formula, ring buffer size x image width x image height x 3 (for 24 bit images) + a bit of overhead.

So, for example:
<pre>384x288 capture resolution, that makes: 110 592 pixels
in 24 bit color that's x24 = 2 654 208 bits per frame
by 80 frames ring buffer x80 = 212 336 640 bits per camera
by 4 cameras x4 = 849 346 560 bits.
Plus 10% overhead = 934 281 216 bits
That's 116 785 152 bytes, and
= 114 048 kB, respectively 111.38 MB.
If my shared memory is set to 134 217 728, which is exactly 128MB,
that means I shouldn't have any problem.
(Note that 1 byte = 8 bits and 1kbyte = 1024bytes, 1MB = 1024 kB)</pre>

If for instance you were using 24bit 640x480 then this would come to about 92Mb if you are using the default buffer size of 100. If this is too large then you can either reduce the image or buffer sizes or increase the maximum amount of shared memory available. If you are using RedHat then you can get details on how to change these settings at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/database/RHDB-2.1-Manual/admin_user/kernel-resources.html .

You should be able to use a similar procedure with other distributions to modify the shared memory pool without kernel recompilations though in some cases this may be necessary. Note, this error also sometimes occurs if you have an old shared memory segment lying around from a previous run that is too small. Use the ipcs and ipcrm system commands to check and remove it if necessary.'"

You can often find out how much shared memory is available by typing the following :-
<pre>cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmall</pre>

and the most you can allocate in one go :-
<pre>cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax</pre>

To change these values type (for example) :-
<pre>echo 134217728 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmall
echo 134217728 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax</pre>

'''Be sure to restart ZoneMinder after this.'''
However be aware that sometimes you will only need to change the shmmax value as shmall is often large enough. Also changing these values in this way is only effective until your machine is rebooted.

To change them permanently you will need to edit <tt>/etc/sysctl.conf</tt> and add the following lines (for example) :-
<pre>kernel.shmall = 134217728
kernel.shmmax = 134217728</pre>

To load these settings in the sysctl.conf file type:
<pre>sysctl -p</pre>

To check your shared memory settings type:
<pre>ipcs -l</pre>

Note that with Megapixel cameras like the Axis 207mw becoming cheaper and more attractive, the above memory settings are not adequate. To get Zoneminder working with a full 1280x1024 resolution camera in full colour, increase 134217728 to, for example, 268424446

These changes will now also be set the next time your machine is restarted.

Versions 1.24.x of ZoneMinder also allows you to use an alternate method of shared memory allocation, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmap mapped memory]. This requires less configuration and can be simpler to use. Mapped memory allows you to use a special type of file as the placeholder for your memory and this file is 'mapped' into memory space for easy and fast access.

To enable mapped memory in ZoneMinder you need add add the --enable--mmap=yes switch to your configure line. By default mapped memory files are created in /dev/shm which on most distributions is a dedicated pseudo-partition containing memory formatted as a filesystem. If your system uses a different path then this can be changed in ZoneMinder in Options->paths->PATH_MAP. It uses a filesystem type called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmpfs tmpfs]. If you type 'df' you should see this area and the size of memory it currently allows. It is important that you do not use a disk based filesystem for your memory mapped files as this will cause memory access to be extremely slow. ZoneMinder creates files called .zm.mmap.<monitor id> in the mapped memory filesystem.

Mapped memory is subject to the same limitations in terms of total memory as using more traditional shared memory but does not require any configuration per allocation or chunk. In future versions of ZoneMinder this will be the default shared memory storage method.

<div id="AlternateSharedMemory" style="width:80%; border:2px solid #8a8588; background:#faf5ff; vertical-align:top; margin-top: 6px; padding: 4px;">
Another good article about shared memory settings http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v9/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.db2.udb.uprun.doc/doc/t0008238.htm .
It made a statement that conflicted with those in the Redhat article but they fixed a [http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9692 long standing memory issue on FC6], so give them a try.

'''The essential difference was that the kernel.shmall setting is NOT in a direct memory setting in KB but in pages of memory. it is Max Pages of memory'''

'''For example:''' If you want to allocate a maximum memory setting to 8GB you have to convert it to the number of pages (or segments).
with a page size of 4096.
*kernel.shmall=8000x1024x1024/4096
**kernel.shmall=2048000
NOT 8388608000 as would be suggested in the RedHat article linked above.

shmmax is the max amount to allocate in one request -
this is is an actual memory size (as opposed to pages) set to 4GB
*kernel.shmmax = 4194304000

The <tt>/etc/sysctl.conf</tt> would have these lines<pre>kernel.shmall=2048000
kernel.shmmax = 4194304000</pre>

As above, reload your sysctl.conf with <tt>sysctl -p</tt> and check that the settings are correct with <tt>ipcs -l</tt>.
</div>

===I have enabled motion detection but it is not always being triggered when things happen in the camera view===

ZoneMinder uses zones to examine images for motion detection. When you create the initial zones you can choose from a number of preset values for sensitivity etc. Whilst these are usually a good starting point they are not always suitable for all situations and you will probably need to tweak the values for your specific circumstances. The meanings of the various settings are described in the documentation (http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Documentation#Defining_Zones) however if you believe you have sensible settings configured then there are two diagnostic approaches you can use.

====Event Statistics====
The first technique is to use event statistics. Firstly you should ensure they are switched on in Options->Debug->ZM_RECORD_EVENT_STATS. This will then cause the raw motion detection statistics for any subsequently generated events to be written to the DB. These can then be accessed by first clicking on the Frames or Alarm Frames values of the event from any event list view in the web gui. Then click on the score value to see the actual values that caused the event. Alternatively the stats can be accessed by clicking on the 'Stats' link when viewing any individual frame. The values displayed there correspond with the values that are used in the zone configuration and give you an idea of what 'real world' values are being generated.

Note that if you are investigating why events 'do not' happen then these will not be saved and so won't be accessible. The best thing to do in that circumstance is to make your zone more sensitive so that it captures all events (perhap even ones you don't want) so you can get an idea of what values are being generated and then start to adjust back to less sensitive settings if necessary. You should make sure you test your settings under a variety of lighting conditions (e.g. day and night, sunny or dull) to get the best feel for that works and what doesn't.

Using statistics will slow your system down to a small degree and use a little extra disk space in the DB so once you are happy you can switch them off again. However it is perfectly feasible to keep them permanently on if your system is able to cope which will allow you to review your setting periodically.

====Diagnostic Images====
The second approach is to use diagnostic images which are saved copies of the intermediate images that ZM uses when determining motion detection. These are switched on and off using Options->Debug->ZM_RECORD_DIAG_IMAGES.

There are two kinds of diagnostic images which are and are written (and continuously overwritten) to the top level monitor event directory. If an event occurs then the files are additionally copied to the event directory and renamed with the appropriate frame number as a prefix.

The first set are produced by the monitor on the image as a whole. The diag-r.jpg image is the current reference image against which all individual frames are compared and the diag-d.jpg image is the delta image highlighting the difference between the reference image and the last analysed image. In this images identicial pixels will be black and the more different a pixel is the whiter it will be. Viewing this image and determining the colour of the pixels is a good way of getting a feel for the pixel differences you might expect (often more than you think).

The second set of diag images are labelled as diag-<zoneid>-<stage>.jpg where zoneid is the id of the zone in question (Smile) and the stage is where in the alarm check process the image is generated from. So if you have several zones you can expect to see multiple files. Also these files are only interested in what is happening in their zone only and will ignore anything else outside of the zone. The stages that each number represents are as follows,

# Alarmed Pixels - This image shows all pixels in the zone that are considered to be alarmed as white pixels and all other pixels as black.
# Filtered Pixels - This is as stage one except that all pixels removed by the filters are now black. The white pixels represent the pixels that are candidates to generate an event.
# Raw Blobs - This image contains all alarmed pixels from stage 2 but aggrageted into blobs. Each blob will have a different greyscale value (between 1 and 254) so they can be difficult to spot with the naked eye but using a colour picker or photoshop will make it easier to see what blob is what.
# Filtered Blobs - This image is as stage 3 but under (or over) sized blobs have been removed. This is the final step before determining if an event has occurred, just prior to the number of blobs being counted. Thus this image forms the basis for determining whether an event is generated and outlining on alarmed images is done from the blobs in this image.

Using the above images you should be able to tell at all stages what ZM is doing to determine if an event should happen or not. They are useful diagnostic tools but as is mentioned elsewhere they will massively slow your system down and take up a great deal more space. You should never leave ZM running for any length of time with diagnostic images on.

===Why can't ZoneMinder capture images (either at all or just particularly fast) when I can see my camera just fine in xawtv or similar?===

With capture cards ZoneMinder will pull images as fast as it possibly can unless limited by configuration. ZoneMinder (and any similar application) uses the frame grabber interface to copy frames from video memory into user memory. This takes some time, plus if you have several inputs sharing one capture chip it has to switch between inputs between captures which further slows things down.

On average a card that can capture at 25fps per chip PAL for one input will do maybe 6-10fps for two, 1-4fps for three and 1-2 for four. For a 30fps NTSC chip the figures will be correspondingly higher. However sometimes it is necessary to slow down capture even further as after an input switch it may take a short while for the new image to settle before it can be captured without corruption.

When using xawtv etc to view the stream you are not looking at an image captured using the frame grabber but the card's video memory mapped onto your screen. This requires no capture or processing unless you do an explicit capture via the J or ctrl-J keys for instance. Some cards or drivers do not support the frame grabber interface at all so may not work with ZoneMinder even though you can view the stream in xawtv. If you can grab a still using the grab functionality of xawtv then in general your card will work with ZoneMinder.

===Why can't I see streamed images when I can see stills in the Zone window etc?===

This issue is normally down to one of two causes

1) You are using Internet Explorer and are trying to view multi-part jpeg streams. IE does not support these streams directly, unlike most other browsers. You will need to install Cambozola or another multi-part jpeg aware pluging to view them. To do this you will need to obtain the applet from the Downloads page and install the cambozola.jar file in the same directly as the ZoneMinder php files. Then find the ZoneMinder Options->Images page and enable ZM_OPT_CAMBOZOLA and enter the web path to the .jar file in ZM_PATH_CAMBOZOLA. This will ordinarily just be cambozola.jar. Provided ZM_CAN_STREAM is set to auto and ZM_STREAM_METHOD is set to jpeg then Cambozola should be loaded next time you try and view a stream.

'''NOTE''': If you find that the Cambozola applet loads in IE but the applet just displays the version # of Cambozola and the author's name (as opposed to seeing the streaming images), you may need to chmod your cambozola.jar:

$ sudo chmod 775 cambozola.jar

Once I did this, images started to stream for me.

2) The other common cause for being unable to view streams is that you have installed the ZoneMinder cgi binaries (zms and nph-zms) in a different directory than your web server is expecting. Make sure that the --with-cgidir option you use to the ZoneMinder configure script is the same as the CGI directory configure for your web server. If you are using Apache, which is the most common one, then in your httpd.conf file there should be a line like <pre>ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"</pre> where the last directory in the quotes is the one you have specified. If not then change one or the other to match. Be warned that configuring apache can be complex so changing the one passed to the ZoneMinder configure (and then rebuilding and reinstalling) is recommended in the first instance. If you change the apache config you will need to restart apache for the changes to take effect. If you still cannot see stream reliably then try changing Options->Paths->ZM_PATH_ZMS to just use zms if nph-zms is specified, or vice versa. Also check in your apache error logs.

===I have several monitors configured but when I load the Montage view in FireFox why can I only see two? or, Why don't all my cameras display when I use the Montage view in FireFox?===

By default FireFox only supports a small number of simultaneous connections. Using the montage view usually requires one persistent connection for each camera plus intermittent connections for other information such as statuses.

You will need to increase the number of allowed connections to use the montage view with more than a small number of cameras. Certain FireFox extensions such as FasterFox may also help to achieve the same result.

To resolve this situation, follow the instructions below:

<pre>Enter about:config in the address bar

scroll down to
browser.cache.check_doc_frequency 3
change the 3 to a 1

browser.cache.disk.enable True -> False
network.http.max-connections-per-server -> put a value of 100
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy -> 100 again
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server -> 100 again
</pre>

===Why is ZoneMinder using so much CPU?===

The various elements of ZoneMinder can be involved in some pretty intensive activity, especially while analysing images for motion. However generally this should not overwhelm your machine unless it is very old or underpowered.

There are a number of specific reasons why processor loads can be high either by design or by accident. To figure out exactly what is causing it in your circumstances requires a bit of experimentation.

The main causes are.

# Using a video palette other than greyscale or RGB24. This can cause a relatively minor performace hit, though still significant. Although some cameras and cards require using planar palettes ZM currently doesn't support this format internally and each frame is converted to an RGB representation prior to processing. Unless you have compelling reasons for using YUV or reduced RGB type palettes such as hitting USB transfer limits I would experiment to see if RGB24 or greyscale is quicker. Put your monitors into 'Monitor' mode so that only the capture daemons are running and monitor the process load of these (the 'zmc' processes) using top. Try it with various palettes to see if it makes a difference.
# Big image sizes. A image of 640x480 requires at least four times the processing of a 320x240 image. Experiment with different sizes to see what effect it may have. Sometimes a large image is just two interlaced smaller frames so has no real benefit anyway. This is especially true for analog cameras/cards as image height over 320 (NTSC) or 352 PAL) are invariably interlaced.
# Capture frame rates. Unless there's a compelling reason in your case there is often little benefit in running cameras at 25fps when 5-10fps would often get you results just as good. Try changing your monitor settings to limit your cameras to lower frame rates. You can still configure ZM to ignore these limits and capture as fast as possible when motion is detected.
# Run function. Obviously running in Record or Mocord modes or in Modect with lots of events generates a lot of DB and file activity and so CPU and load will increase.
# Basic default detection zones. By default when a camera is added one detection zone is added which covers the whole image with a default set of parameters. If your camera covers a view in which various regions are unlikely to generate a valid alarm (ie the sky) then I would experiment with reducing the zone sizes or adding inactive zones to blank out areas you don't want to monitor. Additionally the actual settings of the zone themselves may not be optimal. When doing motion detection the number of changed pixels above a threshold is examined, then this is filter, then contiguous regions are calculated to see if an alarm is generated. If any maximum or minimum threshold is exceeded according to your zone settings at any time the calculation stops. If your settings always result in the calculations going through to the last stage before being failed then additional CPU time is used unnecessarily. Make sure your maximum and minimumzone thresholds are set to sensible values and experiment by switching RECORD_EVENT_STATS on and seeing what the actual values of alarmed pixels etc are during sample events.
# Optimise your settings. After you've got some settings you're happy with then switching off RECORD_EVENT_STATS will prevent the statistics being written to the database which saves some time. Other settings which might make a difference are ZM_FAST_RGB_DIFFS, ZM_OPT_FRAME_SERVER and the JPEG_xxx_QUALITY ones.

I'm sure there are other things which might make a difference such as what else you have running on the box and memory sizes (make sure there's no swapping going on). Also speed of disk etc will make some difference during event capture and also if you are watching the whole time then you may have a bunch of zms processes running also.

I think the biggest factors are image size, colour depth and capture rate. Having said that I also don't always know why you get certains results from 'top'. For instance if I have a 'zma' daemon running for a monitor that is capturing an image. I've commented out the actual analysis so all it's doing is blending the image with the previous one. In colour mode this takes ~11 milliseconds per frame on my system and the camera is capturing at ~10fps. Using 'top' this reports the process as using ~5% of CPU and permanently in R(un) state. Changing to greyscale mode the blending takes ~4msec (as you would expect as this is roughly a third of 11) but top reports the process as now with 0% CPU and permanently in S(leep) state. So an actual CPU resource usage change of a factor of 3 causes huge differences in reported CPU usage. I have yet to get to the bottom of this but I suspect it's to do with scheduling somewhere along the line and that maybe the greyscale processing will fit into one scheduling time slice whereas the colour one won't but I have no evidence of this yet!

===Why is the timeline view all messed up?===

The timeline view is a new view allowing you to see a graph of alarm activity over time and to quickly scan and home in on events of interest. However this feature is highly complex and still in beta. It is based extensively on HTML div tags, sometimes lots of them. Whilst FireFox is able to render this view successfully other browsers, particular Internet Explorer do not seem able to cope and so present a messed up view, either always or when there are a lot of events.
Using the timeline view is only recommended when using FireFox, however even then there may be issues.

===How much Hard Disk Space / Bandwidth do I need for ZM?===
Please see [http://www.jpwilson.eu/ZM_Utils/ZM%20storage%20calc%20sheet.xls Storage Calc] in excel format

Or go to [http://www.axis.com/products/video/design_tool/index.htm this link] for the Axis bandwidth calculator. Although this is aimed at Axis cameras it still produces valid results for any kind of IP camera.

As a quick guide I have 4 cameras at 320x240 storing 1 fps except during alarm events. After 1 week 60GB of space in the volume where the events are stored (/var/www/html/zm) has been used.

===When I try and run ZoneMinder I get lots of audit permission errors in the logs and it won't start===
Many Linux distributions nowadays are built with security in mind. One of the latest methods of achieving this is via SELinux (Secure Linux) which controls who is able to run what in a more precise way then traditional accounting and file based permissions ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinux]).
If you are seeing entries in your system log like:

Jun 11 20:44:02 kernel: audit(1150033442.443:226): avc: denied { read } for pid=5068
comm="uptime" name="utmp" dev=dm-0 ino=16908345 scontext=user_u:system_r:httpd_sys_script_t
tcontext=user_u:object_r:initrc_var_run_t tclass=file

then it is likely that your system has SELinux enabled and it is preventing ZoneMinder from performaing certain activities. You then have two choices. You can either tune SELinux to permit the required operations or you can disable SELinux entirely which will permit ZoneMinder to run unhindered. Disabling SELinux is usually performed by editing it's configuration file (e.g., <tt>/etc/selinux/config</tt>) and then rebooting. However if you run a public server you should read up on the risks associated with disabled Secure Linux before disabling it.

Note that SELinux may cause errors other than those listed above. If you are in any doubt then it can be worth disabling SELinux experimentally to see if it fixes your problem before trying other solutions.

=== How do I enable ZoneMinder's security? ===
In the console, click on Options. Check the box next to "ZM_OPT_USE_AUTH". You will immediately be asked to login. The username is 'admin' and the password is 'admin'.

'''To Manage Users:''' 
In main console, go to '''Options->Users'''.

* You may also consider to use the web server security, for example, htaccess files under Apache scope; You may even use this as an additional/redundant security on top of Zoneminders built-in security features;

=== Why does ZM stop recording once I have 32000 events for my monitor? ===
This is a limitation of the ext3 filesystem that most Linux distributions use. One directory cannot hold more than 32k approx files.

Version of ZM from 1.23.0 onwards allow you to have a deeper filesystem with fewer files per individual directory. As well as not being susceptible to the 32k limit this is also somewhat faster. However it is relatively and although few issues have been reported thus far it should be considered in beta for now. Also, it is currently not possible to migrate saved events between the different storage formats so is only suitable for new installations or if you do not mind losing saved events.

So if you do not want to use the deeper filesystem option
(Options->Paths->ZM_USE_DEEP_STORAGE), for now you have to reduce the
number of events or store your images (e.g. /var/lib/zoneminder) on a
partition that uses a different filesystem such as ext4 or reiserfs.

You can read about the lack of a limit in the number of
sub-directories in the ext4 filesystem at:
http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4
and see what tools may assist in your use of this filesystem in:
http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto
Note that while GParted 0.5.2 recognizes ext4 partitions, at least in
some circumstances it does not succeed in formatting a partition for
the ext4 filesystem. Also, if you search for ext3 or reiserfs on the
forums you will find various threads on this issue with guidance on
how to convert.

== Managing system load ''(with IP Cameras in mind)'' ==

=== Introduction ===
Zoneminder is a superb application in every way, but it does a job that needs a lot of horsepower especially when using multiple IP cameras. IP Cams require an extra level of processing to analogue cards as the jpg or mjpeg images need to be decoded before analysing. This needs grunt. If you have lots of cameras, you need lots of grunt.

Why do ZM need so much grunt?
Think what Zoneminder is actually doing. In modect mode ZM is:
1. Fetching a jpeg from the camera. (Either in single part or multipart stream)
2. Decoding the jpeg image.
3. Comparing the zoned selections to the previous image or images and applying rules.
4. If in alarm state, writing that image to the disk and updating the mysql database.

If you're capturing at five frames per second, the above is repeated five times every second, multiplied by the number of cameras. Decoding the images is what takes the real power from the processor and this is the main reason why analogue cameras which present an image ready-decoded in memory take less work.

