Arch Linux User Repository

Hey, thanks for this @Nocifer. It's super hacky (by your own admission), but it installed without issue. Maiming the default nginx config and auto-enabling the systemd unit are the bits that would probably normally scare me, but in this case it's on a machine I don't care about.

@whata-mess

Is this with the updated PKGBUILD I've posted a few comments below, or with the current "official" PKGBUILD?

If the former, then these issues might have to do with you trying to perform the upgrade on an old and largely incompatible ZoneMinder installation (too many things have changed in my PKGBUILD, from different perl modules to the switching out of Apache in favor of Nginx). Do a clean install and see if that fixes your issues. For what it's worth, so far on a current Arch installation it's been running almost flawlessly, and it builds fine without any need for "symbolic links to old libs" or blacklisting packages or any such wizardry.

If the latter, then do use my PKGBUILD, but once again as a precaution try to do a clean install and NOT an upgrade. Less potential headaches that way.

Jesus this thing sucks! Every time I update it breaks, I have so many symbolic links to old libs and blacklisted package updates and it still breaks every time I update.

I have no idea what is wrong with this time

Sep 28 12:44:06 arch zmwatch[1541]: ERR [Can't open memory map file '/dev/shm/zm.mmap.1': Permission denied] Sep 28 12:44:06 arch zmwatch[1541]: INF [Restarting capture daemon for Monitor-1, shared data not valid] Sep 28 12:44:06 arch zmdc[952]: INF ['zmc -m 1' starting at 18/09/28 12:44:06, pid = 3240] Sep 28 12:44:06 arch zmdc[3240]: INF ['zmc -m 1' started at 18/09/28 12:44:06] Sep 28 12:44:06 arch zmdc[952]: ERR ['zmc -m 1' exited abnormally, exit status 127] Sep 28 12:44:16 arch zmwatch[1541]: ERR [Can't open memory map file '/dev/shm/zm.mmap.1': Permission denied] Sep 28 12:44:16 arch zmwatch[1541]: INF [Restarting capture daemon for Monitor-1, shared data not valid] Sep 28 12:44:16 arch zmdc[3251]: INF ['zmc -m 1' started at 18/09/28 12:44:16] Sep 28 12:44:16 arch zmdc[952]: INF ['zmc -m 1' starting at 18/09/28 12:44:16, pid = 3251] Sep 28 12:44:16 arch zmdc[952]: ERR ['zmc -m 1' exited abnormally, exit status 127]

@alanking

• I should have mentioned that when I said libvlc, I really meant the vlc package (which is already listed as an optional dependency in my PKGBUILD). Arch does not officially provide separate packages for the VLC GUI and its internal mechanics, like some other distros do, and I can't be sure if the two libvlc packages in the AUR are good or not (if you say you already tried them and ZoneMinder kept complaining, well... there you have it). So if you want to experiment with the libvlc backend you'll have to install the VLC player itself, along with all its bells and whistles.

• But I think I found a much better solution: there is an AUR package called ffmpeg-full which provides an ffmpeg build with every possible feature enabled, which means that yes, it also includes libavresample (and likely will continue to do so in the future - I of course wouldn't hold my breath, since libavresample has been flagged as deprecated in upstream, but you can at least buy yourself some time until ZoneMinder hopefully updates itself to not require that library). So you can install that package instead of the official ffmpeg and be done with it.

As for your camera issues, the first thing you should do is check the various logs (/var/log/zoneminder/*.log and the systemd journal, or the 'Logs' screen from within ZoneMinder itself) and see if there are any errors reported. I also encountered some issues, as I mentioned in my first comment, which in my case had mostly to do with the tracking module (zmtrack.pl) constantly crashing, something I found out about by reading the logs. These kinds of issues are most probably incompatibility issues with old(ish) or cheap(ish) cameras, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about ZoneMinder to say for certain.

EDIT: Something just occurred to me. Since you installed zoneminder while on ffmpeg 4.0.2, which includes libavresample, then, as it is a library dependency zoneminder is built against, you will have to rebuild zoneminder so it knows the library is no longer available. Only updating ffmpeg to 4.0.3, which silently removes libavresample, would result in the current situation: zoneminder thinking libavresample is there, trying to use it, and failing.

The same goes for libvlc as well - did you rebuild zoneminder after installing it? If not, then it could be that the libvlc packages in the AUR are perfectly working, and you would still have a problem: zoneminder only knows what libraries were available during install time, so any new or changed requirements would need a rebuild. Which in a perfect world would translate in this package getting a release number bump and getting rebuilt automatically, something I would do myself if I were the package maintainer but alas, I'm not (yet).

So, long story short, try rebuilding zoneminder AFTER updating ffmpeg to 4.0.3 and/or installing either libvlc or vlc, and see if that resolves your issues.

EDIT 2: Just ran a test with libvlc installed, and zoneminder failed to build, so that's a no-go. Judging by the state of that package (wrong version numbers, unused variables, missing sources, etc) I wouldn't recommend installing it even if it had somehow worked. But anyway, the good news is that everything worked a-okay with the official vlc package installed, so previous advice is still relevant: install either vlc or preferably ffmpeg-full, then rebuild zoneminder.

