Tag: OH2

Temporary Fix: ZoneMinder, PHP7.2, openHAB ZoneMinder Binding

I got Zoneminder 1.31.45 (which includes the new CakePHP framework that doesn’t use what have become reserved words in PHP7) working with the openHAB ZoneMinder binding (which relies on data from the API at  /zm/api/configs/view/ATTR_NAME.json). There are two options, ZM_PATH_ZMS and ZM_OPT_FRAME_SERVER which now return bad parameter errors when attempting to retrieve the config using /view/. Looking through the database update scripts, it appears both of these parameters were removed at ZoneMinder 1.31.1

ZM_PATH_ZMS was removed from the Config database and placed in a config file, /etc/zm/conf.d/01-system-paths.conf. There is a PR to “munge” this value into the API so /viewByName returns its value … but that doesn’t expose it through /view.

ZM_OPT_FRAME_SERVER appears to have been eliminated as a configuration option.

You cannot simply re-insert the config options into the database, as ZoneMinder itself loads the ZM_PATH_ZMS value from the config file and then proceeds to use it. When it attempts to load config parameters from the Config table and encounters a duplicate … it falls over. We were unable to view our video through the ZoneMinder server.

*But* editing /usr/share/zoneminder/www/includes/config.php (exact path may vary, list the files from your package install and find the config.php in www/includes) to include an if clause around the section that loads config parameters from the database, and only loading the parameter when the Name is not ZM_PATH_ZMS (bit in yellow below) avoids this overlapping config value.

$result = $dbConn->query( 'select * from Config order by Id asc' );
if ( !$result )
   echo mysql_error();
   $monitors = array();
   while( $row = dbFetchNext( $result ) ) {
      if ( $defineConsts )
      // LJR 2018-08-18 I inserted this config parameter into DB to get OH2-ZM running, and need to ignore it in the ZM web code
      if( strcmp($row['Name'],'ZM_PATH_ZMS') != 0){
         define( $row['Name'], $row['Value'] );
      }
   $config[$row['Name']] = $row;
   if ( !($configCat = &$configCats[$row['Category']]) ) {
      $configCats[$row['Category']] = array();
      $configCat = &$configCats[$row['Category']];
   }
   $configCat[$row['Name']] = $row;
}

Once the ZoneMinder web site happily ignores the presence of ZM_PATH_ZMS from the database config table, you can insert it and ZM_OPT_FRAME_SERVER (an option which appears to have been removed at ZoneMinder 1.31.1) back into the Config table. **Important** — change the actual value of ZM_PATH_ZMS to whatever is appropriate for your installation. In my ZoneMinder installation, /cgi-bin-zm is the cgi-bin directory, and /cgi-bin-zm/nph-zms is the ZMS binary.

From a MySQL command line:

use zm; #Assuming your zoneminder database is actually named zm
INSERT INTO `Config` VALUES (225,'ZM_PATH_ZMS','/cgi-bin-zm/nph-zms','string','/cgi-bin-zm/nph-zms','relative/path/to/somewhere','(?^:^((?:[^/].*)?)/?$)',' $1 ','Web path to zms streaming server',' The ZoneMinder streaming server is required to send streamed images to your browser. It will be installed into the cgi-bin path given at configuration time. This option determines what the web path to the server is rather than the local path on your machine. Ordinarily the streaming server runs in parser-header mode however if you experience problems with streaming you can change this to non-parsed-header (nph) mode by changing \'zms\' to \'nph-zms\'. ','hidden',0,NULL);
INSERT INTO `Config` VALUES (226,'ZM_OPT_FRAME_SERVER','0','boolean','no','yes|no','(?^i:^([yn]))',' ($1 =~ /^y/) ? \"yes\" : \"no\" ','Should analysis farm out the writing of images to disk',' In some circumstances it is possible for a slow disk to take so long writing images to disk that it causes the analysis daemon to fall behind especially during high frame rate events. Setting this option to yes enables a frame server daemon (zmf) which will be sent the images from the analysis daemon and will do the actual writing of images itself freeing up the analysis daemon to get on with other things. Should this transmission fail or other permanent or transient error occur, this function will fall back to the analysis daemon. ','system',0,NULL);

Now restart ZoneMinder and the OH2 ZoneMinder binding. We’ve got monitors on the ZoneMinder web site, we are able to view the video stream, and OH2 picks up alarms from the ZoneMinder server.

If you re-run zmupdate.pl, it will remove these two records from the Config table. If you upgrade ZoneMinder, the change to the PHP file will be reverted.