=== How do I know if my computer is overloaded? ===
If your CPU is running at 100% all the time, it's probably overloaded (or running at exact optimisation). If the load is consistently high (over 10.0 for a single processor) then Bad Things happen - like lost frames, unrecorded events etc. Occasional peaks are fine, normal and nothing to worry about.

Zoneminder runs on Linux, Linux measures system load using "load", which is complicated but gives a rough guide on what the computer is doing at any given time. Zoneminder shows Load on the main page (top right) as well as disk space. Typing "uptime" on the command line will give a similar guide, but with three figures to give a fuller measure of what's happening over a period of time but for the best guide to see what's happening, install "htop" - which gives easy to read graphs for load, memory and cpu usage.

A load of 1.0 means the processor has "just enough to do right now". Also worth noting that a load of 4.0 means exactly the same for a quad processor machine - each number equals a single processor's workload. A very high load can be fine on a computer that has a stacked workload - such as a machine sending out bulk emails, or working its way through a knotty problem; it'll just keep churning away until it's done. However - Zoneminder needs to process information in real time so it can't afford to stack its jobs, it needs to deal with them right away.

For a better and full explanation of Load: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_%28computing%29

=== My load is too high, how can I reduce it? ===
Zoneminder is /very/ tweakable and it's possible to tune it to compromise. The following are good things to try, in no particular order;

Change the jpeg libraries. In most distributions Linux uses standard jpeg libraries which although fine for most things, don't use the MMX functions in nearly all modern processors. Check whether your cpu supports mmx by running "cpuid |grep MMX" which should give you a line or two along the lines of "MMX instructions". If so, give the libs a try. Most people report their load halves simply by using these libs. You may be able to experience substantial Zoneminder performance boosts now by merely upgrading your operating system, without having to download libraries and compile your own binaries, etc. as described in the forum thread linked below. Some distributions, e.g. Fedora 14 now include library code to utilize the instruction set extensions available in your processor:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_14_Alpha_release_notes#Faster_JPEG_Compression.2FDecompression

"The replacement of libjpeg with libjpeg-turbo brings speed improvements to a wide range of applications when handling images in JPEG format ..."

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/14/Schedule

still states "2010-11-02 final release".

http://libjpeg-turbo.virtualgl.org/

provides some history on its project page. If you seek confirmation for which library is in use, you may consider querying e.g. while running on a prior distribution:
<pre>
[u@who ~]$ rpm -q --whatprovides libjpeg
libjpeg-6b-46.fc12.i686
[u@who ~]$
</pre>
and comparing the response to querying when the higher-performance library is available:
<pre>
[u@who ~]$ rpm -q --whatprovides libjpeg
libjpeg-turbo-1.0.1-1.fc14.x86_64
[u@who ~]$
</pre>
As noted in other forum postings, some zoneminder camera and usage configurations may not make much use of jpeg processing (e.g. some webcams), and thus obtain little performance benefit. Otherwise, you should be able to select one or more of:
* running more cameras,
* running existing cameras at higher image resolutions,
* running cameras at a faster frame rate,
* saving MoDect images with higher quality,
* having more CPU cycles available for any non-Zoneminder workload, etc.

http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6419 gives more info on the download-the-library-yourself, compile-your-own-Zoneminder binary, etc. approach if needed. Nobody's posted there to say it broke their system... Yet.

If your camera allows you to change image size, think whether you can get away with smaller images. Smaller pics = less load. 320x240 is usually ok for close-up corridor shots.

Go Black and White. Colour pictures use twice to three times the CPU, memory and diskspace but give little benefit to identification.

Reduce frames per second. Halve the fps, halve the workload. If your camera supports fps throttling (Axis do), try that - saves ZM having to drop frames from a stream. 2-5 fps seems to be widely used.

Experiment with using jpeg instead of mjpeg. Some users have reported it gives better performance, but YMMV.

Tweak the zones. Keep them as small and as few as possible. Stick to one zone unless you really need more.

Schedule. If you are running a linux system at near capacity, you'll need to think carefully about things like backups and scheduled tasks. updatedb - the process which maintains a file database so that 'locate' works quickly, is normally scheduled to run once a day and if on a busy system can create a heavy increase on the load. The same is true for scheduled backups, especially those which compress the files. Re-schedule these tasks to a time when the cpu is less likely to be busy, if possible - and also use the "nice" command to reduce their priority. (crontab and /etc/cron.daily/ are good places to start)

Reduce clutter on your PC. Don't run X unless you really need it, the GUI is a huge overhead in both memory and cpu.

More expensive options:

Increase RAM. If your system is having to use disk swap it will HUGELY impact performance in all areas. Again, htop is a good monitor - but first you need to understand that because Linux is using all the memory, it doesn't mean it needs it all - linux handles ram very differently to Windows/DOS and caches stuff. htop will show cached ram as a different colour in the memory graph. Also check that you're actually using a high memory capable kernel - many kernels don't enable high memory by default.

Faster CPU. Simple but effective. Zoneminder also works very well with multiple processor systems out of the box (if SMP is enabled in your kernel). The load of different cameras is spread across the processors.

=== What about disks and bandwidth? ===

In most modern pc-based servers, disk I/O is more than adequate for the speeds involved in capturing from multiple cameras in most scenarios.

A typical 100mbit LAN will cope with most setups easily. If you're feeding from cameras over smaller or internet links, obviously fps will be much lower.

Disk and Bandwidth calculators are referenced on the Zoneminder wiki here: http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_much_Hard_Disk_Space_.2F_Bandwidth_do_I_need_for_ZM.3F

== Building ZoneMinder ==

===I cannot build ZoneMinder and am getting lots of undefined C++ template errors===

This is almost certainly due to the 'ccache' package which attempts to speed up compilation by caching compiled objects. Unfortunately one of the side effects is that it breaks the GNU g++ template resolution method that ZoneMinder uses in building by prevent files getting recompiled. The simplest way around this is to remove the ccache package using your distros package manager.

=== How do I build for X10 support? ===

You do not need to rebuild ZM for X10 support. You will need to install the perl module and switch on X10 in the options, then restart. Installing the perl module is covered in the README amongst other places but in summary, do:

perl -MCPAN -eshell
install X10::ActiveHome
quit

== Extending ZoneMinder ==

=== How can I get ZM to do different things at different times of day or week? ===
If you want to configure ZoneMinder to do motion detection during the day and just record at night, for example, you will need to use ZoneMinder 'run states'. A run state is a particular configuration of monitor functions that you want to use at any time.

To save a run state you should first configure your monitors for Modect, Record, Monitor etc as you would want them during one of the times of day. Then click on the running state link at the top of the Console view. This will usually say 'Running' or 'Stopped'. You will then be able to save the current state and give it a name, 'Daytime' for example. Now configure your monitors how you would want them during other times of day and save that, for instance as 'Nighttime'.

Now you can switch between these two states by selecting them from the same dialog you saved them, or from the command line from issue the command ''zmpkg.pl <run state>'', for example ''zmpkg.pl Daytime''.

The final step you need to take, is scheduling the time the changes take effect. For this you can use [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron cron]. A simple entry to change to the Daylight state at at 8am and to the nighttime state at 8pm would be as follows,
<pre>0 8 * * * /usr/local/bin/zmpkg.pl Daytime
0 20 * * * /usr/local/bin/zmpkg.pl Nighttime</pre>

On Ubuntu 7.04 and possibly others, look in /usr/bin not just /usr/local/bin for the zmpkg.pl file.

Although the example above describes changing states at different times of day, the same principle can equally be applied to days of the week or other more arbitrary periods.

For an alternative method of time controlling ZoneMinder, forum user 'voronwe' has created a more interactive calendar style integration. Details of this can be found in this [http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6519 forum thread]. If you would like to find out more about this contribution please post on this thread.

=== How can I use ZoneMinder to trigger something else when there is an alarm? ===
ZoneMinder includes a perl API which means you can create a script to interact with the ZM shared memory data and use it in your own scripts to react to ZM alarms or to trigger ZM to generate new alarms. Full details are in the README or by doing 'perdoc ZoneMinder', 'perldoc ZoneMinder::SharedMem' etc.
Below is an example script that checks all monitors for alarms and when one occurs, prints a message to the screen. You can add in your own code to make this reaction a little more useful.

<pre>#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

use ZoneMinder;

$| = 1;

zmDbgInit( "myscript", level=>0, to_log=>0, to_syslog=>0, to_term=>1 );

my $dbh = DBI->connect( "DBI:mysql:database=".ZM_DB_NAME.";host=".ZM_DB_HOST, ZM_DB_USER, ZM_DB_PASS );

my $sql = "select M.*, max(E.Id) as LastEventId from Monitors as M left join Events as E on M.Id = E.MonitorId where M.Function != 'None' group by (M.Id)";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare_cached( $sql ) or die( "Can't prepare '$sql': ".$dbh->errstr() );

my $res = $sth->execute() or die( "Can't execute '$sql': ".$sth->errstr() );
my @monitors;
while ( my $monitor = $sth->fetchrow_hashref() )
{
push( @monitors, $monitor );
}

while( 1 )
{
foreach my $monitor ( @monitors )
{
next if ( !zmMemVerify( $monitor ) );

if ( my $last_event_id = zmHasAlarmed( $monitor, $monitor->{LastEventId} ) )
{
$monitor->{LastEventId} = $last_event_id;
print( "Monitor ".$monitor->{Name}." has alarmed\n" );
#
# Do your stuff here
#
}
}
sleep( 1 );
}</pre>

==Trouble Shooting==
Here are some things that will help you track down whats wrong.
This is also how to obtain the info that we need to help you on the forums.

===What logs should I check for errors?===
ZoneMinder creates its own logs and are usually located in the <tt>/tmp</tt> directory.

The ZoneMinder logs for the RPM packages are located in <tt>/var/log/zm</tt>.

Depending on your problem errors can show up in any of these logs but, usually the logs of interest are <tt>zmdc.log</tt> and <tt>zmpkg.log</tt> if ZM is not able to start.

Now since ZM is dependent on other components to work, you might not find errors in ZM but in the other components.
Other logs of interest are:<tt>
*/var/log/messages and/or /var/log/syslog
*/var/log/dmesg
*/var/log/httpd/error_log</tt> (RedHat/Fedora) or <tt>/var/log/apache2/error_log
*/var/log/mysqld.log</tt> (Errors here don't happen very often but just in case)

If ZM is not functioning, you should always be able to find an error in at least one of these logs. Use the [[tail]] command to get info from the logs. This can be done like so:

tail -f /var/log/messages /var/log/httpd/error_log /var/log/zm/zm*.log

This will append any data entered to any of these logs to your console screen (<tt>-f</tt>). To exit, hit [ctrl -c].

More verbose logging for the ZoneMinder binaries is available by enabling the debug option from the control panel and will be placed in the path you have configured for the debug logs. Output can be limited to a specific binary as described in the Debug options page under the "?" marks.

===How can I trouble shoot the hardware and/or software?===
Here are some commands to get information about your hardware. Some commands are distribution dependent.
* <tt>[[lspci]] -vv</tt> -- Returns lots of detailed info. Check for conflicting interrupts or port assignments. You can sometimes alter interrupts/ ports in bios. Try a different pci slot to get a clue if it is HW conflict (comand provided by the pciutils package).
* <tt>[[scanpci]] -v</tt> -- Gives you information from your hardware EPROM
* <tt>[[lsusb]] -vv</tt> -- Returns lots of detail about USB devices (camand provided by usbutils package).
* <tt>[[dmesg]]</tt> -- Shows you how your hardware initialized (or didn't) on boot-up. You will get the most use of this.
* <tt>[[v4l-info]]</tt> -- to see how driver is talking to card. look for unusual values.
* <tt>[[modinfo bttv]]</tt> -- some bttv driver stats.
* <tt>[[zmu]] -m 0 -q -v</tt> -- Returns various information regarding a monitor configuration.
* <tt>[[ipcs]] </tt> -- Provides information on the ipc facilities for which the calling process has read acccess.
* <tt>[[ipcrm]] </tt> -- The ipcrm command can be used to remove an IPC object from the kernel.
* <tt>cat /proc/interrupts</tt> -- This will dispaly what interrupts your hardware is using.

===Why is it that when monitoring a camera, the top portion of the image is cutoff and appears at the bottom of the image, with a line seperating the top from the bottom?===

=== Why am I getting a 403 access error with my web browser when trying to access http //localhost/zm? ===

The apache web server needs to have the right permissions and configuration to be able to read the Zoneminder files. Check the forums for solution, and edit the apache configuration and change directory permissions to give apache the right to read the Zoneminder files. Depending on your Zoneminder configuration, you would use the zm user and group that Zoneminder was built with, such as wwwuser and www.

=== Why am I getting broken images when trying to view events? ===

Zoneminder and the Apache web server need to have the right permissions. Check this forum topic and similar ones:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=48754#48754

===Why is the image from my color camera appearing in black and white?===
This may occur if you have a NTSC analog camera but have configured the source in ZoneMinder as PAL for the Device Format under the source tab. You may also be mislead because zmu can report the video port as being PAL when the camera is actually NTSC. Confirm the format of your analog camera by checking it's technical specifications, possibly found with the packaging it came in, on the manufacturers website, or even on the retail website where you purchased the camera. Change the Device Format setting to NTSC and set it to the lowest resolution of 320 x 240. If you have confirmed that the camera itself is NTSC format, but don't get a picture using the NTSC setting, consider increasing the shared memory '''kernel.shmall''' and '''kernel.shmmax''' settings in /etc/sysctl.conf to a larger value such as 268435456. This is also the reason you should start with the 320x240 resolution, so as to minimize the potential of memory problems which would interfere with your attempts to troubleshoot the device format issue. Once you have obtained a picture in the monitor using the NTSC format, then you can experiment with raising the resolution.

===Why do I only see blue screens with a timestamp when monitoring my camera?===
If this camera is attached to a capture card, then you may have selected the wrong Device Source or Channel when configuring the monitor in the ZoneMinder console. If you have a capture card with 2 D-sub style inputs(looks like a VGA port) to which you attach a provided splitter that splits off multiple cables, then the splitter may be attached to the wrong port. For example, PV-149 capture cards have two D-sub style ports labeled as DB1 and DB2, and come packaged with a connector for one of these ports that splits into 4 BNC connecters. The initial four video ports are available with the splitter attached to DB1.

===Why do I only see black screens with a timestamp when monitoring my camera?===
In the monitor windows where you see the black screen with a timestamp, select settings and enter the Brightness, Contrast, Hue, and Color settings reported for the device by '''zmu -d <device_path> -q -v'''. 32768 may be appropriate values to try for these settings. After saving the settings, select Settings again to confirm they saved successfully.

===I am getting messages about a backtrace in my logs, what do I do?===
If you are seeing entries in your log like the following
<pre>Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /lib64/libc.so.6 [0x3347230210]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /lib64/libc.so.6(memset+0xce) [0x334727684e]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma [0x40ee9a]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma [0x419946]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma [0x4213cf]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma(cos+0x35c) [0x404674]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /lib64/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf4) [0x334721da44]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma(cos+0xd1) [0x4043e9]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: INF [Backtrace complete]</pre>
then you can help diagnose the problem by running a special command to translate the hex addresses into helpful information. This command is called addr2line and you can type 'man addr2line' for more information.
Basically addr2line takes two sets of parameters, the first is the name of the binary file, and the second is a list of addresses. Both of these pieces of information are displayed in the logs. The filename is the first part after the 'Backtrace:' tag, in this case /usr/local/bin/zma, though it may well be different in your case. Some of the lines refer to libraries rather than the zma executable but those can be ignored for now, the important part is noting which ZM binary is involved. The binary file is passed in following the -e flag. The addresses to pass to addr2line are those contained in the '[]' pairs. Again you can ignore those that are on a line that refers to a library but it will not hurt if you include them.
So in the example above, the command would be <pre>addr2line -e /usr/local/bin/zma 0x40ee9a 0x419946 0x4213cf 0x404674 0x4043e9</pre>
This should then dump out a more symbolic list containing source file names and line numbers, and it is this information which will be helpful if posted to the forums. Sometimes addr2line fails to produce useful output. This is usually because either the problem is so severe that it has corrupted the stack and prevented useful information from being displayed, or that you have either compiled ZM without the -g flag for debug, or you have stripped the binaries of symbol information after installation. This this case you would need to rebuild temporarily with debug enabled for the information to be useful.

===How do I repair the MySQL Database?===
There is two ways to go about this. In most cases you can run from the command prompt ->
* mysqlcheck --all-databases --auto-repair -p'''your_database_password''' -u '''your_databse_user'''

If that does not work then you will have to make sure that ZoneMinder is stopped then run the following (nothing should be using the database while running this and you will have to adjust for your correct path if it is different). ->
* myisamchk --silent --force --fast --update-state -O key_buffer=64M -O sort_buffer=64M -O read_buffer=1M -O write_buffer=1M /var/lib/mysql/*/*.MYI

===How do I repair the MySQL Database when the cli fails?===
In Ubuntu, the commands listed above do not seem to work. However, actually doing it by hand from within MySQL does. (But that is beyond the scope of this document) But that got me thinking... And phpmyadmin does work. Bring up a terminal.
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

Now go to http://zoneminder_IP/ and stop the ZM service. Continue to http://zoneminder_IP/phpmyadmin and select the zoneminder database. Select and tables marked 'in use' and pick the action 'repare' to fix. Restart the zoneminder service from the web browser. Remove or disable the phpmyadmin tool, as it is not always the most secure thing around, and opens your database wide to any skilled hacker.
sudo apt-get remove phpmyadmin

===I upgraded by distribution and ZM stopped working===
Some possibilties (Incomplete list and subject to correction)
#[[/usr/local/bin/zmfix: /usr/lib/libmysqlclient.so.15: version `MYSQL_5.0' not found (required by /usr/local/bin/zmfix)]] :: Solution: Recompile and reinstall Zoneminder.
Any time you update a major version that ZoneMinder depends on, you need to recompile ZoneMinder.

===Zoneminder doesn't start automatically on boot===
Check the list for log entries like "zmfix[766]: ERR [Can't connect to server: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)] ".
What can happen is that zoneminder is started too quickly after Mysql and tries to contact the database server before it's ready. Zoneminder gets no answer and aborts.
August 2010 - Ubuntu upgrades seem to be leaving several systems in this state. One way around this is to add a delay to the zoneminder startup script allowing Mysql to finish starting.
"Simply adding 'sleep 15' in the line above 'zmfix -a' in the /etc/init.d/zoneminder file fixed my ZoneMinder startup problems!" - credit to Pada.

=== Remote Path setup for Panasonic and other Camera ===
On adding or editing the source you can select the preset link for the parameters for the specified camera . In version 1.23.3 presets for BTTV,Axis,Panasonic,GadSpot,VEO, and BlueNet are available . Selecting the presets ZM fills up the required value for the remote path variable

=== Why do I get repeated/ mixed/unstable/ blank monitors on bt878-like cards (a.k.a. PICO 2000) ===

Please have a check at [[Pico2000]];

===What causes "Invalid JPEG file structure: two SOI markers" from zmc (1.24.x)===

Some settings that used to be global only are now per camera. On the Monitor Source tab, if you are using Remote Protocol "HTTP" and Remote Method "Simple", try changing Remote Method to "Regexp".

== Miscellaneous ==
=== I see ZoneMinder is licensed under the GPL. What does that allow or restrict me in doing with ZoneMinder? ===

The ZoneMinder license is described at the end of the documentation and consists of the following section

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty
of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

This means that ZoneMinder is licensed under the terms described [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html here]. There is a comprehensive FAQ covering the GPL at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html but in essence you are allowed to redistribute or modify GPL licensed software provided that you release your distribution or modifications freely under the same terms. You are allowed to sell systems based on GPL software. You are not allowed to restrict or reduce the rights of GPL software in your distribution however. Of course if you are just making modifications for your system locally you are not releasing changes so you have no obligations in this case. I recommend reading the GPL FAQ for more in-depth coverage of this issue.

=== Can I use ZoneMinder as part of my commercial product? ===

The GPL license allows you produce systems based on GPL software provided your systems also adhere to that license and any modifications you make are also released under the same terms. The GPL does not permit you to include ZoneMinder in proprietary systems (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem for details). If you wish to include ZoneMinder in this kind of system then you will need to license ZoneMinder under different terms. This is sometimes possible and you will need to contact me for further details in these circuumstances.

