ZoneMinder Forums

After 2 years of blissful operation which included an update, there was a power cut on Sunday and now there are no pictures any more.
I am running v1.24.2 on an ubuntu box 10.04 LTS.
I have 4 cameras connected and I know that it is recording quite happily:
If I click on e.g. one of the "Zone" rows (3rd column from the right of the main panel) then up comes the car park, or the key rack, with trigger zone all correct. If I click on the one of the "Events" rows a table comes up as it has always done with a list of the last 25 or so events, including the thumbnails. If I click on a thumbnail, no problem, up it comes.
But if I click on one of the event numbers on the left of that same table, the box appears with all the buttons and info, but no picture.
If I click on e.g. car park in the main panel, same thing, no picture.
It's been so long since I installed it, I don't think I have the necessary balls to do it again. Julie has said if I don't fix it by tomorrow, she's buying one of these new fangled, expensive hdd recorders.
Help!!
What info would you need to diagnose this and what commands would I need to type in to get whatever info you need?
Cheers!

My ZM system was recently turned off rather than shutdown properly, and everything stopped working. I found I had to reset the mysql tables to get it going again. I assume they became corrupted.

Theres a simple command to do this: sudo mysql -u root -p < /usr/share/zoneminder/db/zm_create.sql

However! This also deleted all my camera profiles, so make sure you write down all the settings before doing this. You also need to know the root password for MYSQL if you set one...

Thank you very much! it sort of worked.
Sort of, in that I can now get the individual cameras up and see the events.
The only bit that doesn't work is the "Cycle" and "Montage", which is a bit wierd...
I also notice that the pictures judder up and down just a little bit, so obviously I didn't write down the original settings.

Still jumps and breaks up on all 4 images.
I'm at my wits end with this.

I hate to say it, but its sometimes easier to reinstall the OS and zoneminder from scratch rather than try to save it. Simply removing and reinstalling hasnt worked for me because so much is left behind when using the remove command.

Of course, there could be hardware issues as well. Running a few passes with memtest86+ will tell you if the ram and over-all system is ok. And you really should read the hard drive's SMART data with gnome-disk-util or smartctl to see if the drive is sound. You need to look for reallocated sectors, pending sectors, and offline uncorrectable. There's no need to run any tests to read the data.

To install, I believe I used this guide:

"http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... x)_Desktop"

That worked even for Ubuntu version 11.10.

Of course, you may use a different OS than I do...

I'm not convinced it's a drive problem, I've put files on my website to show the problem
http://www.braffertonguesthouse.co.uk/Album/eventa.mpeg Key Rack
http://www.braffertonguesthouse.co.uk/Album/eventb.mpeg Car Park
http://www.braffertonguesthouse.co.uk/Album/eventc.mpeg Ktchen back yard
and reloading is out of the question, as I don't have many days left.
So I think it's a trip to makros to get that hdd surveillance kit after all.

If you open a camera directly in a browser there's no issues?

Pick a camera and post the name and model and the setup for it in the ZM console...

The cameras are more than 5 years old and are made by Swann with a CE number N3960

General:
Name Key Rack
Source Type Local
Function Modect
Enabled Yes
Linked Monitors Car Park, Kitchen, Workshop
Maximum FPS 5.00
Alarm Maximum FPS 5.00
Reference Image Blend %ge 7
Triggers none available

Source:
Device Path /dev/video0
Capture Method Video for Linux 2
Device Channel 0 (1 is the car park, 2 is the kitchen and 3 is the workshop)
Device Format PAL
Capture Palette RGB565
Capture Width (pixels) 320
Capture Height (pixels) 240
Preserve Aspect Ratio blank
Orientation normal

Buffers:
Image Buffer Size (frames) 40
Warmup Frames 25
Pre Event Image Count 10
Post Event Image Count 10
Stream Replay Image Buffer 1000
Alarm Frame Count 3

Misc:
Event Prefix Event-
Section length 600
Frame Skip 0
FPS Report Interval 1000
Default View Events
Default Rate Real
Default Scale Actual
Signal Check Colour #0100BE
Web Colour Red

There is attached a screen shot of the montage.

Ah, you have a capture card in there. Did that involve the installation of drivers, or does ZM support it without drivers?

It makes sense living where you live to use PAL, but is there any chance the cams are NTSC? It just that it seems something is not syncing up..

What happens if you delete the value '5' from the Maximum FPS and Alarm Maximum FPS? If I set those values, I am unable to capture are the rate my cams are capable of capturing, and ZM has issues. I just leave them blank.

The card has been running for about eight years now, 3 of them in Linux.
The card is a BT878 which again has been running fine and I do believe that they were set to PAL originally.
It was worth a shot removing the FPS's, but no change. Is there anywhere else in the options table where there is a FPS that could be set?

If I play around with the pixel settings, things go haywire quite quick, e.g. changing to 300 x 240 and only the first picture is good, the rest are all over the place.

Maybe the settings have to be exactly right, but if so, what would be the settings for a single BT878 chip controlling 4 cameras?

4 cameras on one chip = all settings must match exactly! Make sure that the options::config::V4L_MULTI_BUFFER is unchecked and that the options::config::CAPTURES_PER_FRAME is at a value of 2.

Fingers crossed, that seems to have done the trick bb99.
Thanks both of you for your help.
This will probably be my last post on this forum as I am departing the guest house and leaving her and her new boyfriend to it.
Thanks everyone for their help in the past and I wish you all a happy and prosperous future.
All the best and Merry Christmas.

Alistair Fitchie,
ex partner, Brafferton Guest House.

Fitch wrote:Fingers crossed, that seems to have done the trick bb99.
Thanks both of you for your help.
This will probably be my last post on this forum as I am departing the guest house and leaving her and her new boyfriend to it.
Thanks everyone for their help in the past and I wish you all a happy and prosperous future.
All the best and Merry Christmas.

Alistair Fitchie,
ex partner, Brafferton Guest House.

wow so is it possible to install v1.24.2 using apt-get on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS? I though that flat out does not work no matter what hence the solution is hopeless if one truly wants a predictable install using the LTS CD and apt-get?

How did you do it? I know it doesn't work if one follows the manuals so there must be a trick, no?