Cameras not showing live stream until tweaked

Discussions related to the 1.36.x series of ZoneMinder
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onetoomany
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2022 11:14 am

Cameras not showing live stream until tweaked

Post by onetoomany »

When I log in I have a null image when viewing the cameras. The camearas are capturing (e.g. "Rear Garden: 288200 - Capturing at 19.95 fps, capturing bandwidth 496977bytes/sec Analysing at 3.99 fps"), but nothing shows in the live view (see attached image, and I get the same when I select a single camera). I can watch the historical recordings from the time periods when the cameras appeared not to be working.

If I tweak a setting on just one of the cameras, then ALL the cameras start to show.

Cameras are all HIKVision DS-2CD2032-I.
Attachments
cameras.jpg
cameras.jpg (38.8 KiB) Viewed 644 times
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iconnor
Posts: 2879
Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2010 1:43 am
Location: Toronto
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Re: Cameras not showing live stream until tweaked

Post by iconnor »

What you describe would normally just be an apache cgi config problem that we've seen a million times.

Changing a camera setting shouldnt' affect it though, so that weird.

As always, start by checking your logs.
onetoomany
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2022 11:14 am

Re: Cameras not showing live stream until tweaked

Post by onetoomany »

As far as I can tell, I followed the install instructions (using your ppa:iconnor/zoneminder). New install on clean Ubuntu; since then, I've also installed Drupal.

Right now, I've got two computers looking at my site. One with a working live stream, the other with the null image.
cameras2.jpg
cameras2.jpg (48.22 KiB) Viewed 620 times
My config file is as per original:

Code: Select all

# Remember to enable cgi mod (i.e. "a2enmod cgi").
ScriptAlias /zm/cgi-bin "/usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin"
<Directory "/usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin">
    Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>
(with the files in /usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin)

... and then after half an hour the second computer showed a live stream. (not sure if I fiddled with anything in the meantime or not though)

Starting again with a fresh browser, I can log in fine, but again no live stream. In the logs, I get:

Code: Select all

Unable to authenticate user from http://192.168.1.4/zm/?view=montage
and

Code: Select all

Socket /run/zm/zms-250235s.sock does not exist. This file is created by zms, and since it does not exist, either zms did not run, or zms exited early. Please check your zms logs and ensure that CGI is enabled in apache and check that the PATH_ZMS is set correctly. Make sure that ZM is actually recording. If you are trying to view a live stream and the capture process (zmc) is not running then zms will exit. Please go to http://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html#why-can-t-i-see-streamed-images-when-i-can-see-stills-in-the-zone-window-etc for more information.
(I can't see any instructions in the website that are out of kilter with my install)
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iconnor
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Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2010 1:43 am
Location: Toronto
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Re: Cameras not showing live stream until tweaked

Post by iconnor »

I'm wondering if it is a timezone issue. System time zone has to be the same as set in Options->System->TimeZone. And After you change the system time zone, you have to restart mysql so it picks it up.
onetoomany
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2022 11:14 am

Re: Cameras not showing live stream until tweaked

Post by onetoomany »

I don't think I had set my timezone on the server, but I had in ZoneMinder - so I think you are onto something here. Set TZ on the server and in php.ini; MySQL is picking up system time. Initial testing on a fresh browser suggests that this is the fix.

Many thanks!

EDIT: I can confirm that setting the timezone was the fix.
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