Logitech Webcam Pro 9000

2010-08-19T14:44:59Z

Jusfixit:

Here are some initial clues toward making a Logitech Webcam Pro 9000
camera co-operate with Zoneminder. On the Zoneminder console:
http://localhost/zm/index.php
when one selects the "Add New Monitor" command button, some appropriate
values may resemble:

General tab
Name Whose_webcam
Source Type Local
:
Source tab
Device Path /dev/video0
Capture Method Video For Linux version 2
Device Channel 0
Device Format PAL B
Capture Palette YUYV
Capture Width (pixels) 1600
Capture Height (pixels) 1200

One clue for the correct value to supply for the Device Path is to scan (as the root user) through the entries in the /dev directory for an entry created at the time the webcam was first connected to this computer system.

/dev:
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 0 Aug 16 19:20 video0

If Zoneminder drops FATAL error messages in e.g. /var/log/messages such as:

zmc ... [Failed to stat video device /dev/video: No such file or directory]

the guess for the Device Path was incorrect or entered with a typographical error.

More clues for the correct values to supply for the Device Format and Capture Palette may be found using the zmu utility program which is included with your Zoneminder installation:

[root@who ~]# zmu -d /dev/video0 --query
error22
[root@who ~]# zmu -d /dev/video0 -V2 --query
error22
[root@who ~]# zmu -d /dev/video0 -V1 --query
d:/dev/video0|N:UVC Camera (046d:0809)|T:1|nC:1|nA:0|mxW:1600|mxH:1200|mnW:48|mnH:32|X:0|Y:0|W:640|H:480|P:8|D:16|B:32896|h:0|Cl:7196|Cn:8224|w:0|n0:Camera 1|C0:0|Fl0:0|T0:2|F0:0
[root@who ~]# zmu -d /dev/video0 --verbose -V1 --query
Video Device: /dev/video0
Video Capabilities
Name: UVC Camera (046d:0809)
Type: 1
Can capture
Video Channels: 1
Audio Channels: 0
Maximum Width: 1600
Maximum Height: 1200
Minimum Width: 48
Minimum Height: 32
Window Attributes
X Offset: 0
Y Offset: 0
Width: 640
Height: 480
Picture Attributes
Palette: 8 - YUYV
Colour Depth: 16
Brightness: 32896
Hue: 0
Colour :7196
Contrast: 8224
Whiteness: 0
Channel 0 Attributes
Name: Camera 1
Channel: 0
Flags: 0
Type: 2 - Camera
Format: 0 - PAL
[root@who ~]#

I have not found a combination of values using Capture Method "Video for Linux version 1" that works with this camera. Some forum postings point toward imperfections in zmu, and other Logitech cameras that need Device Format "PAL B", which is only available under "Video for Linux version 2". Thus far, I have only used one value for the Capture Width (1600) and the Capture Height (1200), but there are many other image sizes that this camera may supply. See:

http://www.quickcamteam.net/devices/logitech_uvc_frame_format_list.pdf

pages 5 and 6 (of 19) lists the ~18 frame formats for motion JPEG and the ~18 frame formats for still images. (No, I do not understand why each resolution and frame rate is listed twice in each list.)

If you are wishing to use a higher-resolution choice from this list, or you are seeing ERROR messages such as:

zm ... [Can't shmget, probably not enough shared memory space free: Invalid argument]

in the logs, you want to read and implement the instructions near:

http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#What_does_a_.27Can.27t_shmget:_Invalid_argument.27_error_in_my_logs_mean.3F_and_my_cameras_won.27t_display_video_at_higher_resolutions

If you see FATAL messages such as:

zmc... [Failed to setup memory: Invalid argument]

you did not select the correct Device Format.

Following through this chain of references:

http://www.quickcamteam.net/documentation/reference
http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs
http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/USB_Video_Class_1_1.zip

can lead one to documentation for "USB Video Class 1.1", the current version of the UVC specification.

Hardware Compatibility List

2010-08-19T14:28:46Z

Jusfixit: /* USB Cameras */

Zoneminder will work with almost any capture card that is supported by the linux kernel. You may find additional details about supported hardware in the [http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=10 Hardware Compatibility List] part of the forums. Also if you find something in the forums that is missing from the wiki ADD IT.

== Capture Cards ==

[[Anykeeper]]

[[Avermedia]]

[[Camsecure PCI Express video capture]]

[[Digiflower]]

[[Grandtec Grand X Guard]] [http://www.grandtec.com/products/surveillance/xguard.html]

[[Hauppauge]]

[[Ituner Spectra 8]] [http://www.ituner.com/spectra.htm]

[[Kodicom 4400r]]

[[Kodicom 8800]]

Leadtek WinFast VC 100 - the cheapest bt878 model with no tuner on it, just Com/Svideo in.

[[Linux Media Labs LMLBT44]] [http://www.linuxmedialabs.com]

[[Osprey 100]]

[[Provideo PV- series (Bluecherry)]] [http://store.bluecherry.net/SearchResults.asp?Cat=63&Click=51]

[[TView 95/99]]

[[Videocards with Philips saa7134 chipset]]

[[WinFast TV2000 XP]]

== bt8x8 Cards ==
A note on the bt8x8-based TV-tuner cards: these usually have beside the tuner input, also a Composite and an S-Video input. You can hook up 2 analog cameras to these, and access from ZoneMinder both of them as individual cameras, at max 15Fps. You don't need two separate TV cards for two cameras!

[[Pico2000]] - 4 port card, one chip bt878, around 2 fps when using all channels

[[Bt878_4chip_8inputs]] -4 chips bt878, 8 inputs, around 5 fps when using 2 inputs per chip

[[:Image:Karta.jpg| bt878 8 chip 8 input]] - options bttv card=77,77,77,77,77,77,77,77. The card is supplied with D-sub to 8 BNC connector with the connectors labelled VID1, AUD1, VID2, AUD3 etc. The /dev/video device numbering may be backwards such that /dev/video7 is VID1, /dev/video6 -> VID2, 5 -> 3, 4 -> 4, /dev/video3 -> AUD1 etc.

'''Most other BTTV (bt878, bt848) cards, see /usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv/CARDLIST on your system for a list of some of them.'''

== Analog Cameras ==

Any regular composite or S-video camera connected via a supported capture card. Some analog cameras feature camera control - ZM supports several of these camera's Pan/Tilt/Zoom functions via serial port control, as well as camera Presets, Focus, Iris, etc.
*[[PicturetelControlScript | PictureTel PTZ2N]].

== Network Cameras ==
For Network Cams to work they need to be able to stream MJPEG without the requirement of activex controls. If you see the requirement for the camera calls for IE then there is a good chance it may not work. The other option is to grab JPEG images if the camera supports that option which will work but at a lower frame rate.

Any network camera that allows access to single JPEG image grabs or '''some but not all''' multi-part JPEG feeds.

'''Full Compatibility '''

* [[Airlink 101]] some

* [[Axis]] All

* [[BSTI]] Some

* [[Cisco]] some

* [[Cisco]] WVC80N

* [[D-Link]] Most

* [[Foscam]] (FI8908W, FI8904W, possibly others)

* [[Gadspot]] Most

* [[Level One]] some

* [[Linksys]] WVC-210 / WVC2300 / PVC2300 / WVC54GC

* [[Maygion]] (IP-603, IP-604, possibly others)

* [[Rimax]] Some

* [[Sony]] Most

* [[Trendnet]] Most

* [[Y-Cam]] Most

* [[Zavio]] Some

* [[Iguard]] IP390E

* Remote systems, themselves running zoneminder, can be accessed as cameras using the Remote Path of '''/cgi-bin/nph-zms?mode=single&monitor=1&scale=100&maxfps=5&buffer=1000''' - where the monitor number is the correct camera on the remote system.

'''Single Jpeg Only'''

* [[Airlink 101]] some

* [[JVC]] some

* [[Panasonic]] some

* PLANET some

*[[Toshiba]] some

* [[Veo Observer IP NetCam]] most

*[[Vivotek]] All

'''Mpeg(ver1.24.0 and up)'''

*[[ABS_MegaCam]]

* [[Axis]] All

* [[ ACTi]] All

*[[Vivotek]] Most

'''Compatible with modifications'''

*[[Aviosys]] some

* [[Mobotix]] all

*[[Edimax]] some

* [[Conceptronic]] some

'''Compatible with problems'''

* [[Grandtec]] [[Grandtec_WLAN_Camera|WLAN Camera]] WiFi or III - acceptable indoor quality, no infrared-filter (better nightvision) cheap!

* [[Intellinet]] IPCamera with the new firmware.

* Old Intellinet IPCamera (model MWNC-100) with this (http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7500) protocol adapter.

* OvisLink AirLive WL-5400CAM

== Network Digitizers ==

Like Network Cameras, these devices produce a video stream - but they accept an analog video input from a camera or other video source.

*The [[IP9100 | Aviosys IP9100, Models A, B and Plus]] has four analog video inputs. It produces a ZM compatible video stream from one of the inputs, which is selectable via an HTTP GET command. There might even be a control script for ZM that lets you select the active video input using ''ZM's Camera Control Presets!''

With the yoics Aviosys 9100 firmware at http://www.yoics.com/?p=28, ZoneMinder can directly access all four ports via /usr/yoicsX.jpg as the remote host path, where X is 0 - 3.

== USB Cameras ==

*Just Zoom USB cam

*Creative Webcam Pro, Webcam 3, LIVE! Cam OPTIA PRO (V4L2, Chan 0, PAL, YUYV)

*''Most'' UVCvideo cameras, including: [[Logitech QuickCam Express]], QuickCam Pro 3000, QuickCam Communicate STX/Deluxe, and [[Logitech Webcam Pro 9000]]

*Logitech Quickcam Orbit/Sphere (experimental basic pan/tilt control has also published for testing and hacking [http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9788])

*[[Philips]]

*Any OV511 based USB camera [http://alpha.dyndns.org/ov511/cameras.html]

*Any CPIA based USB camera [http://webcam.sourceforge.net]

*[[LabTec WebCam Pro]]

*Confirmed basic functionality with Microsoft Lifecam VX 5000 using UVC Streaming method

Note that most USB cameras that can use Video4Linux/V4L2, and so can be used by ZoneMinder. Some have older chipsets and can be hard to find new.

Note that PWC drivers are not included in the kernel. Some distribution's add them in and other may not. Here are some relevant links:
* [http://www.smcc.demon.nl/webcam/ Old Maintainer]
* [http://www.saillard.org/linux/pwc/ Current PWC Maintainer]

== X10 Devices ==
The only device that really needs to be compatable with ZM is the Transceiver, all other x10 devices comunicate through that device.
*[[CM11]] Bi-Directional Transceiver

Other X10 notes:

[http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6423&highlight=x10 Topic 6423]

[http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7082&highlight=x10 Topic 7082]

== All other hardware as supported by Linux ==
To find out if your hardware is supported, check the HCL at [http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/ linuxquestions.org]

[http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/ Debian]

[http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HCL Fedora] [http://fedora-linux.nl/wiki/index.php/HCL Fedora Unofficial HCL]

[http://www.mandriva.com/hardware Mandriva]

[https://hardware.redhat.com/index.cgi RedHat]

[http://en.opensuse.org/Hardware Suse]

[http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/HCL Ubuntu]

FAQ

2010-08-16T21:56:51Z

Jusfixit: /* Why does ZM stop recording once I have 32000 events for my monitor? */

== ZoneMinder Frequently Asked Questions ==

This is the new FAQ page. I will be migrating the existing FAQs here as soon as possible. In the meantime the old FAQ page is available [http://www.zoneminder.com/faq.html here].

Feel free to contribute any FAQs that you think are missing.

===How can I stop ZoneMinder filling up my disk?===

Recent versions of ZoneMinder come with a filter you can use for this purpose already included. However '''by default it is not enabled for event deletion'''.

The filter is called ''PurgeWhenFull'' and to find it, choose one of the event counts from the console page, for instance events in the last hour, for one of your monitors.

This will bring up an event listing and a filter window.

In the filter window there is a drop down select box labeled 'Use Filter', that lets your select a saved filter. Select 'PurgeWhenFull' and it will load that filter.

Make any modifications you might want, such as the percentage full you want it to kick in, or how many events to delete at a time (it will repeat the filter as many times as needed to clear the space, but will only delete this many events each time to get there).

Then click on 'Save' which will bring up a new window. Make sure the 'Automatically delete' box is checked and press save to save your filter. This will then run in the background to keep your disk within those limits.

After you've done that, you changes will automatically be loaded into zmfilter within a few minutes.

Check the <tt>zmfilter.log</tt> file to make sure it is running as sometimes missing perl modules mean that it never runs but people don't always realize.

There are two methods for ZM to remove files when they are deleted that can be found in Options under the System tab ZM_OPT_FAST_DELETE and ZM_RUN_AUDIT.

ZM_OPT_FAST_DELETE:

Normally an event created as the result of an alarm consists of entries in one or more database tables plus the various files associated with it. When deleting events in the browser it can take a long time to remove all of this if your are trying to do a lot of events at once. It is recommended that you set this option which means that the browser client only deletes the key entries in the events table, which means the events will no longer appear in the listing, and leaves the zmaudit daemon to clear up the rest later.

ZM_RUN_AUDIT:

The zmaudit daemon exists to check that the saved information in the database and on the file system match and are consistent with each other. If an error occurs or if you are using 'fast deletes' it may be that database records are deleted but files remain. In this case, and similar, zmaudit will remove redundant information to synchronize the two data stores. This option controls whether zmaudit is run in the background and performs these checks and fixes continuously. This is recommended for most systems however if you have a very large number of events the process of scanning the database and file system may take a long time and impact performance. In this case you may prefer to not have zmaudit running unconditionally and schedule occasional checks at other, more convenient, times.

ZM_AUDIT_CHECK_INTERVAL:

The zmaudit daemon exists to check that the saved information in the database and on the files system match and are consistent with each other. If an error occurs or if you are using 'fast deletes' it may be that database records are deleted but files remain. In this case, and similar, zmaudit will remove redundant information to synchronize the two data stores. The default check interval of 900 seconds (15 minutes) is fine for most systems however if you have a very large number of events the process of scanning the database and file system may take a long time and impact performance. In this case you may prefer to make this interval much larger to reduce the impact on your system. This option determines how often these checks are performed.

===What does a 'Can't shmget: Invalid argument' error in my logs mean? and my cameras won't display video at higher resolutions.===

This error is discussed in the README in the following excerpt:-
''...this is caused by an attempt to allocate an amount of shared memory greater than your system can handle. The size it requests is based on the following formula, ring buffer size x image width x image height x 3 (for 24 bit images) + a bit of overhead.

So, for example:
<pre>384x288 capture resolution, that makes: 110 592 pixels
in 24 bit color that's x24 = 2 654 208 bits per frame
by 80 frames ring buffer x80 = 212 336 640 bits per camera
by 4 cameras x4 = 849 346 560 bits.
Plus 10% overhead = 934 281 216 bits
That's 116 785 152 bytes, and
= 114 048 kB, respectively 111.38 MB.
If my shared memory is set to 134 217 728, which is exactly 128MB,
that means I shouldn't have any problem.
(Note that 1 byte = 8 bits and 1kbyte = 1024bytes, 1MB = 1024 kB)</pre>

If for instance you were using 24bit 640x480 then this would come to about 92Mb if you are using the default buffer size of 100. If this is too large then you can either reduce the image or buffer sizes or increase the maximum amount of shared memory available. If you are using RedHat then you can get details on how to change these settings at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/database/RHDB-2.1-Manual/admin_user/kernel-resources.html .

You should be able to use a similar procedure with other distributions to modify the shared memory pool without kernel recompilations though in some cases this may be necessary. Note, this error also sometimes occurs if you have an old shared memory segment lying around from a previous run that is too small. Use the ipcs and ipcrm system commands to check and remove it if necessary.'"

You can often find out how much shared memory is available by typing the following :-
<pre>cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmall</pre>

and the most you can allocate in one go :-
<pre>cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax</pre>

To change these values type (for example) :-
<pre>echo 134217728 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmall
echo 134217728 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax</pre>

'''Be sure to restart ZoneMinder after this.'''
However be aware that sometimes you will only need to change the shmmax value as shmall is often large enough. Also changing these values in this way is only effective until your machine is rebooted.

To change them permanently you will need to edit <tt>/etc/sysctl.conf</tt> and add the following lines (for example) :-
<pre>kernel.shmall = 134217728
kernel.shmmax = 134217728</pre>

To load these settings in the sysctl.conf file type:
<pre>sysctl -p</pre>

To check your shared memory settings type:
<pre>ipcs -l</pre>

Note that with Megapixel cameras like the Axis 207mw becoming cheaper and more attractive, the above memory settings are not adequate. To get Zoneminder working with a full 1280x1024 resolution camera in full colour, increase 134217728 to, for example, 268424446

These changes will now also be set the next time your machine is restarted.

Versions 1.24.x of ZoneMinder also allows you to use an alternate method of shared memory allocation, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmap mapped memory]. This requires less configuration and can be simpler to use. Mapped memory allows you to use a special type of file as the placeholder for your memory and this file is 'mapped' into memory space for easy and fast access.

To enable mapped memory in ZoneMinder you need add add the --enable--mmap=yes switch to your configure line. By default mapped memory files are created in /dev/shm which on most distributions is a dedicated pseudo-partition containing memory formatted as a filesystem. If your system uses a different path then this can be changed in ZoneMinder in Options->paths->PATH_MAP. It uses a filesystem type called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmpfs tmpfs]. If you type 'df' you should see this area and the size of memory it currently allows. It is important that you do not use a disk based filesystem for your memory mapped files as this will cause memory access to be extremely slow. ZoneMinder creates files called .zm.mmap.<monitor id> in the mapped memory filesystem.

Mapped memory is subject to the same limitations in terms of total memory as using more traditional shared memory but does not require any configuration per allocation or chunk. In future versions of ZoneMinder this will be the default shared memory storage method.

<div id="AlternateSharedMemory" style="width:80%; border:2px solid #8a8588; background:#faf5ff; vertical-align:top; margin-top: 6px; padding: 4px;">
Another good article about shared memory settings http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v9/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.db2.udb.uprun.doc/doc/t0008238.htm .
It made a statement that conflicted with those in the Redhat article but they fixed a [http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9692 long standing memory issue on FC6], so give them a try.

'''The essential difference was that the kernel.shmall setting is NOT in a direct memory setting in KB but in pages of memory. it is Max Pages of memory'''

'''For example:''' If you want to allocate a maximum memory setting to 8GB you have to convert it to the number of pages (or segments).
with a page size of 4096.
*kernel.shmall=8000x1024x1024/4096
**kernel.shmall=2048000
NOT 8388608000 as would be suggested in the RedHat article linked above.

shmmax is the max amount to allocate in one request -
this is is an actual memory size (as opposed to pages) set to 4GB
*kernel.shmmax = 4194304000

The <tt>/etc/sysctl.conf</tt> would have these lines<pre>kernel.shmall=2048000
kernel.shmmax = 4194304000</pre>

As above, reload your sysctl.conf with <tt>sysctl -p</tt> and check that the settings are correct with <tt>ipcs -l</tt>.
</div>

===I have enabled motion detection but it is not always being triggered when things happen in the camera view===

ZoneMinder uses zones to examine images for motion detection. When you create the initial zones you can choose from a number of preset values for sensitivity etc. Whilst these are usually a good starting point they are not always suitable for all situations and you will probably need to tweak the values for your specific circumstances. The meanings of the various settings are described in the documentation (http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Documentation#Defining_Zones) however if you believe you have sensible settings configured then there are two diagnostic approaches you can use.

====Event Statistics====
The first technique is to use event statistics. Firstly you should ensure they are switched on in Options->Debug->ZM_RECORD_EVENT_STATS. This will then cause the raw motion detection statistics for any subsequently generated events to be written to the DB. These can then be accessed by first clicking on the Frames or Alarm Frames values of the event from any event list view in the web gui. Then click on the score value to see the actual values that caused the event. Alternatively the stats can be accessed by clicking on the 'Stats' link when viewing any individual frame. The values displayed there correspond with the values that are used in the zone configuration and give you an idea of what 'real world' values are being generated.

Note that if you are investigating why events 'do not' happen then these will not be saved and so won't be accessible. The best thing to do in that circumstance is to make your zone more sensitive so that it captures all events (perhap even ones you don't want) so you can get an idea of what values are being generated and then start to adjust back to less sensitive settings if necessary. You should make sure you test your settings under a variety of lighting conditions (e.g. day and night, sunny or dull) to get the best feel for that works and what doesn't.

Using statistics will slow your system down to a small degree and use a little extra disk space in the DB so once you are happy you can switch them off again. However it is perfectly feasible to keep them permanently on if your system is able to cope which will allow you to review your setting periodically.