Hi Nocifer, Thanks for the time taken to reply. Yes it is a problem with AVResample that broke ffmpeg. I can not for the life of me get libvlc working. I installed libvlc from the AUR but zoneminder is saying i have to install required libraries to use libvlc, even after i have it installed. the problems i get a sometimes the cameras just stop responding when switching through them or just not allowing recordings to play back. Never had that issue on the previous build of zm. I do think its more likely to be a zm issue then an issue with your build. In the mean time i guess i can just freeze the build of ffmpeg i have installed to keep AAVResample installed.

@alanking

Would you care to elaborate on what kind of "a few problems here or there" you've been having? I'd like to fix them if I can (and if they're due to faulty packaging), that's the whole point of my updating this ancient PKGBUILD :)

Regarding ffmpeg 4.0.2-3: I just rebuilt and reinstalled zoneminder and it worked as before, without any errors or hick-ups. The only difference I could spot is at the end of CMake's configuration step, where in the "Optional libraries not found" list there is a new "AVResample" item added. I did a little digging though and I found that the entire reason for Arch updating the ffmpeg package was to drop support for libavresample. See here: https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/commit/trunk?h=packages/ffmpeg&id=a0f9a95b804d34209c88122fe9941179ad584262

So this is probably our culprit. Seeing as it is designated "optional" in ZoneMinder's CMake file, it seems like it isn't an absolutely required component. So, if your setup is broken, I guess that unknowingly to you or not your camera(s) have been making use of video resampling through ffmpeg.

If that's what you really want or need (i.e. for some reason your camera(s) need that specific resampling library to work properly - which I doubt) then maybe you could consider using libvlc instead of ffmpeg, as it's there for precisely that reason - as an optional alternative in case ffmpeg doesn't cover your needs.

If that isn't the case, then maybe you could try fiddling with your camera(s)'s settings and find a way to either change the resampling method or disable the resampling altogether. Sorry for being so vague but as I said, I'm not exactly an expert on ZoneMinder :P

appreciate your work Nocifer, works pretty well mostly. I am having a few problems here or there but overall it is mostly working... just wanted to warn users the ffmpeg 1:4.0.2-3 update yesterday broke zm. so i needed to downgrade.

After almost a year of eagerly waiting for this package to be updated, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Some much needed observations:

• This package is an effing mess.
• ZoneMinder itself is an effing mess.
• ZoneMinder's documentation is an even worse effing mess (I'm talking instructions conflicting with other instructions within the same file, and both of them being outdated or just plain wrong).

This is really not intended as bashing to ZoneMinder's developers or to the previous and current (?) maintainers of this package, it's just something I had to get out of my chest. Developers, please keep up the good work!

So, first the good news:

• ZoneMinder is updated to its latest version 1.32 and builds and runs on a current Arch installation. No more downgrading, no more hacking, no more cursing.
• It now uses Nginx instead of Apache (yeah, I know that some people may want it without hardcoded dependencies on either an HTTP server or a database server, but first things first - first we get it working, then we can think about proper deployment).
• As far as I can tell everything works properly, meaning I have successfully added a camera and viewed its live feed, recorded motion events, etc. Oh, and the API works as well (tested with both official instructions and zmNinja).
• It installs ready to run out of the box, i.e. the database is created automatically and Nginx, PHP-FPM et al are also configured automatically.

Now, the not-so-good news:

• I'm not a Perl coder, so I can't properly debug missing or buggy modules etc besides what I can gleam from the various error logs. There are some errors here and there there that mostly have to do with missing memory maps, which I believe have more to do with the software itself rather than the packaging. But, I may be wrong.
• I have never used ZoneMinder before, so I can't really tell if everything is really working properly.
• I only have access to an old-ish, cheap-ish Foscam IP camera, which means that I can't easily tell whether bad and/or buggy performance is my fault, ZoneMinder's fault or the camera's fault.

What this comes down to is: people with experience on using ZoneMinder, please check these errors and see if you can tell whether they're errors that should be fixed on my side or common bugs that upstream should/will take care of. Also, assume that I have made errors in packaging and/or forgotten a few dependencies, so please check every nook and corner to ensure that nothing is blatantly broken!

And finally the bad news:

• In order to make ZoneMinder run automagically I had to resort to a few hacks like messing with the main Nginx configuration file without checking whether its contents have been changed from the default or not (i.e. whether this is a fresh install or it was already installed). In the same vein there should be a few other sanity checks in the script, like checking whether there is already a previous ZoneMinder database in place and upgrading it instead of trying to create it (and probably failing miserably). Suffice to say that this PKGBUILD may just make your PC go boom or do other bad things, so I recommend checking it out extensively before you use it. Caveat emptor. You have been warned.

Without further ado:

EDIT: Links removed, use the updated official PKGBUILD instead.

Fingers crossed that it works for you as great as it worked for me.

Oh, also @zlqrn:

"why is this beautiful software so hard to install!!!!"

It's hard because under the surface it's really not as beautiful as you may think... :P

I hope so, as of now my zoneminder is broke due to PHP 7 and ffmpg/x265 updates which I had to allow for other packages. I see the new version is PHP 7 compatible. Fingers crossed mesmar or someone else can maintain this important package.

There is a new version out now. Is this package still maintained for an expected update?