====Diagnostic Images====
The second approach is to use diagnostic images which are saved copies of the intermediate images that ZM uses when determining motion detection. These are switched on and off using Options->Debug->ZM_RECORD_DIAG_IMAGES.

There are two kinds of diagnostic images which are and are written (and continuously overwritten) to the top level monitor event directory. If an event occurs then the files are additionally copied to the event directory and renamed with the appropriate frame number as a prefix.

The first set are produced by the monitor on the image as a whole. The diag-r.jpg image is the current reference image against which all individual frames are compared and the diag-d.jpg image is the delta image highlighting the difference between the reference image and the last analysed image. In this images identicial pixels will be black and the more different a pixel is the whiter it will be. Viewing this image and determining the colour of the pixels is a good way of getting a feel for the pixel differences you might expect (often more than you think).

The second set of diag images are labelled as diag-<zoneid>-<stage>.jpg where zoneid is the id of the zone in question (Smile) and the stage is where in the alarm check process the image is generated from. So if you have several zones you can expect to see multiple files. Also these files are only interested in what is happening in their zone only and will ignore anything else outside of the zone. The stages that each number represents are as follows,

# Alarmed Pixels - This image shows all pixels in the zone that are considered to be alarmed as white pixels and all other pixels as black.
# Filtered Pixels - This is as stage one except that all pixels removed by the filters are now black. The white pixels represent the pixels that are candidates to generate an event.
# Raw Blobs - This image contains all alarmed pixels from stage 2 but aggrageted into blobs. Each blob will have a different greyscale value (between 1 and 254) so they can be difficult to spot with the naked eye but using a colour picker or photoshop will make it easier to see what blob is what.
# Filtered Blobs - This image is as stage 3 but under (or over) sized blobs have been removed. This is the final step before determining if an event has occurred, just prior to the number of blobs being counted. Thus this image forms the basis for determining whether an event is generated and outlining on alarmed images is done from the blobs in this image.

Using the above images you should be able to tell at all stages what ZM is doing to determine if an event should happen or not. They are useful diagnostic tools but as is mentioned elsewhere they will massively slow your system down and take up a great deal more space. You should never leave ZM running for any length of time with diagnostic images on.

===Why can't ZoneMinder capture images (either at all or just particularly fast) when I can see my camera just fine in xawtv or similar?===

With capture cards ZoneMinder will pull images as fast as it possibly can unless limited by configuration. ZoneMinder (and any similar application) uses the frame grabber interface to copy frames from video memory into user memory. This takes some time, plus if you have several inputs sharing one capture chip it has to switch between inputs between captures which further slows things down.

On average a card that can capture at 25fps per chip PAL for one input will do maybe 6-10fps for two, 1-4fps for three and 1-2 for four. For a 30fps NTSC chip the figures will be correspondingly higher. However sometimes it is necessary to slow down capture even further as after an input switch it may take a short while for the new image to settle before it can be captured without corruption.

When using xawtv etc to view the stream you are not looking at an image captured using the frame grabber but the card's video memory mapped onto your screen. This requires no capture or processing unless you do an explicit capture via the J or ctrl-J keys for instance. Some cards or drivers do not support the frame grabber interface at all so may not work with ZoneMinder even though you can view the stream in xawtv. If you can grab a still using the grab functionality of xawtv then in general your card will work with ZoneMinder.

===Why can't I see streamed images when I can see stills in the Zone window etc?===

This issue is normally down to one of two causes

1) You are using Internet Explorer and are trying to view multi-part jpeg streams. IE does not support these streams directly, unlike most other browsers. You will need to install Cambozola or another multi-part jpeg aware pluging to view them. To do this you will need to obtain the applet from the Downloads page and install the cambozola.jar file in the same directly as the ZoneMinder php files. Then find the ZoneMinder Options->Images page and enable ZM_OPT_CAMBOZOLA and enter the web path to the .jar file in ZM_PATH_CAMBOZOLA. This will ordinarily just be cambozola.jar. Provided ZM_CAN_STREAM is set to auto and ZM_STREAM_METHOD is set to jpeg then Cambozola should be loaded next time you try and view a stream.

'''NOTE''': If you find that the Cambozola applet loads in IE but the applet just displays the version # of Cambozola and the author's name (as opposed to seeing the streaming images), you may need to chmod your cambozola.jar:

$ sudo chmod 775 cambozola.jar

Once I did this, images started to stream for me.

2) The other common cause for being unable to view streams is that you have installed the ZoneMinder cgi binaries (zms and nph-zms) in a different directory than your web server is expecting. Make sure that the --with-cgidir option you use to the ZoneMinder configure script is the same as the CGI directory configure for your web server. If you are using Apache, which is the most common one, then in your httpd.conf file there should be a line like <pre>ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"</pre> where the last directory in the quotes is the one you have specified. If not then change one or the other to match. Be warned that configuring apache can be complex so changing the one passed to the ZoneMinder configure (and then rebuilding and reinstalling) is recommended in the first instance. If you change the apache config you will need to restart apache for the changes to take effect. If you still cannot see stream reliably then try changing Options->Paths->ZM_PATH_ZMS to just use zms if nph-zms is specified, or vice versa. Also check in your apache error logs.

===I have several monitors configured but when I load the Montage view in FireFox why can I only see two? or, Why don't all my cameras display when I use the Montage view in FireFox?===

By default FireFox only supports a small number of simultaneous connections. Using the montage view usually requires one persistent connection for each camera plus intermittent connections for other information such as statuses.

You will need to increase the number of allowed connections to use the montage view with more than a small number of cameras. Certain FireFox extensions such as FasterFox may also help to achieve the same result.

To resolve this situation, follow the instructions below:

<pre>Enter about:config in the address bar

scroll down to
browser.cache.check_doc_frequency 3
change the 3 to a 1

browser.cache.disk.enable True -> False
network.http.max-connections-per-server -> put a value of 100
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy -> 100 again
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server -> 100 again
</pre>

===Why is ZoneMinder using so much CPU?===

The various elements of ZoneMinder can be involved in some pretty intensive activity, especially while analysing images for motion. However generally this should not overwhelm your machine unless it is very old or underpowered.

There are a number of specific reasons why processor loads can be high either by design or by accident. To figure out exactly what is causing it in your circumstances requires a bit of experimentation.

The main causes are.

# Using a video palette other than greyscale or RGB24. This can cause a relatively minor performace hit, though still significant. Although some cameras and cards require using planar palettes ZM currently doesn't support this format internally and each frame is converted to an RGB representation prior to processing. Unless you have compelling reasons for using YUV or reduced RGB type palettes such as hitting USB transfer limits I would experiment to see if RGB24 or greyscale is quicker. Put your monitors into 'Monitor' mode so that only the capture daemons are running and monitor the process load of these (the 'zmc' processes) using top. Try it with various palettes to see if it makes a difference.
# Big image sizes. A image of 640x480 requires at least four times the processing of a 320x240 image. Experiment with different sizes to see what effect it may have. Sometimes a large image is just two interlaced smaller frames so has no real benefit anyway. This is especially true for analog cameras/cards as image height over 320 (NTSC) or 352 PAL) are invariably interlaced.
# Capture frame rates. Unless there's a compelling reason in your case there is often little benefit in running cameras at 25fps when 5-10fps would often get you results just as good. Try changing your monitor settings to limit your cameras to lower frame rates. You can still configure ZM to ignore these limits and capture as fast as possible when motion is detected.
# Run function. Obviously running in Record or Mocord modes or in Modect with lots of events generates a lot of DB and file activity and so CPU and load will increase.
# Basic default detection zones. By default when a camera is added one detection zone is added which covers the whole image with a default set of parameters. If your camera covers a view in which various regions are unlikely to generate a valid alarm (ie the sky) then I would experiment with reducing the zone sizes or adding inactive zones to blank out areas you don't want to monitor. Additionally the actual settings of the zone themselves may not be optimal. When doing motion detection the number of changed pixels above a threshold is examined, then this is filter, then contiguous regions are calculated to see if an alarm is generated. If any maximum or minimum threshold is exceeded according to your zone settings at any time the calculation stops. If your settings always result in the calculations going through to the last stage before being failed then additional CPU time is used unnecessarily. Make sure your maximum and minimumzone thresholds are set to sensible values and experiment by switching RECORD_EVENT_STATS on and seeing what the actual values of alarmed pixels etc are during sample events.
# Optimise your settings. After you've got some settings you're happy with then switching off RECORD_EVENT_STATS will prevent the statistics being written to the database which saves some time. Other settings which might make a difference are ZM_FAST_RGB_DIFFS, ZM_OPT_FRAME_SERVER and the JPEG_xxx_QUALITY ones.

I'm sure there are other things which might make a difference such as what else you have running on the box and memory sizes (make sure there's no swapping going on). Also speed of disk etc will make some difference during event capture and also if you are watching the whole time then you may have a bunch of zms processes running also.

I think the biggest factors are image size, colour depth and capture rate. Having said that I also don't always know why you get certains results from 'top'. For instance if I have a 'zma' daemon running for a monitor that is capturing an image. I've commented out the actual analysis so all it's doing is blending the image with the previous one. In colour mode this takes ~11 milliseconds per frame on my system and the camera is capturing at ~10fps. Using 'top' this reports the process as using ~5% of CPU and permanently in R(un) state. Changing to greyscale mode the blending takes ~4msec (as you would expect as this is roughly a third of 11) but top reports the process as now with 0% CPU and permanently in S(leep) state. So an actual CPU resource usage change of a factor of 3 causes huge differences in reported CPU usage. I have yet to get to the bottom of this but I suspect it's to do with scheduling somewhere along the line and that maybe the greyscale processing will fit into one scheduling time slice whereas the colour one won't but I have no evidence of this yet!

===Why is the timeline view all messed up?===

The timeline view is a new view allowing you to see a graph of alarm activity over time and to quickly scan and home in on events of interest. However this feature is highly complex and still in beta. It is based extensively on HTML div tags, sometimes lots of them. Whilst FireFox is able to render this view successfully other browsers, particular Internet Explorer do not seem able to cope and so present a messed up view, either always or when there are a lot of events.
Using the timeline view is only recommended when using FireFox, however even then there may be issues.

===How much Hard Disk Space / Bandwidth do I need for ZM?===
Please see [http://www.jpwilson.eu/ZM_Utils/ZM%20storage%20calc%20sheet.xls Storage Calc] in excel format

Or go to [http://www.axis.com/products/video/design_tool/index.htm this link] for the Axis bandwidth calculator. Although this is aimed at Axis cameras it still produces valid results for any kind of IP camera.

As a quick guide I have 4 cameras at 320x240 storing 1 fps except during alarm events. After 1 week 60GB of space in the volume where the events are stored (/var/www/html/zm) has been used.

===When I try and run ZoneMinder I get lots of audit permission errors in the logs and it won't start===
Many Linux distributions nowadays are built with security in mind. One of the latest methods of achieving this is via SELinux (Secure Linux) which controls who is able to run what in a more precise way then traditional accounting and file based permissions ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinux]).
If you are seeing entries in your system log like:

Jun 11 20:44:02 kernel: audit(1150033442.443:226): avc: denied { read } for pid=5068
comm="uptime" name="utmp" dev=dm-0 ino=16908345 scontext=user_u:system_r:httpd_sys_script_t
tcontext=user_u:object_r:initrc_var_run_t tclass=file

then it is likely that your system has SELinux enabled and it is preventing ZoneMinder from performaing certain activities. You then have two choices. You can either tune SELinux to permit the required operations or you can disable SELinux entirely which will permit ZoneMinder to run unhindered. Disabling SELinux is usually performed by editing it's configuration file (e.g., <tt>/etc/selinux/config</tt>) and then rebooting. However if you run a public server you should read up on the risks associated with disabled Secure Linux before disabling it.

Note that SELinux may cause errors other than those listed above. If you are in any doubt then it can be worth disabling SELinux experimentally to see if it fixes your problem before trying other solutions.

=== How do I enable ZoneMinder's security? ===
In the console, click on Options. Check the box next to "ZM_OPT_USE_AUTH". You will immediately be asked to login. The username is 'admin' and the password is 'admin'.

'''To Manage Users:''' 
In main console, go to '''Options->Users'''.

* You may also consider to use the web server security, for example, htaccess files under Apache scope; You may even use this as an additional/redundant security on top of Zoneminders built-in security features;

=== Why does ZM stop recording once I have 32000 events for my monitor? ===
This is a limitation of the ext3 filesystem that most Linux distributions use. One directory cannot hold more than 32k approx files.

Version of ZM from 1.23.0 onwards allow you to have a deeper filesystem with fewer files per individual directory. As well as not being susceptible to the 32k limit this is also somewhat faster. However it is relatively and although few issues have been reported thus far it should be considered in beta for now. Also, it is currently not possible to migrate saved events between the different storage formats so is only suitable for new installations or if you do not mind losing saved events.

So if you do not want to use the deeper filesystem option
(Options->Paths->ZM_USE_DEEP_STORAGE), for now you have to reduce the
number of events or store your images (e.g. /var/lib/zoneminder) on a
partition that uses a different filesystem such as ext4 or reiserfs.

You can read about the lack of a limit in the number of
sub-directories in the ext4 filesystem at:
http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4
and see what tools may assist in your use of this filesystem in:
http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto
Note that while GParted 0.5.2 recognizes ext4 partitions, at least in
some circumstances it does not succeed in formatting a partition for
the ext4 filesystem. Also, if you search for ext3 or reiserfs on the
forums you will find various threads on this issue with guidance on
how to convert.

== Managing system load ''(with IP Cameras in mind)'' ==

=== Introduction ===
Zoneminder is a superb application in every way, but it does a job that needs a lot of horsepower especially when using multiple IP cameras. IP Cams require an extra level of processing to analogue cards as the jpg or mjpeg images need to be decoded before analysing. This needs grunt. If you have lots of cameras, you need lots of grunt.

Why do ZM need so much grunt?
Think what Zoneminder is actually doing. In modect mode ZM is:
1. Fetching a jpeg from the camera. (Either in single part or multipart stream)
2. Decoding the jpeg image.
3. Comparing the zoned selections to the previous image or images and applying rules.
4. If in alarm state, writing that image to the disk and updating the mysql database.

If you're capturing at five frames per second, the above is repeated five times every second, multiplied by the number of cameras. Decoding the images is what takes the real power from the processor and this is the main reason why analogue cameras which present an image ready-decoded in memory take less work.

=== How do I know if my computer is overloaded? ===
If your CPU is running at 100% all the time, it's probably overloaded (or running at exact optimisation). If the load is consistently high (over 10.0 for a single processor) then Bad Things happen - like lost frames, unrecorded events etc. Occasional peaks are fine, normal and nothing to worry about.

Zoneminder runs on Linux, Linux measures system load using "load", which is complicated but gives a rough guide on what the computer is doing at any given time. Zoneminder shows Load on the main page (top right) as well as disk space. Typing "uptime" on the command line will give a similar guide, but with three figures to give a fuller measure of what's happening over a period of time but for the best guide to see what's happening, install "htop" - which gives easy to read graphs for load, memory and cpu usage.

A load of 1.0 means the processor has "just enough to do right now". Also worth noting that a load of 4.0 means exactly the same for a quad processor machine - each number equals a single processor's workload. A very high load can be fine on a computer that has a stacked workload - such as a machine sending out bulk emails, or working its way through a knotty problem; it'll just keep churning away until it's done. However - Zoneminder needs to process information in real time so it can't afford to stack its jobs, it needs to deal with them right away.

For a better and full explanation of Load: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_%28computing%29

=== My load is too high, how can I reduce it? ===
Zoneminder is /very/ tweakable and it's possible to tune it to compromise. The following are good things to try, in no particular order;

Change the jpeg libraries. In most distributions Linux uses standard jpeg libraries which although fine for most things, don't use the MMX functions in nearly all modern processors. Check whether your cpu supports mmx by running "cpuid |grep MMX" which should give you a line or two along the lines of "MMX instructions". If so, give the libs a try. Most people report their load halves simply by using these libs. http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6419 gives more info. Nobody's posted there to say it broke their system... Yet.

If your camera allows you to change image size, think whether you can get away with smaller images. Smaller pics = less load. 320x240 is usually ok for close-up corridor shots.

Go Black and White. Colour pictures use twice to three times the CPU, memory and diskspace but give little benefit to identification.

Reduce frames per second. Halve the fps, halve the workload. If your camera supports fps throttling (Axis do), try that - saves ZM having to drop frames from a stream. 2-5 fps seems to be widely used.

Experiment with using jpeg instead of mjpeg. Some users have reported it gives better performance, but YMMV.

Tweak the zones. Keep them as small and as few as possible. Stick to one zone unless you really need more.

Schedule. If you are running a linux system at near capacity, you'll need to think carefully about things like backups and scheduled tasks. updatedb - the process which maintains a file database so that 'locate' works quickly, is normally scheduled to run once a day and if on a busy system can create a heavy increase on the load. The same is true for scheduled backups, especially those which compress the files. Re-schedule these tasks to a time when the cpu is less likely to be busy, if possible - and also use the "nice" command to reduce their priority. (crontab and /etc/cron.daily/ are good places to start)

Reduce clutter on your PC. Don't run X unless you really need it, the GUI is a huge overhead in both memory and cpu.

More expensive options:

Increase RAM. If your system is having to use disk swap it will HUGELY impact performance in all areas. Again, htop is a good monitor - but first you need to understand that because Linux is using all the memory, it doesn't mean it needs it all - linux handles ram very differently to Windows/DOS and caches stuff. htop will show cached ram as a different colour in the memory graph. Also check that you're actually using a high memory capable kernel - many kernels don't enable high memory by default.

Faster CPU. Simple but effective. Zoneminder also works very well with multiple processor systems out of the box (if SMP is enabled in your kernel). The load of different cameras is spread across the processors.

=== What about disks and bandwidth? ===

In most modern pc-based servers, disk I/O is more than adequate for the speeds involved in capturing from multiple cameras in most scenarios.

A typical 100mbit LAN will cope with most setups easily. If you're feeding from cameras over smaller or internet links, obviously fps will be much lower.

Disk and Bandwidth calculators are referenced on the Zoneminder wiki here: http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_much_Hard_Disk_Space_.2F_Bandwidth_do_I_need_for_ZM.3F

== Building ZoneMinder ==

===I cannot build ZoneMinder and am getting lots of undefined C++ template errors===

This is almost certainly due to the 'ccache' package which attempts to speed up compilation by caching compiled objects. Unfortunately one of the side effects is that it breaks the GNU g++ template resolution method that ZoneMinder uses in building by prevent files getting recompiled. The simplest way around this is to remove the ccache package using your distros package manager.

=== How do I build for X10 support? ===

You do not need to rebuild ZM for X10 support. You will need to install the perl module and switch on X10 in the options, then restart. Installing the perl module is covered in the README amongst other places but in summary, do:

perl -MCPAN -eshell
install X10::ActiveHome
quit

== Extending ZoneMinder ==

=== How can I get ZM to do different things at different times of day or week? ===
If you want to configure ZoneMinder to do motion detection during the day and just record at night, for example, you will need to use ZoneMinder 'run states'. A run state is a particular configuration of monitor functions that you want to use at any time.

To save a run state you should first configure your monitors for Modect, Record, Monitor etc as you would want them during one of the times of day. Then click on the running state link at the top of the Console view. This will usually say 'Running' or 'Stopped'. You will then be able to save the current state and give it a name, 'Daytime' for example. Now configure your monitors how you would want them during other times of day and save that, for instance as 'Nighttime'.

Now you can switch between these two states by selecting them from the same dialog you saved them, or from the command line from issue the command ''zmpkg.pl <run state>'', for example ''zmpkg.pl Daytime''.

The final step you need to take, is scheduling the time the changes take effect. For this you can use [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron cron]. A simple entry to change to the Daylight state at at 8am and to the nighttime state at 8pm would be as follows,
<pre>0 8 * * * /usr/local/bin/zmpkg.pl Daytime
0 20 * * * /usr/local/bin/zmpkg.pl Nighttime</pre>

On Ubuntu 7.04 and possibly others, look in /usr/bin not just /usr/local/bin for the zmpkg.pl file.

Although the example above describes changing states at different times of day, the same principle can equally be applied to days of the week or other more arbitrary periods.

For an alternative method of time controlling ZoneMinder, forum user 'voronwe' has created a more interactive calendar style integration. Details of this can be found in this [http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6519 forum thread]. If you would like to find out more about this contribution please post on this thread.

=== How can I use ZoneMinder to trigger something else when there is an alarm? ===
ZoneMinder includes a perl API which means you can create a script to interact with the ZM shared memory data and use it in your own scripts to react to ZM alarms or to trigger ZM to generate new alarms. Full details are in the README or by doing 'perdoc ZoneMinder', 'perldoc ZoneMinder::SharedMem' etc.
Below is an example script that checks all monitors for alarms and when one occurs, prints a message to the screen. You can add in your own code to make this reaction a little more useful.

<pre>#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

use ZoneMinder;

$| = 1;

zmDbgInit( "myscript", level=>0, to_log=>0, to_syslog=>0, to_term=>1 );

my $dbh = DBI->connect( "DBI:mysql:database=".ZM_DB_NAME.";host=".ZM_DB_HOST, ZM_DB_USER, ZM_DB_PASS );

my $sql = "select M.*, max(E.Id) as LastEventId from Monitors as M left join Events as E on M.Id = E.MonitorId where M.Function != 'None' group by (M.Id)";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare_cached( $sql ) or die( "Can't prepare '$sql': ".$dbh->errstr() );

my $res = $sth->execute() or die( "Can't execute '$sql': ".$sth->errstr() );
my @monitors;
while ( my $monitor = $sth->fetchrow_hashref() )
{
push( @monitors, $monitor );
}

while( 1 )
{
foreach my $monitor ( @monitors )
{
next if ( !zmMemVerify( $monitor ) );

if ( my $last_event_id = zmHasAlarmed( $monitor, $monitor->{LastEventId} ) )
{
$monitor->{LastEventId} = $last_event_id;
print( "Monitor ".$monitor->{Name}." has alarmed\n" );
#
# Do your stuff here
#
}
}
sleep( 1 );
}</pre>

==Trouble Shooting==
Here are some things that will help you track down whats wrong.
This is also how to obtain the info that we need to help you on the forums.

===What logs should I check for errors?===
ZoneMinder creates its own logs and are usually located in the <tt>/tmp</tt> directory.

The ZoneMinder logs for the RPM packages are located in <tt>/var/log/zm</tt>.

Depending on your problem errors can show up in any of these logs but, usually the logs of interest are <tt>zmdc.log</tt> and <tt>zmpkg.log</tt> if ZM is not able to start.

Now since ZM is dependent on other components to work, you might not find errors in ZM but in the other components.
Other logs of interest are:<tt>
*/var/log/messages and/or /var/log/syslog
*/var/log/dmesg
*/var/log/httpd/error_log</tt> (RedHat/Fedora) or <tt>/var/log/apache2/error_log
*/var/log/mysqld.log</tt> (Errors here don't happen very often but just in case)

If ZM is not functioning, you should always be able to find an error in at least one of these logs. Use the [[tail]] command to get info from the logs. This can be done like so:

tail -f /var/log/messages /var/log/httpd/error_log /var/log/zm/zm*.log

This will append any data entered to any of these logs to your console screen (<tt>-f</tt>). To exit, hit [ctrl -c].

More verbose logging for the ZoneMinder binaries is available by enabling the debug option from the control panel and will be placed in the path you have configured for the debug logs. Output can be limited to a specific binary as described in the Debug options page under the "?" marks.

===How can I trouble shoot the hardware and/or software?===
Here are some commands to get information about your hardware. Some commands are distribution dependent.
* <tt>[[lspci]] -vv</tt> -- Returns lots of detailed info. Check for conflicting interrupts or port assignments. You can sometimes alter interrupts/ ports in bios. Try a different pci slot to get a clue if it is HW conflict (comand provided by the pciutils package).
* <tt>[[scanpci]] -v</tt> -- Gives you information from your hardware EPROM
* <tt>[[lsusb]] -vv</tt> -- Returns lots of detail about USB devices (camand provided by usbutils package).
* <tt>[[dmesg]]</tt> -- Shows you how your hardware initialized (or didn't) on boot-up. You will get the most use of this.
* <tt>[[v4l-info]]</tt> -- to see how driver is talking to card. look for unusual values.
* <tt>[[modinfo bttv]]</tt> -- some bttv driver stats.
* <tt>[[zmu]] -m 0 -q -v</tt> -- Returns various information regarding a monitor configuration.
* <tt>[[ipcs]] </tt> -- Provides information on the ipc facilities for which the calling process has read acccess.
* <tt>[[ipcrm]] </tt> -- The ipcrm command can be used to remove an IPC object from the kernel.
* <tt>cat /proc/interrupts</tt> -- This will dispaly what interrupts your hardware is using.

===Why is it that when monitoring a camera, the top portion of the image is cutoff and appears at the bottom of the image, with a line seperating the top from the bottom?===

=== Why am I getting a 403 access error with my web browser when trying to access http //localhost/zm? ===

The apache web server needs to have the right permissions and configuration to be able to read the Zoneminder files. Check the forums for solution, and edit the apache configuration and change directory permissions to give apache the right to read the Zoneminder files. Depending on your Zoneminder configuration, you would use the zm user and group that Zoneminder was built with, such as wwwuser and www.

=== Why am I getting broken images when trying to view events? ===

Zoneminder and the Apache web server need to have the right permissions. Check this forum topic and similar ones:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=48754#48754

===Why is the image from my color camera appearing in black and white?===
This may occur if you have a NTSC analog camera but have configured the source in ZoneMinder as PAL for the Device Format under the source tab. You may also be mislead because zmu can report the video port as being PAL when the camera is actually NTSC. Confirm the format of your analog camera by checking it's technical specifications, possibly found with the packaging it came in, on the manufacturers website, or even on the retail website where you purchased the camera. Change the Device Format setting to NTSC and set it to the lowest resolution of 320 x 240. If you have confirmed that the camera itself is NTSC format, but don't get a picture using the NTSC setting, consider increasing the shared memory '''kernel.shmall''' and '''kernel.shmmax''' settings in /etc/sysctl.conf to a larger value such as 268435456. This is also the reason you should start with the 320x240 resolution, so as to minimize the potential of memory problems which would interfere with your attempts to troubleshoot the device format issue. Once you have obtained a picture in the monitor using the NTSC format, then you can experiment with raising the resolution.

===Why do I only see blue screens with a timestamp when monitoring my camera?===
If this camera is attached to a capture card, then you may have selected the wrong Device Source or Channel when configuring the monitor in the ZoneMinder console. If you have a capture card with 2 D-sub style inputs(looks like a VGA port) to which you attach a provided splitter that splits off multiple cables, then the splitter may be attached to the wrong port. For example, PV-149 capture cards have two D-sub style ports labeled as DB1 and DB2, and come packaged with a connector for one of these ports that splits into 4 BNC connecters. The initial four video ports are available with the splitter attached to DB1.

===Why do I only see black screens with a timestamp when monitoring my camera?===
In the monitor windows where you see the black screen with a timestamp, select settings and enter the Brightness, Contrast, Hue, and Color settings reported for the device by '''zmu -d <device_path> -q -v'''. 32768 may be appropriate values to try for these settings. After saving the settings, select Settings again to confirm they saved successfully.

===I am getting messages about a backtrace in my logs, what do I do?===
If you are seeing entries in your log like the following
<pre>Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /lib64/libc.so.6 [0x3347230210]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /lib64/libc.so.6(memset+0xce) [0x334727684e]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma [0x40ee9a]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma [0x419946]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma [0x4213cf]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma(cos+0x35c) [0x404674]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /lib64/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf4) [0x334721da44]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma(cos+0xd1) [0x4043e9]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: INF [Backtrace complete]</pre>
then you can help diagnose the problem by running a special command to translate the hex addresses into helpful information. This command is called addr2line and you can type 'man addr2line' for more information.
Basically addr2line takes two sets of parameters, the first is the name of the binary file, and the second is a list of addresses. Both of these pieces of information are displayed in the logs. The filename is the first part after the 'Backtrace:' tag, in this case /usr/local/bin/zma, though it may well be different in your case. Some of the lines refer to libraries rather than the zma executable but those can be ignored for now, the important part is noting which ZM binary is involved. The binary file is passed in following the -e flag. The addresses to pass to addr2line are those contained in the '[]' pairs. Again you can ignore those that are on a line that refers to a library but it will not hurt if you include them.
So in the example above, the command would be <pre>addr2line -e /usr/local/bin/zma 0x40ee9a 0x419946 0x4213cf 0x404674 0x4043e9</pre>
This should then dump out a more symbolic list containing source file names and line numbers, and it is this information which will be helpful if posted to the forums. Sometimes addr2line fails to produce useful output. This is usually because either the problem is so severe that it has corrupted the stack and prevented useful information from being displayed, or that you have either compiled ZM without the -g flag for debug, or you have stripped the binaries of symbol information after installation. This this case you would need to rebuild temporarily with debug enabled for the information to be useful.

===How do I repair the MySQL Database?===
There is two ways to go about this. In most cases you can run from the command prompt ->
* mysqlcheck --all-databases --auto-repair -p'''your_database_password''' -u '''your_databse_user'''

If that does not work then you will have to make sure that ZoneMinder is stopped then run the following (nothing should be using the database while running this and you will have to adjust for your correct path if it is different). ->
* myisamchk --silent --force --fast --update-state -O key_buffer=64M -O sort_buffer=64M -O read_buffer=1M -O write_buffer=1M /var/lib/mysql/*/*.MYI

===How do I repair the MySQL Database when the cli fails?===
In Ubuntu, the commands listed above do not seem to work. However, actually doing it by hand from within MySQL does. (But that is beyond the scope of this document) But that got me thinking... And phpmyadmin does work. Bring up a terminal.
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

Now go to http://zoneminder_IP/ and stop the ZM service. Continue to http://zoneminder_IP/phpmyadmin and select the zoneminder database. Select and tables marked 'in use' and pick the action 'repare' to fix. Restart the zoneminder service from the web browser. Remove or disable the phpmyadmin tool, as it is not always the most secure thing around, and opens your database wide to any skilled hacker.
sudo apt-get remove phpmyadmin

===I upgraded by distribution and ZM stopped working===
Some possibilties (Incomplete list and subject to correction)
#[[/usr/local/bin/zmfix: /usr/lib/libmysqlclient.so.15: version `MYSQL_5.0' not found (required by /usr/local/bin/zmfix)]] :: Solution: Recompile and reinstall Zoneminder.
Any time you update a major version that ZoneMinder depends on, you need to recompile ZoneMinder.

=== Remote Path setup for Panasonic and other Camera ===
On adding or editing the source you can select the preset link for the parameters for the specified camera . In version 1.23.3 presets for BTTV,Axis,Panasonic,GadSpot,VEO, and BlueNet are available . Selecting the presets ZM fills up the required value for the remote path variable

=== Why do I get repeated/ mixed/unstable/ blank monitors on bt878-like cards (a.k.a. PICO 2000) ===

Please have a check at [[Pico2000]];

===What causes "Invalid JPEG file structure: two SOI markers" from zmc (1.24.x)===

Some settings that used to be global only are now per camera. On the Monitor Source tab, if you are using Remote Protocol "HTTP" and Remote Method "Simple", try changing Remote Method to "Regexp".

== Miscellaneous ==
=== I see ZoneMinder is licensed under the GPL. What does that allow or restrict me in doing with ZoneMinder? ===

The ZoneMinder license is described at the end of the documentation and consists of the following section

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty
of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

This means that ZoneMinder is licensed under the terms described [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html here]. There is a comprehensive FAQ covering the GPL at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html but in essence you are allowed to redistribute or modify GPL licensed software provided that you release your distribution or modifications freely under the same terms. You are allowed to sell systems based on GPL software. You are not allowed to restrict or reduce the rights of GPL software in your distribution however. Of course if you are just making modifications for your system locally you are not releasing changes so you have no obligations in this case. I recommend reading the GPL FAQ for more in-depth coverage of this issue.

=== Can I use ZoneMinder as part of my commercial product? ===

The GPL license allows you produce systems based on GPL software provided your systems also adhere to that license and any modifications you make are also released under the same terms. The GPL does not permit you to include ZoneMinder in proprietary systems (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem for details). If you wish to include ZoneMinder in this kind of system then you will need to license ZoneMinder under different terms. This is sometimes possible and you will need to contact me for further details in these circuumstances.

FAQ

2010-08-16T21:54:38Z

Jusfixit: /* Why does ZM stop recording once I have 32000 events for my monitor? */

== ZoneMinder Frequently Asked Questions ==

This is the new FAQ page. I will be migrating the existing FAQs here as soon as possible. In the meantime the old FAQ page is available [http://www.zoneminder.com/faq.html here].

Feel free to contribute any FAQs that you think are missing.

===How can I stop ZoneMinder filling up my disk?===

Recent versions of ZoneMinder come with a filter you can use for this purpose already included. However '''by default it is not enabled for event deletion'''.

The filter is called ''PurgeWhenFull'' and to find it, choose one of the event counts from the console page, for instance events in the last hour, for one of your monitors.

This will bring up an event listing and a filter window.

In the filter window there is a drop down select box labeled 'Use Filter', that lets your select a saved filter. Select 'PurgeWhenFull' and it will load that filter.

Make any modifications you might want, such as the percentage full you want it to kick in, or how many events to delete at a time (it will repeat the filter as many times as needed to clear the space, but will only delete this many events each time to get there).

Then click on 'Save' which will bring up a new window. Make sure the 'Automatically delete' box is checked and press save to save your filter. This will then run in the background to keep your disk within those limits.

After you've done that, you changes will automatically be loaded into zmfilter within a few minutes.

Check the <tt>zmfilter.log</tt> file to make sure it is running as sometimes missing perl modules mean that it never runs but people don't always realize.

There are two methods for ZM to remove files when they are deleted that can be found in Options under the System tab ZM_OPT_FAST_DELETE and ZM_RUN_AUDIT.

ZM_OPT_FAST_DELETE:

Normally an event created as the result of an alarm consists of entries in one or more database tables plus the various files associated with it. When deleting events in the browser it can take a long time to remove all of this if your are trying to do a lot of events at once. It is recommended that you set this option which means that the browser client only deletes the key entries in the events table, which means the events will no longer appear in the listing, and leaves the zmaudit daemon to clear up the rest later.

ZM_RUN_AUDIT:

The zmaudit daemon exists to check that the saved information in the database and on the file system match and are consistent with each other. If an error occurs or if you are using 'fast deletes' it may be that database records are deleted but files remain. In this case, and similar, zmaudit will remove redundant information to synchronize the two data stores. This option controls whether zmaudit is run in the background and performs these checks and fixes continuously. This is recommended for most systems however if you have a very large number of events the process of scanning the database and file system may take a long time and impact performance. In this case you may prefer to not have zmaudit running unconditionally and schedule occasional checks at other, more convenient, times.

ZM_AUDIT_CHECK_INTERVAL:

The zmaudit daemon exists to check that the saved information in the database and on the files system match and are consistent with each other. If an error occurs or if you are using 'fast deletes' it may be that database records are deleted but files remain. In this case, and similar, zmaudit will remove redundant information to synchronize the two data stores. The default check interval of 900 seconds (15 minutes) is fine for most systems however if you have a very large number of events the process of scanning the database and file system may take a long time and impact performance. In this case you may prefer to make this interval much larger to reduce the impact on your system. This option determines how often these checks are performed.

===What does a 'Can't shmget: Invalid argument' error in my logs mean? and my cameras won't display video at higher resolutions.===

This error is discussed in the README in the following excerpt:-
''...this is caused by an attempt to allocate an amount of shared memory greater than your system can handle. The size it requests is based on the following formula, ring buffer size x image width x image height x 3 (for 24 bit images) + a bit of overhead.

So, for example:
<pre>384x288 capture resolution, that makes: 110 592 pixels
in 24 bit color that's x24 = 2 654 208 bits per frame
by 80 frames ring buffer x80 = 212 336 640 bits per camera
by 4 cameras x4 = 849 346 560 bits.
Plus 10% overhead = 934 281 216 bits
That's 116 785 152 bytes, and
= 114 048 kB, respectively 111.38 MB.
If my shared memory is set to 134 217 728, which is exactly 128MB,
that means I shouldn't have any problem.
(Note that 1 byte = 8 bits and 1kbyte = 1024bytes, 1MB = 1024 kB)</pre>

If for instance you were using 24bit 640x480 then this would come to about 92Mb if you are using the default buffer size of 100. If this is too large then you can either reduce the image or buffer sizes or increase the maximum amount of shared memory available. If you are using RedHat then you can get details on how to change these settings at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/database/RHDB-2.1-Manual/admin_user/kernel-resources.html .

You should be able to use a similar procedure with other distributions to modify the shared memory pool without kernel recompilations though in some cases this may be necessary. Note, this error also sometimes occurs if you have an old shared memory segment lying around from a previous run that is too small. Use the ipcs and ipcrm system commands to check and remove it if necessary.'"

You can often find out how much shared memory is available by typing the following :-
<pre>cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmall</pre>

and the most you can allocate in one go :-
<pre>cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax</pre>

To change these values type (for example) :-
<pre>echo 134217728 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmall
echo 134217728 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax</pre>

'''Be sure to restart ZoneMinder after this.'''
However be aware that sometimes you will only need to change the shmmax value as shmall is often large enough. Also changing these values in this way is only effective until your machine is rebooted.

To change them permanently you will need to edit <tt>/etc/sysctl.conf</tt> and add the following lines (for example) :-
<pre>kernel.shmall = 134217728
kernel.shmmax = 134217728</pre>

To load these settings in the sysctl.conf file type:
<pre>sysctl -p</pre>

To check your shared memory settings type:
<pre>ipcs -l</pre>

Note that with Megapixel cameras like the Axis 207mw becoming cheaper and more attractive, the above memory settings are not adequate. To get Zoneminder working with a full 1280x1024 resolution camera in full colour, increase 134217728 to, for example, 268424446

These changes will now also be set the next time your machine is restarted.

Versions 1.24.x of ZoneMinder also allows you to use an alternate method of shared memory allocation, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmap mapped memory]. This requires less configuration and can be simpler to use. Mapped memory allows you to use a special type of file as the placeholder for your memory and this file is 'mapped' into memory space for easy and fast access.

To enable mapped memory in ZoneMinder you need add add the --enable--mmap=yes switch to your configure line. By default mapped memory files are created in /dev/shm which on most distributions is a dedicated pseudo-partition containing memory formatted as a filesystem. If your system uses a different path then this can be changed in ZoneMinder in Options->paths->PATH_MAP. It uses a filesystem type called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmpfs tmpfs]. If you type 'df' you should see this area and the size of memory it currently allows. It is important that you do not use a disk based filesystem for your memory mapped files as this will cause memory access to be extremely slow. ZoneMinder creates files called .zm.mmap.<monitor id> in the mapped memory filesystem.

Mapped memory is subject to the same limitations in terms of total memory as using more traditional shared memory but does not require any configuration per allocation or chunk. In future versions of ZoneMinder this will be the default shared memory storage method.

<div id="AlternateSharedMemory" style="width:80%; border:2px solid #8a8588; background:#faf5ff; vertical-align:top; margin-top: 6px; padding: 4px;">
Another good article about shared memory settings http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v9/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.db2.udb.uprun.doc/doc/t0008238.htm .
It made a statement that conflicted with those in the Redhat article but they fixed a [http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9692 long standing memory issue on FC6], so give them a try.

'''The essential difference was that the kernel.shmall setting is NOT in a direct memory setting in KB but in pages of memory. it is Max Pages of memory'''

'''For example:''' If you want to allocate a maximum memory setting to 8GB you have to convert it to the number of pages (or segments).
with a page size of 4096.
*kernel.shmall=8000x1024x1024/4096
**kernel.shmall=2048000
NOT 8388608000 as would be suggested in the RedHat article linked above.

shmmax is the max amount to allocate in one request -
this is is an actual memory size (as opposed to pages) set to 4GB
*kernel.shmmax = 4194304000

The <tt>/etc/sysctl.conf</tt> would have these lines<pre>kernel.shmall=2048000
kernel.shmmax = 4194304000</pre>

As above, reload your sysctl.conf with <tt>sysctl -p</tt> and check that the settings are correct with <tt>ipcs -l</tt>.
</div>

===I have enabled motion detection but it is not always being triggered when things happen in the camera view===

ZoneMinder uses zones to examine images for motion detection. When you create the initial zones you can choose from a number of preset values for sensitivity etc. Whilst these are usually a good starting point they are not always suitable for all situations and you will probably need to tweak the values for your specific circumstances. The meanings of the various settings are described in the documentation (http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Documentation#Defining_Zones) however if you believe you have sensible settings configured then there are two diagnostic approaches you can use.

====Event Statistics====
The first technique is to use event statistics. Firstly you should ensure they are switched on in Options->Debug->ZM_RECORD_EVENT_STATS. This will then cause the raw motion detection statistics for any subsequently generated events to be written to the DB. These can then be accessed by first clicking on the Frames or Alarm Frames values of the event from any event list view in the web gui. Then click on the score value to see the actual values that caused the event. Alternatively the stats can be accessed by clicking on the 'Stats' link when viewing any individual frame. The values displayed there correspond with the values that are used in the zone configuration and give you an idea of what 'real world' values are being generated.

Note that if you are investigating why events 'do not' happen then these will not be saved and so won't be accessible. The best thing to do in that circumstance is to make your zone more sensitive so that it captures all events (perhap even ones you don't want) so you can get an idea of what values are being generated and then start to adjust back to less sensitive settings if necessary. You should make sure you test your settings under a variety of lighting conditions (e.g. day and night, sunny or dull) to get the best feel for that works and what doesn't.

Using statistics will slow your system down to a small degree and use a little extra disk space in the DB so once you are happy you can switch them off again. However it is perfectly feasible to keep them permanently on if your system is able to cope which will allow you to review your setting periodically.

====Diagnostic Images====
The second approach is to use diagnostic images which are saved copies of the intermediate images that ZM uses when determining motion detection. These are switched on and off using Options->Debug->ZM_RECORD_DIAG_IMAGES.

There are two kinds of diagnostic images which are and are written (and continuously overwritten) to the top level monitor event directory. If an event occurs then the files are additionally copied to the event directory and renamed with the appropriate frame number as a prefix.

The first set are produced by the monitor on the image as a whole. The diag-r.jpg image is the current reference image against which all individual frames are compared and the diag-d.jpg image is the delta image highlighting the difference between the reference image and the last analysed image. In this images identicial pixels will be black and the more different a pixel is the whiter it will be. Viewing this image and determining the colour of the pixels is a good way of getting a feel for the pixel differences you might expect (often more than you think).

The second set of diag images are labelled as diag-<zoneid>-<stage>.jpg where zoneid is the id of the zone in question (Smile) and the stage is where in the alarm check process the image is generated from. So if you have several zones you can expect to see multiple files. Also these files are only interested in what is happening in their zone only and will ignore anything else outside of the zone. The stages that each number represents are as follows,

# Alarmed Pixels - This image shows all pixels in the zone that are considered to be alarmed as white pixels and all other pixels as black.
# Filtered Pixels - This is as stage one except that all pixels removed by the filters are now black. The white pixels represent the pixels that are candidates to generate an event.
# Raw Blobs - This image contains all alarmed pixels from stage 2 but aggrageted into blobs. Each blob will have a different greyscale value (between 1 and 254) so they can be difficult to spot with the naked eye but using a colour picker or photoshop will make it easier to see what blob is what.
# Filtered Blobs - This image is as stage 3 but under (or over) sized blobs have been removed. This is the final step before determining if an event has occurred, just prior to the number of blobs being counted. Thus this image forms the basis for determining whether an event is generated and outlining on alarmed images is done from the blobs in this image.

Using the above images you should be able to tell at all stages what ZM is doing to determine if an event should happen or not. They are useful diagnostic tools but as is mentioned elsewhere they will massively slow your system down and take up a great deal more space. You should never leave ZM running for any length of time with diagnostic images on.

===Why can't ZoneMinder capture images (either at all or just particularly fast) when I can see my camera just fine in xawtv or similar?===

With capture cards ZoneMinder will pull images as fast as it possibly can unless limited by configuration. ZoneMinder (and any similar application) uses the frame grabber interface to copy frames from video memory into user memory. This takes some time, plus if you have several inputs sharing one capture chip it has to switch between inputs between captures which further slows things down.

On average a card that can capture at 25fps per chip PAL for one input will do maybe 6-10fps for two, 1-4fps for three and 1-2 for four. For a 30fps NTSC chip the figures will be correspondingly higher. However sometimes it is necessary to slow down capture even further as after an input switch it may take a short while for the new image to settle before it can be captured without corruption.

When using xawtv etc to view the stream you are not looking at an image captured using the frame grabber but the card's video memory mapped onto your screen. This requires no capture or processing unless you do an explicit capture via the J or ctrl-J keys for instance. Some cards or drivers do not support the frame grabber interface at all so may not work with ZoneMinder even though you can view the stream in xawtv. If you can grab a still using the grab functionality of xawtv then in general your card will work with ZoneMinder.

===Why can't I see streamed images when I can see stills in the Zone window etc?===

This issue is normally down to one of two causes

1) You are using Internet Explorer and are trying to view multi-part jpeg streams. IE does not support these streams directly, unlike most other browsers. You will need to install Cambozola or another multi-part jpeg aware pluging to view them. To do this you will need to obtain the applet from the Downloads page and install the cambozola.jar file in the same directly as the ZoneMinder php files. Then find the ZoneMinder Options->Images page and enable ZM_OPT_CAMBOZOLA and enter the web path to the .jar file in ZM_PATH_CAMBOZOLA. This will ordinarily just be cambozola.jar. Provided ZM_CAN_STREAM is set to auto and ZM_STREAM_METHOD is set to jpeg then Cambozola should be loaded next time you try and view a stream.

'''NOTE''': If you find that the Cambozola applet loads in IE but the applet just displays the version # of Cambozola and the author's name (as opposed to seeing the streaming images), you may need to chmod your cambozola.jar:

$ sudo chmod 775 cambozola.jar

Once I did this, images started to stream for me.

2) The other common cause for being unable to view streams is that you have installed the ZoneMinder cgi binaries (zms and nph-zms) in a different directory than your web server is expecting. Make sure that the --with-cgidir option you use to the ZoneMinder configure script is the same as the CGI directory configure for your web server. If you are using Apache, which is the most common one, then in your httpd.conf file there should be a line like <pre>ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"</pre> where the last directory in the quotes is the one you have specified. If not then change one or the other to match. Be warned that configuring apache can be complex so changing the one passed to the ZoneMinder configure (and then rebuilding and reinstalling) is recommended in the first instance. If you change the apache config you will need to restart apache for the changes to take effect. If you still cannot see stream reliably then try changing Options->Paths->ZM_PATH_ZMS to just use zms if nph-zms is specified, or vice versa. Also check in your apache error logs.

===I have several monitors configured but when I load the Montage view in FireFox why can I only see two? or, Why don't all my cameras display when I use the Montage view in FireFox?===

By default FireFox only supports a small number of simultaneous connections. Using the montage view usually requires one persistent connection for each camera plus intermittent connections for other information such as statuses.

You will need to increase the number of allowed connections to use the montage view with more than a small number of cameras. Certain FireFox extensions such as FasterFox may also help to achieve the same result.

To resolve this situation, follow the instructions below:

<pre>Enter about:config in the address bar

scroll down to
browser.cache.check_doc_frequency 3
change the 3 to a 1

browser.cache.disk.enable True -> False
network.http.max-connections-per-server -> put a value of 100
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy -> 100 again
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server -> 100 again
</pre>

===Why is ZoneMinder using so much CPU?===

The various elements of ZoneMinder can be involved in some pretty intensive activity, especially while analysing images for motion. However generally this should not overwhelm your machine unless it is very old or underpowered.

There are a number of specific reasons why processor loads can be high either by design or by accident. To figure out exactly what is causing it in your circumstances requires a bit of experimentation.

The main causes are.

# Using a video palette other than greyscale or RGB24. This can cause a relatively minor performace hit, though still significant. Although some cameras and cards require using planar palettes ZM currently doesn't support this format internally and each frame is converted to an RGB representation prior to processing. Unless you have compelling reasons for using YUV or reduced RGB type palettes such as hitting USB transfer limits I would experiment to see if RGB24 or greyscale is quicker. Put your monitors into 'Monitor' mode so that only the capture daemons are running and monitor the process load of these (the 'zmc' processes) using top. Try it with various palettes to see if it makes a difference.
# Big image sizes. A image of 640x480 requires at least four times the processing of a 320x240 image. Experiment with different sizes to see what effect it may have. Sometimes a large image is just two interlaced smaller frames so has no real benefit anyway. This is especially true for analog cameras/cards as image height over 320 (NTSC) or 352 PAL) are invariably interlaced.
# Capture frame rates. Unless there's a compelling reason in your case there is often little benefit in running cameras at 25fps when 5-10fps would often get you results just as good. Try changing your monitor settings to limit your cameras to lower frame rates. You can still configure ZM to ignore these limits and capture as fast as possible when motion is detected.
# Run function. Obviously running in Record or Mocord modes or in Modect with lots of events generates a lot of DB and file activity and so CPU and load will increase.
# Basic default detection zones. By default when a camera is added one detection zone is added which covers the whole image with a default set of parameters. If your camera covers a view in which various regions are unlikely to generate a valid alarm (ie the sky) then I would experiment with reducing the zone sizes or adding inactive zones to blank out areas you don't want to monitor. Additionally the actual settings of the zone themselves may not be optimal. When doing motion detection the number of changed pixels above a threshold is examined, then this is filter, then contiguous regions are calculated to see if an alarm is generated. If any maximum or minimum threshold is exceeded according to your zone settings at any time the calculation stops. If your settings always result in the calculations going through to the last stage before being failed then additional CPU time is used unnecessarily. Make sure your maximum and minimumzone thresholds are set to sensible values and experiment by switching RECORD_EVENT_STATS on and seeing what the actual values of alarmed pixels etc are during sample events.
# Optimise your settings. After you've got some settings you're happy with then switching off RECORD_EVENT_STATS will prevent the statistics being written to the database which saves some time. Other settings which might make a difference are ZM_FAST_RGB_DIFFS, ZM_OPT_FRAME_SERVER and the JPEG_xxx_QUALITY ones.

I'm sure there are other things which might make a difference such as what else you have running on the box and memory sizes (make sure there's no swapping going on). Also speed of disk etc will make some difference during event capture and also if you are watching the whole time then you may have a bunch of zms processes running also.

I think the biggest factors are image size, colour depth and capture rate. Having said that I also don't always know why you get certains results from 'top'. For instance if I have a 'zma' daemon running for a monitor that is capturing an image. I've commented out the actual analysis so all it's doing is blending the image with the previous one. In colour mode this takes ~11 milliseconds per frame on my system and the camera is capturing at ~10fps. Using 'top' this reports the process as using ~5% of CPU and permanently in R(un) state. Changing to greyscale mode the blending takes ~4msec (as you would expect as this is roughly a third of 11) but top reports the process as now with 0% CPU and permanently in S(leep) state. So an actual CPU resource usage change of a factor of 3 causes huge differences in reported CPU usage. I have yet to get to the bottom of this but I suspect it's to do with scheduling somewhere along the line and that maybe the greyscale processing will fit into one scheduling time slice whereas the colour one won't but I have no evidence of this yet!

===Why is the timeline view all messed up?===

The timeline view is a new view allowing you to see a graph of alarm activity over time and to quickly scan and home in on events of interest. However this feature is highly complex and still in beta. It is based extensively on HTML div tags, sometimes lots of them. Whilst FireFox is able to render this view successfully other browsers, particular Internet Explorer do not seem able to cope and so present a messed up view, either always or when there are a lot of events.
Using the timeline view is only recommended when using FireFox, however even then there may be issues.

===How much Hard Disk Space / Bandwidth do I need for ZM?===
Please see [http://www.jpwilson.eu/ZM_Utils/ZM%20storage%20calc%20sheet.xls Storage Calc] in excel format

Or go to [http://www.axis.com/products/video/design_tool/index.htm this link] for the Axis bandwidth calculator. Although this is aimed at Axis cameras it still produces valid results for any kind of IP camera.

As a quick guide I have 4 cameras at 320x240 storing 1 fps except during alarm events. After 1 week 60GB of space in the volume where the events are stored (/var/www/html/zm) has been used.

===When I try and run ZoneMinder I get lots of audit permission errors in the logs and it won't start===
Many Linux distributions nowadays are built with security in mind. One of the latest methods of achieving this is via SELinux (Secure Linux) which controls who is able to run what in a more precise way then traditional accounting and file based permissions ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinux]).
If you are seeing entries in your system log like:

Jun 11 20:44:02 kernel: audit(1150033442.443:226): avc: denied { read } for pid=5068
comm="uptime" name="utmp" dev=dm-0 ino=16908345 scontext=user_u:system_r:httpd_sys_script_t
tcontext=user_u:object_r:initrc_var_run_t tclass=file

then it is likely that your system has SELinux enabled and it is preventing ZoneMinder from performaing certain activities. You then have two choices. You can either tune SELinux to permit the required operations or you can disable SELinux entirely which will permit ZoneMinder to run unhindered. Disabling SELinux is usually performed by editing it's configuration file (e.g., <tt>/etc/selinux/config</tt>) and then rebooting. However if you run a public server you should read up on the risks associated with disabled Secure Linux before disabling it.

Note that SELinux may cause errors other than those listed above. If you are in any doubt then it can be worth disabling SELinux experimentally to see if it fixes your problem before trying other solutions.

=== How do I enable ZoneMinder's security? ===
In the console, click on Options. Check the box next to "ZM_OPT_USE_AUTH". You will immediately be asked to login. The username is 'admin' and the password is 'admin'.

'''To Manage Users:''' 
In main console, go to '''Options->Users'''.

* You may also consider to use the web server security, for example, htaccess files under Apache scope; You may even use this as an additional/redundant security on top of Zoneminders built-in security features;

=== Why does ZM stop recording once I have 32000 events for my monitor? ===
This is a limitation of the ext3 filesystem that most Linux distributions use. One directory cannot hold more than 32k approx files.

Version of ZM from 1.23.0 onwards allow you to have a deeper filesystem with fewer files per individual directory. As well as not being susceptible to the 32k limit this is also somewhat faster. However it is relatively and although few issues have been reported thus far it should be considered in beta for now. Also, it is currently not possible to migrate saved events between the different storage formats so is only suitable for new installations or if you do not mind losing saved events.

So if you do not want to use the deeper filesystem option
(Options->Paths->ZM_USE_DEEP_STORAGE), for now you have to reduce the
number of events or store your images (e.g. /var/lib/zoneminder) on a
partition that uses a different filesystem such as ext4 or reiserfs.

You can read about the lack of a limit in the number of
sub-directories in the ext4 filesystem at:
[[http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4]]
and see what tools may assist in your use of this filesystem in:
[[http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto]]
Note that while GParted 0.5.2 recognizes ext4 partitions, at least in
some circumstances it does not succeed in formatting a partition for
the ext4 filesystem. Also, if you search for ext3 or reiserfs on the
forums you will find various threads on this issue with guidance on
how to convert.

== Managing system load ''(with IP Cameras in mind)'' ==

=== Introduction ===
Zoneminder is a superb application in every way, but it does a job that needs a lot of horsepower especially when using multiple IP cameras. IP Cams require an extra level of processing to analogue cards as the jpg or mjpeg images need to be decoded before analysing. This needs grunt. If you have lots of cameras, you need lots of grunt.

Why do ZM need so much grunt?
Think what Zoneminder is actually doing. In modect mode ZM is:
1. Fetching a jpeg from the camera. (Either in single part or multipart stream)
2. Decoding the jpeg image.
3. Comparing the zoned selections to the previous image or images and applying rules.
4. If in alarm state, writing that image to the disk and updating the mysql database.

If you're capturing at five frames per second, the above is repeated five times every second, multiplied by the number of cameras. Decoding the images is what takes the real power from the processor and this is the main reason why analogue cameras which present an image ready-decoded in memory take less work.

=== How do I know if my computer is overloaded? ===
If your CPU is running at 100% all the time, it's probably overloaded (or running at exact optimisation). If the load is consistently high (over 10.0 for a single processor) then Bad Things happen - like lost frames, unrecorded events etc. Occasional peaks are fine, normal and nothing to worry about.

Zoneminder runs on Linux, Linux measures system load using "load", which is complicated but gives a rough guide on what the computer is doing at any given time. Zoneminder shows Load on the main page (top right) as well as disk space. Typing "uptime" on the command line will give a similar guide, but with three figures to give a fuller measure of what's happening over a period of time but for the best guide to see what's happening, install "htop" - which gives easy to read graphs for load, memory and cpu usage.

A load of 1.0 means the processor has "just enough to do right now". Also worth noting that a load of 4.0 means exactly the same for a quad processor machine - each number equals a single processor's workload. A very high load can be fine on a computer that has a stacked workload - such as a machine sending out bulk emails, or working its way through a knotty problem; it'll just keep churning away until it's done. However - Zoneminder needs to process information in real time so it can't afford to stack its jobs, it needs to deal with them right away.

For a better and full explanation of Load: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_%28computing%29

=== My load is too high, how can I reduce it? ===
Zoneminder is /very/ tweakable and it's possible to tune it to compromise. The following are good things to try, in no particular order;

Change the jpeg libraries. In most distributions Linux uses standard jpeg libraries which although fine for most things, don't use the MMX functions in nearly all modern processors. Check whether your cpu supports mmx by running "cpuid |grep MMX" which should give you a line or two along the lines of "MMX instructions". If so, give the libs a try. Most people report their load halves simply by using these libs. http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6419 gives more info. Nobody's posted there to say it broke their system... Yet.

If your camera allows you to change image size, think whether you can get away with smaller images. Smaller pics = less load. 320x240 is usually ok for close-up corridor shots.

Go Black and White. Colour pictures use twice to three times the CPU, memory and diskspace but give little benefit to identification.

Reduce frames per second. Halve the fps, halve the workload. If your camera supports fps throttling (Axis do), try that - saves ZM having to drop frames from a stream. 2-5 fps seems to be widely used.

Experiment with using jpeg instead of mjpeg. Some users have reported it gives better performance, but YMMV.

Tweak the zones. Keep them as small and as few as possible. Stick to one zone unless you really need more.

Schedule. If you are running a linux system at near capacity, you'll need to think carefully about things like backups and scheduled tasks. updatedb - the process which maintains a file database so that 'locate' works quickly, is normally scheduled to run once a day and if on a busy system can create a heavy increase on the load. The same is true for scheduled backups, especially those which compress the files. Re-schedule these tasks to a time when the cpu is less likely to be busy, if possible - and also use the "nice" command to reduce their priority. (crontab and /etc/cron.daily/ are good places to start)

Reduce clutter on your PC. Don't run X unless you really need it, the GUI is a huge overhead in both memory and cpu.

More expensive options:

Increase RAM. If your system is having to use disk swap it will HUGELY impact performance in all areas. Again, htop is a good monitor - but first you need to understand that because Linux is using all the memory, it doesn't mean it needs it all - linux handles ram very differently to Windows/DOS and caches stuff. htop will show cached ram as a different colour in the memory graph. Also check that you're actually using a high memory capable kernel - many kernels don't enable high memory by default.

Faster CPU. Simple but effective. Zoneminder also works very well with multiple processor systems out of the box (if SMP is enabled in your kernel). The load of different cameras is spread across the processors.

=== What about disks and bandwidth? ===

In most modern pc-based servers, disk I/O is more than adequate for the speeds involved in capturing from multiple cameras in most scenarios.

A typical 100mbit LAN will cope with most setups easily. If you're feeding from cameras over smaller or internet links, obviously fps will be much lower.

Disk and Bandwidth calculators are referenced on the Zoneminder wiki here: http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_much_Hard_Disk_Space_.2F_Bandwidth_do_I_need_for_ZM.3F

== Building ZoneMinder ==

===I cannot build ZoneMinder and am getting lots of undefined C++ template errors===

This is almost certainly due to the 'ccache' package which attempts to speed up compilation by caching compiled objects. Unfortunately one of the side effects is that it breaks the GNU g++ template resolution method that ZoneMinder uses in building by prevent files getting recompiled. The simplest way around this is to remove the ccache package using your distros package manager.

=== How do I build for X10 support? ===

You do not need to rebuild ZM for X10 support. You will need to install the perl module and switch on X10 in the options, then restart. Installing the perl module is covered in the README amongst other places but in summary, do:

perl -MCPAN -eshell
install X10::ActiveHome
quit

== Extending ZoneMinder ==

=== How can I get ZM to do different things at different times of day or week? ===
If you want to configure ZoneMinder to do motion detection during the day and just record at night, for example, you will need to use ZoneMinder 'run states'. A run state is a particular configuration of monitor functions that you want to use at any time.

To save a run state you should first configure your monitors for Modect, Record, Monitor etc as you would want them during one of the times of day. Then click on the running state link at the top of the Console view. This will usually say 'Running' or 'Stopped'. You will then be able to save the current state and give it a name, 'Daytime' for example. Now configure your monitors how you would want them during other times of day and save that, for instance as 'Nighttime'.

Now you can switch between these two states by selecting them from the same dialog you saved them, or from the command line from issue the command ''zmpkg.pl <run state>'', for example ''zmpkg.pl Daytime''.

The final step you need to take, is scheduling the time the changes take effect. For this you can use [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron cron]. A simple entry to change to the Daylight state at at 8am and to the nighttime state at 8pm would be as follows,
<pre>0 8 * * * /usr/local/bin/zmpkg.pl Daytime
0 20 * * * /usr/local/bin/zmpkg.pl Nighttime</pre>

On Ubuntu 7.04 and possibly others, look in /usr/bin not just /usr/local/bin for the zmpkg.pl file.

Although the example above describes changing states at different times of day, the same principle can equally be applied to days of the week or other more arbitrary periods.

For an alternative method of time controlling ZoneMinder, forum user 'voronwe' has created a more interactive calendar style integration. Details of this can be found in this [http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6519 forum thread]. If you would like to find out more about this contribution please post on this thread.

=== How can I use ZoneMinder to trigger something else when there is an alarm? ===
ZoneMinder includes a perl API which means you can create a script to interact with the ZM shared memory data and use it in your own scripts to react to ZM alarms or to trigger ZM to generate new alarms. Full details are in the README or by doing 'perdoc ZoneMinder', 'perldoc ZoneMinder::SharedMem' etc.
Below is an example script that checks all monitors for alarms and when one occurs, prints a message to the screen. You can add in your own code to make this reaction a little more useful.

<pre>#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

use ZoneMinder;

$| = 1;

zmDbgInit( "myscript", level=>0, to_log=>0, to_syslog=>0, to_term=>1 );

my $dbh = DBI->connect( "DBI:mysql:database=".ZM_DB_NAME.";host=".ZM_DB_HOST, ZM_DB_USER, ZM_DB_PASS );

my $sql = "select M.*, max(E.Id) as LastEventId from Monitors as M left join Events as E on M.Id = E.MonitorId where M.Function != 'None' group by (M.Id)";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare_cached( $sql ) or die( "Can't prepare '$sql': ".$dbh->errstr() );

my $res = $sth->execute() or die( "Can't execute '$sql': ".$sth->errstr() );
my @monitors;
while ( my $monitor = $sth->fetchrow_hashref() )
{
push( @monitors, $monitor );
}

while( 1 )
{
foreach my $monitor ( @monitors )
{
next if ( !zmMemVerify( $monitor ) );

if ( my $last_event_id = zmHasAlarmed( $monitor, $monitor->{LastEventId} ) )
{
$monitor->{LastEventId} = $last_event_id;
print( "Monitor ".$monitor->{Name}." has alarmed\n" );
#
# Do your stuff here
#
}
}
sleep( 1 );
}</pre>

==Trouble Shooting==
Here are some things that will help you track down whats wrong.
This is also how to obtain the info that we need to help you on the forums.

===What logs should I check for errors?===
ZoneMinder creates its own logs and are usually located in the <tt>/tmp</tt> directory.

The ZoneMinder logs for the RPM packages are located in <tt>/var/log/zm</tt>.

Depending on your problem errors can show up in any of these logs but, usually the logs of interest are <tt>zmdc.log</tt> and <tt>zmpkg.log</tt> if ZM is not able to start.

Now since ZM is dependent on other components to work, you might not find errors in ZM but in the other components.
Other logs of interest are:<tt>
*/var/log/messages and/or /var/log/syslog
*/var/log/dmesg
*/var/log/httpd/error_log</tt> (RedHat/Fedora) or <tt>/var/log/apache2/error_log
*/var/log/mysqld.log</tt> (Errors here don't happen very often but just in case)

If ZM is not functioning, you should always be able to find an error in at least one of these logs. Use the [[tail]] command to get info from the logs. This can be done like so:

tail -f /var/log/messages /var/log/httpd/error_log /var/log/zm/zm*.log

This will append any data entered to any of these logs to your console screen (<tt>-f</tt>). To exit, hit [ctrl -c].

More verbose logging for the ZoneMinder binaries is available by enabling the debug option from the control panel and will be placed in the path you have configured for the debug logs. Output can be limited to a specific binary as described in the Debug options page under the "?" marks.

===How can I trouble shoot the hardware and/or software?===
Here are some commands to get information about your hardware. Some commands are distribution dependent.
* <tt>[[lspci]] -vv</tt> -- Returns lots of detailed info. Check for conflicting interrupts or port assignments. You can sometimes alter interrupts/ ports in bios. Try a different pci slot to get a clue if it is HW conflict (comand provided by the pciutils package).
* <tt>[[scanpci]] -v</tt> -- Gives you information from your hardware EPROM
* <tt>[[lsusb]] -vv</tt> -- Returns lots of detail about USB devices (camand provided by usbutils package).
* <tt>[[dmesg]]</tt> -- Shows you how your hardware initialized (or didn't) on boot-up. You will get the most use of this.
* <tt>[[v4l-info]]</tt> -- to see how driver is talking to card. look for unusual values.
* <tt>[[modinfo bttv]]</tt> -- some bttv driver stats.
* <tt>[[zmu]] -m 0 -q -v</tt> -- Returns various information regarding a monitor configuration.
* <tt>[[ipcs]] </tt> -- Provides information on the ipc facilities for which the calling process has read acccess.
* <tt>[[ipcrm]] </tt> -- The ipcrm command can be used to remove an IPC object from the kernel.
* <tt>cat /proc/interrupts</tt> -- This will dispaly what interrupts your hardware is using.

===Why is it that when monitoring a camera, the top portion of the image is cutoff and appears at the bottom of the image, with a line seperating the top from the bottom?===

=== Why am I getting a 403 access error with my web browser when trying to access http //localhost/zm? ===

The apache web server needs to have the right permissions and configuration to be able to read the Zoneminder files. Check the forums for solution, and edit the apache configuration and change directory permissions to give apache the right to read the Zoneminder files. Depending on your Zoneminder configuration, you would use the zm user and group that Zoneminder was built with, such as wwwuser and www.

=== Why am I getting broken images when trying to view events? ===

Zoneminder and the Apache web server need to have the right permissions. Check this forum topic and similar ones:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=48754#48754

===Why is the image from my color camera appearing in black and white?===
This may occur if you have a NTSC analog camera but have configured the source in ZoneMinder as PAL for the Device Format under the source tab. You may also be mislead because zmu can report the video port as being PAL when the camera is actually NTSC. Confirm the format of your analog camera by checking it's technical specifications, possibly found with the packaging it came in, on the manufacturers website, or even on the retail website where you purchased the camera. Change the Device Format setting to NTSC and set it to the lowest resolution of 320 x 240. If you have confirmed that the camera itself is NTSC format, but don't get a picture using the NTSC setting, consider increasing the shared memory '''kernel.shmall''' and '''kernel.shmmax''' settings in /etc/sysctl.conf to a larger value such as 268435456. This is also the reason you should start with the 320x240 resolution, so as to minimize the potential of memory problems which would interfere with your attempts to troubleshoot the device format issue. Once you have obtained a picture in the monitor using the NTSC format, then you can experiment with raising the resolution.

===Why do I only see blue screens with a timestamp when monitoring my camera?===
If this camera is attached to a capture card, then you may have selected the wrong Device Source or Channel when configuring the monitor in the ZoneMinder console. If you have a capture card with 2 D-sub style inputs(looks like a VGA port) to which you attach a provided splitter that splits off multiple cables, then the splitter may be attached to the wrong port. For example, PV-149 capture cards have two D-sub style ports labeled as DB1 and DB2, and come packaged with a connector for one of these ports that splits into 4 BNC connecters. The initial four video ports are available with the splitter attached to DB1.

===Why do I only see black screens with a timestamp when monitoring my camera?===
In the monitor windows where you see the black screen with a timestamp, select settings and enter the Brightness, Contrast, Hue, and Color settings reported for the device by '''zmu -d <device_path> -q -v'''. 32768 may be appropriate values to try for these settings. After saving the settings, select Settings again to confirm they saved successfully.

===I am getting messages about a backtrace in my logs, what do I do?===
If you are seeing entries in your log like the following
<pre>Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /lib64/libc.so.6 [0x3347230210]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /lib64/libc.so.6(memset+0xce) [0x334727684e]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma [0x40ee9a]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma [0x419946]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma [0x4213cf]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma(cos+0x35c) [0x404674]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /lib64/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf4) [0x334721da44]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: ERR [Backtrace: /usr/local/bin/zma(cos+0xd1) [0x4043e9]]
Jan 11 20:25:22 localhost zma_m2[19051]: INF [Backtrace complete]</pre>
then you can help diagnose the problem by running a special command to translate the hex addresses into helpful information. This command is called addr2line and you can type 'man addr2line' for more information.
Basically addr2line takes two sets of parameters, the first is the name of the binary file, and the second is a list of addresses. Both of these pieces of information are displayed in the logs. The filename is the first part after the 'Backtrace:' tag, in this case /usr/local/bin/zma, though it may well be different in your case. Some of the lines refer to libraries rather than the zma executable but those can be ignored for now, the important part is noting which ZM binary is involved. The binary file is passed in following the -e flag. The addresses to pass to addr2line are those contained in the '[]' pairs. Again you can ignore those that are on a line that refers to a library but it will not hurt if you include them.
So in the example above, the command would be <pre>addr2line -e /usr/local/bin/zma 0x40ee9a 0x419946 0x4213cf 0x404674 0x4043e9</pre>
This should then dump out a more symbolic list containing source file names and line numbers, and it is this information which will be helpful if posted to the forums. Sometimes addr2line fails to produce useful output. This is usually because either the problem is so severe that it has corrupted the stack and prevented useful information from being displayed, or that you have either compiled ZM without the -g flag for debug, or you have stripped the binaries of symbol information after installation. This this case you would need to rebuild temporarily with debug enabled for the information to be useful.

===How do I repair the MySQL Database?===
There is two ways to go about this. In most cases you can run from the command prompt ->
* mysqlcheck --all-databases --auto-repair -p'''your_database_password''' -u '''your_databse_user'''

If that does not work then you will have to make sure that ZoneMinder is stopped then run the following (nothing should be using the database while running this and you will have to adjust for your correct path if it is different). ->
* myisamchk --silent --force --fast --update-state -O key_buffer=64M -O sort_buffer=64M -O read_buffer=1M -O write_buffer=1M /var/lib/mysql/*/*.MYI

===How do I repair the MySQL Database when the cli fails?===
In Ubuntu, the commands listed above do not seem to work. However, actually doing it by hand from within MySQL does. (But that is beyond the scope of this document) But that got me thinking... And phpmyadmin does work. Bring up a terminal.
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

Now go to http://zoneminder_IP/ and stop the ZM service. Continue to http://zoneminder_IP/phpmyadmin and select the zoneminder database. Select and tables marked 'in use' and pick the action 'repare' to fix. Restart the zoneminder service from the web browser. Remove or disable the phpmyadmin tool, as it is not always the most secure thing around, and opens your database wide to any skilled hacker.
sudo apt-get remove phpmyadmin

===I upgraded by distribution and ZM stopped working===
Some possibilties (Incomplete list and subject to correction)
#[[/usr/local/bin/zmfix: /usr/lib/libmysqlclient.so.15: version `MYSQL_5.0' not found (required by /usr/local/bin/zmfix)]] :: Solution: Recompile and reinstall Zoneminder.
Any time you update a major version that ZoneMinder depends on, you need to recompile ZoneMinder.

=== Remote Path setup for Panasonic and other Camera ===
On adding or editing the source you can select the preset link for the parameters for the specified camera . In version 1.23.3 presets for BTTV,Axis,Panasonic,GadSpot,VEO, and BlueNet are available . Selecting the presets ZM fills up the required value for the remote path variable

=== Why do I get repeated/ mixed/unstable/ blank monitors on bt878-like cards (a.k.a. PICO 2000) ===

Please have a check at [[Pico2000]];

===What causes "Invalid JPEG file structure: two SOI markers" from zmc (1.24.x)===

Some settings that used to be global only are now per camera. On the Monitor Source tab, if you are using Remote Protocol "HTTP" and Remote Method "Simple", try changing Remote Method to "Regexp".

== Miscellaneous ==
=== I see ZoneMinder is licensed under the GPL. What does that allow or restrict me in doing with ZoneMinder? ===

The ZoneMinder license is described at the end of the documentation and consists of the following section

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty
of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

This means that ZoneMinder is licensed under the terms described [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html here]. There is a comprehensive FAQ covering the GPL at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html but in essence you are allowed to redistribute or modify GPL licensed software provided that you release your distribution or modifications freely under the same terms. You are allowed to sell systems based on GPL software. You are not allowed to restrict or reduce the rights of GPL software in your distribution however. Of course if you are just making modifications for your system locally you are not releasing changes so you have no obligations in this case. I recommend reading the GPL FAQ for more in-depth coverage of this issue.

=== Can I use ZoneMinder as part of my commercial product? ===

The GPL license allows you produce systems based on GPL software provided your systems also adhere to that license and any modifications you make are also released under the same terms. The GPL does not permit you to include ZoneMinder in proprietary systems (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem for details). If you wish to include ZoneMinder in this kind of system then you will need to license ZoneMinder under different terms. This is sometimes possible and you will need to contact me for further details in these circuumstances.

Intellinet

2010-06-19T00:30:28Z

Jusfixit:

This information relates to the Intellinet
Network IP Camera
Professional Series
Medel [sic, per cover of User's Guide] or Model 550710.
The external appearance of this camera is shown below.
 
[[Image:IntellinetProSeries550710.png|image of camera]]
 
[ from
[http://www.intellinet-network.com/en-US/products/3358-pro-series-network-camera] ]

Note that the plastic case of this camera gets warm
(e.g. 22 degree F elevation above ambient)
after it has been powered on for a while.

Aim your web browser at the address you selected for your camera,
and supply the login credentials for an Administrator of your camera.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraHomepage.png]]
 
The manufacturer's default administrator Username is "admin"
with a Password of "admin" (per page 31 of User's Guide).

On the resulting web page,
scroll down to the bottom to select the hyperlink to the Administrator Menu.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraMain.png]]
 
[ Note that in the large grey central section of this browser window,
if one were using a browser that supported ActiveX one would see
the real-time live video feed from the camera.
However, even when one selects the viewing program option
shown on the previous screen for
"Java Applet for Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera
and other browsers",
the video feed is ''not'' displayed on this page by at least Firefox 3.6.3,
whether under Windows (e.g. XP) or Linux (Fedora).
]

On the resulting web page,
select the hyperlink to Image Configuration.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraAdmin.png]]
 
On the resulting web page,
select
* Compression Rate to be Level 1
[Under both firmware levels of FL000004.0 (as this unit was shipped)
and after firmware upgrade to FL000004.29 (the only version available at the manufacturer's website as of 2010-06-), leaving the Compression Rate at the default of Level 10 led to ZoneMinder not displaying the images.]
* Image Size to be 320 x 240,
then select the Submit command button.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraImageConfiguration.png]]
 
On this web page,
select the hyperlink to System Configuration,
and select the option to enable
"Direct public access to image by HTTP",
then select the Submit command button.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraSystemConfiguration.png]]
 

Aim your web browser to the appropriate URL resembling:
[http://169.254.225.221/jpg/image.jpg]
(supplying the IP address of your camera, and
possibly a different name for the image if you so chose)
to verify that you can see a still image in your web browser.
 
[[Image:CameraImage320x240.png]]
 
This is the view from the Intellinet camera as configured above of
a portion of an 8.5 inch by 11 inch piece of paper containing
a printed copy of
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Philips_Pattern_PM5644.png]
(see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_card] )
with the camera lens at a distance of roughly 8.5 inches from
the paper print, illuminated by indoor fluorescent lamps.

Note that this camera also supports an image resolutions of 160 by 120 pixels or 640 by 480 pixels. The image of this same sheet of paper from approximately the same distance with the same lens focus setting under the same lighting conditions does show more detail when the image resolution is 640 by 480 pixels.
 
[[Image:CameraImage640x480.png]]
 

Since successfully capturing an image stream of this resolution from a camera with ZoneMinder likely requires you to perform some additional configuration, let's first verify that your ZoneMinder configuration interacts correctly at this lower camera resolution. See [[#Step Up to VGA Resolution]] below for how to capture more information from this camera with ZoneMinder.

After you have installed all of the necessary software for ZoneMinder,
unless you have already configured all of the daemons to be started
each time the system is booted,
you will probably need to issue commands similar to:

<pre>
[root@who ~]# service mysqld start
Starting mysqld: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]# service httpd start
Starting httpd: [ OK ]
[root@209 ~]# setenforce 0 ## temporarily turn off SELinux enforcing mode
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder start
Starting zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>

Now you should be able to load the ZoneMinder web page,
[http://localhost/zm/]
where you can select the Add New Monitor command button.

On the General tab of the resulting page,
select Remote as the Source Type.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderAddNewMonitorGeneral.png]]
 
On the Source tab of this page,
select
* the Remote Protocol to be HTTP,
* the Remote Host Name to be the IP address of your camera,
* the Remote Host Path to be jpg/image.jpg,
* the Remote Image Colours to be 24 bit colour,
* the Capture Width (pixels) to be 320, and
* the Capture Height (pixels) to be 240.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderAddNewMonitorSource.png]]
 
Select the Save command button.

Now, as one returns to the ZoneMinder web page,
[http://localhost/zm/]
select the name of the camera you just defined.
 [[Image:ZoneMinderConsole.png]]
 

This will open a window containing the live video feed from the camera.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderFeed.png]]
 

===Step Up to VGA Resolution===

Once you tire of seeing small and fuzzily, you may wish to change the configuration to utilize the highest resolution offered by this camera.
<pre>
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder stop
Stopping zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
A necessary step is to return to the Image Configuration page of the camera's Administrator Menu, via a url resembling [http://169.254.225.221/main_configure.cgi]. On this web page, select:
* Image Size to be 640 x 480,
then select the Submit command button.



If you are an optimist, or wish to repeat or verify some debugging steps, you could go ahead and just change the expected image size within ZoneMinder to match. But it is likely that you will also need to change the configuration of your operating system to meet with success in this quest. Many previous forum postings here seem to ask "320 x 240 working, how do I make 640 x 480 work?" ... with no positive and constructive answers following. There is no device-specific issue with this particular camera model, but the frustrations are caused by a general issue with how larger images from any camera are processed by ZoneMinder.

If you desire to merely read the executive summary, you may skip ahead to the probable successful conclusion below the heading [[#Film at 11]]. If you are so clever as to encounter another failure mode, it is possible that returning here and reading the sections skipped may offer some diagnostic clues.

{''begin optional technical details''}

If you were persistent and merely:
* changed the expected image size within ZoneMinder to also be 640 by 480,
* restarted ZoneMinder, and
* selected this camera name on the ZoneMinder console,
your reward is likely to be a black square on your screen where you would expect to see the live video feed. Since you are persistent, you then read some troubleshooting tips in:
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshooting
and within the ZoneMinder console, selected Options, and on the Debug tab of the resulting dialog, selected the checkbox for
<pre>
EXTRA_DEBUG
</pre>
and set the value for
<pre>
EXTRA_DEBUG_LEVEL
</pre>
to e.g. 5 or greater. After saving these changes, and starting or restarting Zoneminder via:
<pre>
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder start
Starting zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
you seek some clues in the files with names in the pattern of /tmp/zm_debug.log.*. (If you list or sort these files by modification date, you can quickly see which few log files have contents affected by the recent (within the last few minutes) ZoneMinder activity.) You are likely to find lines similar to:
<pre>
06/15/10 19:59:16.166399 zms[6444].DB1-zm_monitor.cpp/345 [mem.size=36865192]
06/15/10 19:59:16.166751 zms[6444].ERR-zm_monitor.cpp/378 [Can't shmget, probably not enough shared memory space free: Invalid argument]
</pre>
One of the better places to read material that will assist in understanding this error message is:

http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#What_does_a_.27Can.27t_shmget:_Invalid_argument.27_error_in_my_logs_mean.3F_and_my_cameras_won.27t_display_video_at_higher_resolutions

Many operating system distributions and installed systems apparently use 32 MB = 32 * 1024 * 1024 = 33554432 as the default upper limit for the size of chunks of shared memory that will be offered in respose to requests. You can verify that this generalization is true for your system by comparing the output of this command when run on your system:
<pre>
[u@who ~]$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
33554432
[u@who ~]$
</pre>
As you may have already read in the FAQ entry cited above, or in your zm_debug.log file, ZoneMinder needs to use a chunk of shared memory of size:
ring buffer size x image width x image height x 3 (for 24 bit images) + a bit of overhead = 36 * 640 * 480 * 3 * 1.101 = 36865192
This just happens to be a few megabytes larger than the 32 MB default limit.

{''end optional technical details''}

===Film at 11===

To temporarily configure your system to allow for the successful allocation of the larger chunks of shared memory required by:
* ZoneMinder versions 1.23 and older, or
* ZoneMinder versions 1.24 and newer, unless the --enable--mmap=yes configuration switch has been selected
issue the following command (or possibly with an even larger value if you are planning ahead for using a camera with higher resolution soon):
<pre>
[root@who ~]# echo 37000000 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
Once you have verified correct operation (below), you will want to read the FAQ entry linked above for a reminder of how to have this configuration choice retained and implemented each time the Linux system starts. For this change to be effective, you need to start (or restart, if you were not paying attention above) the zoneminder service:
<pre>
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder start
Starting zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
Returning to the web page for the ZoneMinder console, [http://localhost/zm/], select the Source column of the line for this camera, e.g. 169.254.225.221, to open the monitor configuration dialog again. On the Source tab of this page, set:
* the Capture Width (pixels) to be 640, and
* the Capture Height (pixels) to be 480.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderChangeMonitor.png]]
 
Select the Save command button.
Returning to the ZoneMinder console web page, [http://localhost/zm/] select the name of the camera you just modified. You can view the live video feed from the camera at the 640 by 480 resolution in the resulting window.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderFeed640x480.png]]

Intellinet

2010-06-19T00:09:32Z

Jusfixit: /* Film at 11 */

This information relates to the Intellinet
Network IP Camera
Professional Series
Medel [sic, per cover of User's Guide] or Model 550710.
The external appearance of this camera is shown below.
 
[[Image:IntellinetProSeries550710.png|image of camera]]
 
[ from
[http://www.intellinet-network.com/en-US/products/3358-pro-series-network-camera] ]

Note that the plastic case of this camera gets warm
(e.g. 22 degree F elevation above ambient)
after it has been powered on for a while.

Aim your web browser at the address you selected for your camera,
and supply the login credentials for an Administrator of your camera.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraHomepage.png]]
 
The manufacturer's default administrator Username is "admin"
with a Password of "admin" (per page 31 of User's Guide).

On the resulting web page,
scroll down to the bottom to select the hyperlink to the Administrator Menu.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraMain.png]]
 
[ Note that in the large grey central section of this browser window,
if one were using a browser that supported ActiveX one would see
the real-time live video feed from the camera.
However, even when one selects the viewing program option
shown on the previous screen for
"Java Applet for Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera
and other browsers",
the video feed is ''not'' displayed on this page by at least Firefox 3.6.3,
whether under Windows (e.g. XP) or Linux (Fedora).
]

On the resulting web page,
select the hyperlink to Image Configuration.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraAdmin.png]]
 
On the resulting web page,
select
* Compression Rate to be Level 1
[Under both firmware levels of FL000004.0 (as this unit was shipped)
and after firmware upgrade to FL000004.29 (the only version available at the manufacturer's website as of 2010-06-), leaving the Compression Rate at the default of Level 10 led to ZoneMinder not displaying the images.]
* Image Size to be 320 x 240,
then select the Submit command button.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraImageConfiguration.png]]
 
On this web page,
select the hyperlink to System Configuration,
and select the option to enable
"Direct public access to image by HTTP",
then select the Submit command button.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraSystemConfiguration.png]]
 

Aim your web browser to the appropriate URL resembling:
[http://169.254.225.221/jpg/image.jpg]
(supplying the IP address of your camera, and
possibly a different name for the image if you so chose)
to verify that you can see a still image in your web browser.
 
[[Image:CameraImage320x240.png]]
 
This is the view from the Intellinet camera as configured above of
a portion of an 8.5 inch by 11 inch piece of paper containing
a printed copy of
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Philips_Pattern_PM5644.png]
(see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_card] )
with the camera lens at a distance of roughly 8.5 inches from
the paper print, illuminated by indoor fluorescent lamps.

Note that this camera also supports an image resolutions of 160 by 120 pixels or 640 by 480 pixels. The image of this same sheet of paper from approximately the same distance with the same lens focus setting under the same lighting conditions does show more detail when the image resolution is 640 by 480 pixels.
 
[[Image:CameraImage640x480.png]]
 

Since successfully capturing an image stream of this resolution from a camera with ZoneMinder likely requires you to perform some additional configuration, let's first verify that your ZoneMinder configuration interacts correctly at this lower camera resolution. See [[Step Up to VGA Resolution]] below for how to capture more information from this camera with ZoneMinder.

After you have installed all of the necessary software for ZoneMinder,
unless you have already configured all of the daemons to be started
each time the system is booted,
you will probably need to issue commands similar to:

<pre>
[root@who ~]# service mysqld start
Starting mysqld: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]# service httpd start
Starting httpd: [ OK ]
[root@209 ~]# setenforce 0 ## temporarily turn off SELinux enforcing mode
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder start
Starting zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>

Now you should be able to load the ZoneMinder web page,
[http://localhost/zm/]
where you can select the Add New Monitor command button.

On the General tab of the resulting page,
select Remote as the Source Type.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderAddNewMonitorGeneral.png]]
 
On the Source tab of this page,
select
* the Remote Protocol to be HTTP,
* the Remote Host Name to be the IP address of your camera,
* the Remote Host Path to be jpg/image.jpg,
* the Remote Image Colours to be 24 bit colour,
* the Capture Width (pixels) to be 320, and
* the Capture Height (pixels) to be 240.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderAddNewMonitorSource.png]]
 
Select the Save command button.

Now, as one returns to the ZoneMinder web page,
[http://localhost/zm/]
select the name of the camera you just defined.
 [[Image:ZoneMinderConsole.png]]
 

This will open a window containing the live video feed from the camera.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderFeed.png]]
 

===Step Up to VGA Resolution===

Once you tire of seeing small and fuzzily, you may wish to change the configuration to utilize the highest resolution offered by this camera.
<pre>
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder stop
Stopping zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
A necessary step is to return to the Image Configuration page of the camera's Administrator Menu, via a url resembling [http://169.254.225.221/main_configure.cgi]. On this web page, select:
* Image Size to be 640 x 480,
then select the Submit command button.



If you are an optimist, or wish to repeat or verify some debugging steps, you could go ahead and just change the expected image size within ZoneMinder to match. But it is likely that you will also need to change the configuration of your operating system to meet with success in this quest. Many previous forum postings here seem to ask "320 x 240 working, how do I make 640 x 480 work?" ... with no positive and constructive answers following. There is no device-specific issue with this particular camera model, but the frustrations are caused by a general issue with how larger images from any camera are processed by ZoneMinder.

If you desire to merely read the executive summary, you may skip ahead to the probable successful conclusion below the heading [[Film at 11]]. If you are so clever as to encounter another failure mode, it is possible that returning here and reading the sections skipped may offer some diagnostic clues.

{''begin optional technical details''}

If you were persistent and merely:
* changed the expected image size within ZoneMinder to also be 640 by 480,
* restarted ZoneMinder, and
* selected this camera name on the ZoneMinder console,
your reward is likely to be a black square on your screen where you would expect to see the live video feed. Since you are persistent, you then read some troubleshooting tips in:
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshooting
and within the ZoneMinder console, selected Options, and on the Debug tab of the resulting dialog, selected the checkbox for
<pre>
EXTRA_DEBUG
</pre>
and set the value for
<pre>
EXTRA_DEBUG_LEVEL
</pre>
to e.g. 5 or greater. After saving these changes, and starting or restarting Zoneminder via:
<pre>
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder start
Starting zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
you seek some clues in the files with names in the pattern of /tmp/zm_debug.log.*. (If you list or sort these files by modification date, you can quickly see which few log files have contents affected by the recent (within the last few minutes) ZoneMinder activity.) You are likely to find lines similar to:
<pre>
06/15/10 19:59:16.166399 zms[6444].DB1-zm_monitor.cpp/345 [mem.size=36865192]
06/15/10 19:59:16.166751 zms[6444].ERR-zm_monitor.cpp/378 [Can't shmget, probably not enough shared memory space free: Invalid argument]
</pre>
One of the better places to read material that will assist in understanding this error message is:

http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#What_does_a_.27Can.27t_shmget:_Invalid_argument.27_error_in_my_logs_mean.3F_and_my_cameras_won.27t_display_video_at_higher_resolutions

Many operating system distributions and installed systems apparently use 32 MB = 32 * 1024 * 1024 = 33554432 as the default upper limit for the size of chunks of shared memory that will be offered in respose to requests. You can verify that this generalization is true for your system by comparing the output of this command when run on your system:
<pre>
[u@who ~]$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
33554432
[u@who ~]$
</pre>
As you may have already read in the FAQ entry cited above, or in your zm_debug.log file, ZoneMinder needs to use a chunk of shared memory of size:
ring buffer size x image width x image height x 3 (for 24 bit images) + a bit of overhead = 36 * 640 * 480 * 3 * 1.101 = 36865192
This just happens to be a few megabytes larger than the 32 MB default limit.

{''end optional technical details''}

<a name="film"></a>
===Film at 11===

To temporarily configure your system to allow for the successful allocation of the larger chunks of shared memory required by:
* ZoneMinder versions 1.23 and older, or
* ZoneMinder versions 1.24 and newer, unless the --enable--mmap=yes configuration switch has been selected
issue the following command (or possibly with an even larger value if you are planning ahead for using a camera with higher resolution soon):
<pre>
[root@who ~]# echo 37000000 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
Once you have verified correct operation (below), you will want to read the FAQ entry linked above for a reminder of how to have this configuration choice retained and implemented each time the Linux system starts. For this change to be effective, you need to start (or restart, if you were not paying attention above) the zoneminder service:
<pre>
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder start
Starting zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
Returning to the web page for the ZoneMinder console, [http://localhost/zm/], select the Source column of the line for this camera, e.g. 169.254.225.221, to open the monitor configuration dialog again. On the Source tab of this page, set:
* the Capture Width (pixels) to be 640, and
* the Capture Height (pixels) to be 480.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderChangeMonitor.png]]
 
Select the Save command button.
Returning to the ZoneMinder console web page, [http://localhost/zm/] select the name of the camera you just modified. You can view the live video feed from the camera at the 640 by 480 resolution in the resulting window.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderFeed640x480.png]]

Intellinet

2010-06-19T00:05:27Z

Jusfixit: Show how to utilize the 640 x 480 resolution of this camera with ZoneMinder.

This information relates to the Intellinet
Network IP Camera
Professional Series
Medel [sic, per cover of User's Guide] or Model 550710.
The external appearance of this camera is shown below.
 
[[Image:IntellinetProSeries550710.png|image of camera]]
 
[ from
[http://www.intellinet-network.com/en-US/products/3358-pro-series-network-camera] ]

Note that the plastic case of this camera gets warm
(e.g. 22 degree F elevation above ambient)
after it has been powered on for a while.

Aim your web browser at the address you selected for your camera,
and supply the login credentials for an Administrator of your camera.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraHomepage.png]]
 
The manufacturer's default administrator Username is "admin"
with a Password of "admin" (per page 31 of User's Guide).

On the resulting web page,
scroll down to the bottom to select the hyperlink to the Administrator Menu.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraMain.png]]
 
[ Note that in the large grey central section of this browser window,
if one were using a browser that supported ActiveX one would see
the real-time live video feed from the camera.
However, even when one selects the viewing program option
shown on the previous screen for
"Java Applet for Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera
and other browsers",
the video feed is ''not'' displayed on this page by at least Firefox 3.6.3,
whether under Windows (e.g. XP) or Linux (Fedora).
]

On the resulting web page,
select the hyperlink to Image Configuration.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraAdmin.png]]
 
On the resulting web page,
select
* Compression Rate to be Level 1
[Under both firmware levels of FL000004.0 (as this unit was shipped)
and after firmware upgrade to FL000004.29 (the only version available at the manufacturer's website as of 2010-06-), leaving the Compression Rate at the default of Level 10 led to ZoneMinder not displaying the images.]
* Image Size to be 320 x 240,
then select the Submit command button.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraImageConfiguration.png]]
 
On this web page,
select the hyperlink to System Configuration,
and select the option to enable
"Direct public access to image by HTTP",
then select the Submit command button.
 
[[Image:IntellinetIPCameraSystemConfiguration.png]]
 

Aim your web browser to the appropriate URL resembling:
[http://169.254.225.221/jpg/image.jpg]
(supplying the IP address of your camera, and
possibly a different name for the image if you so chose)
to verify that you can see a still image in your web browser.
 
[[Image:CameraImage320x240.png]]
 
This is the view from the Intellinet camera as configured above of
a portion of an 8.5 inch by 11 inch piece of paper containing
a printed copy of
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Philips_Pattern_PM5644.png]
(see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_card] )
with the camera lens at a distance of roughly 8.5 inches from
the paper print, illuminated by indoor fluorescent lamps.

Note that this camera also supports an image resolutions of 160 by 120 pixels or 640 by 480 pixels. The image of this same sheet of paper from approximately the same distance with the same lens focus setting under the same lighting conditions does show more detail when the image resolution is 640 by 480 pixels.
 
[[Image:CameraImage640x480.png]]
 

Since successfully capturing an image stream of this resolution from a camera with ZoneMinder likely requires you to perform some additional configuration, let's first verify that your ZoneMinder configuration interacts correctly at this lower camera resolution. See [[Step Up to VGA Resolution]] below for how to capture more information from this camera with ZoneMinder.

After you have installed all of the necessary software for ZoneMinder,
unless you have already configured all of the daemons to be started
each time the system is booted,
you will probably need to issue commands similar to:

<pre>
[root@who ~]# service mysqld start
Starting mysqld: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]# service httpd start
Starting httpd: [ OK ]
[root@209 ~]# setenforce 0 ## temporarily turn off SELinux enforcing mode
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder start
Starting zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>

Now you should be able to load the ZoneMinder web page,
[http://localhost/zm/]
where you can select the Add New Monitor command button.

On the General tab of the resulting page,
select Remote as the Source Type.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderAddNewMonitorGeneral.png]]
 
On the Source tab of this page,
select
* the Remote Protocol to be HTTP,
* the Remote Host Name to be the IP address of your camera,
* the Remote Host Path to be jpg/image.jpg,
* the Remote Image Colours to be 24 bit colour,
* the Capture Width (pixels) to be 320, and
* the Capture Height (pixels) to be 240.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderAddNewMonitorSource.png]]
 
Select the Save command button.

Now, as one returns to the ZoneMinder web page,
[http://localhost/zm/]
select the name of the camera you just defined.
 [[Image:ZoneMinderConsole.png]]
 

This will open a window containing the live video feed from the camera.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderFeed.png]]
 

===Step Up to VGA Resolution===

Once you tire of seeing small and fuzzily, you may wish to change the configuration to utilize the highest resolution offered by this camera.
<pre>
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder stop
Stopping zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
A necessary step is to return to the Image Configuration page of the camera's Administrator Menu, via a url resembling [http://169.254.225.221/main_configure.cgi]. On this web page, select:
* Image Size to be 640 x 480,
then select the Submit command button.



If you are an optimist, or wish to repeat or verify some debugging steps, you could go ahead and just change the expected image size within ZoneMinder to match. But it is likely that you will also need to change the configuration of your operating system to meet with success in this quest. Many previous forum postings here seem to ask "320 x 240 working, how do I make 640 x 480 work?" ... with no positive and constructive answers following. There is no device-specific issue with this particular camera model, but the frustrations are caused by a general issue with how larger images from any camera are processed by ZoneMinder.

If you desire to merely read the executive summary, you may skip ahead to the probable successful conclusion below the heading [[Film at 11]]. If you are so clever as to encounter another failure mode, it is possible that returning here and reading the sections skipped may offer some diagnostic clues.

{''begin optional technical details''}

If you were persistent and merely:
* changed the expected image size within ZoneMinder to also be 640 by 480,
* restarted ZoneMinder, and
* selected this camera name on the ZoneMinder console,
your reward is likely to be a black square on your screen where you would expect to see the live video feed. Since you are persistent, you then read some troubleshooting tips in:
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshooting
and within the ZoneMinder console, selected Options, and on the Debug tab of the resulting dialog, selected the checkbox for
<pre>
EXTRA_DEBUG
</pre>
and set the value for
<pre>
EXTRA_DEBUG_LEVEL
</pre>
to e.g. 5 or greater. After saving these changes, and starting or restarting Zoneminder via:
<pre>
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder start
Starting zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
you seek some clues in the files with names in the pattern of /tmp/zm_debug.log.*. (If you list or sort these files by modification date, you can quickly see which few log files have contents affected by the recent (within the last few minutes) ZoneMinder activity.) You are likely to find lines similar to:
<pre>
06/15/10 19:59:16.166399 zms[6444].DB1-zm_monitor.cpp/345 [mem.size=36865192]
06/15/10 19:59:16.166751 zms[6444].ERR-zm_monitor.cpp/378 [Can't shmget, probably not enough shared memory space free: Invalid argument]
</pre>
One of the better places to read material that will assist in understanding this error message is:

http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#What_does_a_.27Can.27t_shmget:_Invalid_argument.27_error_in_my_logs_mean.3F_and_my_cameras_won.27t_display_video_at_higher_resolutions

Many operating system distributions and installed systems apparently use 32 MB = 32 * 1024 * 1024 = 33554432 as the default upper limit for the size of chunks of shared memory that will be offered in respose to requests. You can verify that this generalization is true for your system by comparing the output of this command when run on your system:
<pre>
[u@who ~]$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
33554432
[u@who ~]$
</pre>
As you may have already read in the FAQ entry cited above, or in your zm_debug.log file, ZoneMinder needs to use a chunk of shared memory of size:
ring buffer size x image width x image height x 3 (for 24 bit images) + a bit of overhead = 36 * 640 * 480 * 3 * 1.101 = 36865192
This just happens to be a few megabytes larger than the 32 MB default limit.

{''end optional technical details''}

===Film at 11===

To temporarily configure your system to allow for the successful allocation of the larger chunks of shared memory required by:
* ZoneMinder versions 1.23 and older, or
* ZoneMinder versions 1.24 and newer, unless the --enable--mmap=yes configuration switch has been selected
issue the following command (or possibly with an even larger value if you are planning ahead for using a camera with higher resolution soon):
<pre>
[root@who ~]# echo 37000000 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
Once you have verified correct operation (below), you will want to read the FAQ entry linked above for a reminder of how to have this configuration choice retained and implemented each time the Linux system starts. For this change to be effective, you need to start (or restart, if you were not paying attention above) the zoneminder service:
<pre>
[root@who ~]# service zoneminder start
Starting zoneminder: [ OK ]
[root@who ~]#
</pre>
Returning to the web page for the ZoneMinder console, [http://localhost/zm/], select the Source column of the line for this camera, e.g. 169.254.225.221, to open the monitor configuration dialog again. On the Source tab of this page, set:
* the Capture Width (pixels) to be 640, and
* the Capture Height (pixels) to be 480.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderChangeMonitor.png]]
 
Select the Save command button.
Returning to the ZoneMinder console web page, [http://localhost/zm/] select the name of the camera you just modified. You can view the live video feed from the camera at the 640 by 480 resolution in the resulting window.
 
[[Image:ZoneMinderFeed640x480.png]]

File:ZoneMinderFeed640x480.png

2010-06-18T23:54:25Z

Jusfixit: Image capture of screen dialog.

Image capture of screen dialog.

File:ZoneMinderChangeMonitor.png

2010-06-18T23:53:03Z

Jusfixit: Image capture of screen dialog.

Image capture of screen dialog.

Intellinet

2010-06-08T01:09:09Z

Jusfixit:

File:ZoneMinderFeed.png

2010-06-08T01:07:04Z

Jusfixit:

File:ZoneMinderConsole.png

2010-06-08T00:27:08Z

Jusfixit:

File:ZoneMinderAddNewMonitorSource.png

2010-06-08T00:25:26Z

Jusfixit:

File:ZoneMinderAddNewMonitorGeneral.png

2010-06-08T00:23:58Z

Jusfixit:

File:CameraImage640x480.png

2010-06-08T00:21:48Z

Jusfixit:

File:CameraImage320x240.png

2010-06-08T00:19:36Z

Jusfixit:

File:IntellinetIPCameraSystemConfiguration.png

2010-06-08T00:18:06Z

Jusfixit:

File:IntellinetIPCameraAdmin.png

2010-06-08T00:15:52Z

Jusfixit:

File:IntellinetIPCameraImageConfiguration.png

2010-06-08T00:14:17Z

Jusfixit:

File:IntellinetIPCameraMain.png

2010-06-08T00:12:23Z

Jusfixit:

File:IntellinetIPCameraHomepage.png

2010-06-08T00:10:17Z

Jusfixit:

File:IntellinetProSeries550710.png

2010-06-08T00:06:42Z

Jusfixit: