“sarg[5646]: segfault at 000000008d784200 rip 0000003280078d80 rsp 00007fff8d784d78 error 4″

After googling for a while I found this thread explaining similar problems. Apparently the current sarg rpmforge package for RHEL 5 x64 has some kind of bug when dealing with long url’s. I also noticed that at the rpmforge repository for sarg there is a newer version, sarg-2.2.5-1, but the aren’t packages for RHEL 5 x86 x64 arquitecture, only for FC and RHEL PPC.

The fix is pretty simple, just uninstall the x64 version and install the i386 version. /etc/cron.daily/sarg will ran without problems after changing to the x86 version.

At the time this post was written, latest rpmforge sarg packages for CentOS 5 x64 & i386 were:

sarg-2.2.3.1-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm <– I was using this when I got the error

sarg-2.2.3.1-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm <– changing to this one fixed the problem

I did this for changing the package version:

• rpm -ev rpm -ev sarg-2.2.3.1-1.el5.rf
• wget http://packages.sw.be/sarg/sarg-2.2.3.1-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
• yum localinstall sarg-2.2.3.1-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

FDA, FTC Warn Public Of Fraudulent 2009 H1N1 Influenza Products

Interesting article that alerts and inform us about the raise of fraudulent medication for the H1N1 Influenza virus.

Article gives us this very useful links:

• FDA’s web site for tips about how to protect themselves when buying medicines online: http://www.fda.gov/buyonlineguide/
• Information about FDA-approved antiviral drugs for influenza: http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/antivirals/influenza/default.htm
• Personal protective equipment:http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/ppe/

Filesystem performance tweaking with XFS on Linux

which is, esencially, a two-steps simple procedure:

Create xfs filesystem with a 64 megabyte log
# mkfs.xfs -f -l size=64m /dev/hda3

Mount filesystem with 8 log buffers, and atime and diratime disabled
# mount -o noatime,nodiratime,logbufs=8 /dev/hda3 /mnt/gentoo/

These simple tweaks do help! specially on large RAID partitions.

- Corrections, comments, and suggestions are always welcome -

-=kp=-

xgettext: error while loading shared libraries: libexpat.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I tried fixing it with revdep-rebuild tool but it failed too. Through some research I found this is a common error consequence of a broken update process (nothing is perfect in this life) due to a circular dependency.

But you don’t have to worry, there is a simple way to fix this:

kp ~ # emerge –unmerge –quiet expat gettext
kp ~ # emerge –quiet expat gettext

After this your emerge processes will run smoothly again.

-=kp=-

Webcam information:

Manufacturer: Logitech
Part Number: 861144-0000
Model: Logicool V-UM27 Quickcam USB

# lsusb information:
ID 046d:08f0 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Messenger

First of all we will prepare our kernel so our driver compiles neatly. I am currently using kernel 2.6.23-gentoo-r2.

Select the following kernel options and recompile:

Device Drivers —> Multimedia devices —>
<M> Video For Linux
[*] Enable Video For Linux API 1 compatible Layer
[*] Video capture adapters (NEW) —>

 

Device Drivers —> Multimedia devices —> Video capture adapters –>
[*] Autoselect pertinent encoders/decoders and other helper chips
[*] V4L USB devices (NEW) —>

 

Device Drivers —> Multimedia devices —> Video capture adapters –> V4L USB devices –>
(none)

Next we emerge our qc-usb-messenger drivers:

emerge –quiet media-video/qc-usb-messenger

Now we check if the driver loads, so we connect our camera

# tail -f /var/log/messages should give us a message similar to:
kp_1 quickcam [48.266871]: poisoning qc in qc_usb_exit
kp_1 quickcam [54.779816]: ———-LOADING QUICKCAM MODULE————
kp_1 quickcam [54.779852]: struct quickcam size: 4612
kp_1 quickcam: QuickCam USB camera found (driver version QuickCam Messenger/Communicate USB 1.7 $Date: 2007/09/02 00:00:00 $)
kp_1 quickcam: Kernel:2.6.23-gentoo-r2 bus:2 class:FF subclass:FF vendor:046D product:08F0
kp_1 quickcam [54.780122]: poisoning qc in qc_usb_init
kp_1 quickcam [54.809479]: E00A contains 08F0
kp_1 quickcam: Sensor VV6450 detected
kp_1 input: Quickcam snapshot button as /devices/virtual/input/input2
kp_1 quickcam [54.813168]: Quickcam snapshot button registered on usb-0000:00:01.3-2/input0
kp_1 quickcam: Registered device: /dev/video0
kp_1 usbcore: registered new interface driver quickcam

if driver is not automatically loaded, you can always modprobe it, and the check if interface has been registered
kp_1 ~ # modprobe quickcam

And that’s it! now you can configure any program that can read v4l devices, like xawtv and Zoneminder

- Feel free to leave any comment, suggestion, request or correction you want. I will update this page constantly -

-=kp=-

• Cherokee Web Server

• Zoneminder video camera security and surveillance solution

• ffmpeg support with mpeg-4 codec (xvid)

• php and other relevant packages

I have divided this guide in 2 parts: Cherokee + php and Zoneminder installation.

So, let’s begin!

PART 1 : Installing Cherokee Web Server and PHP on Gentoo Linux

First we need to unmask www-servers/cherokee package

# echo “www-servers/cherokee” >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

next we set up our make options for cherokee

Edit /etc/make.conf and add “threads” to the USE variable

finally we use emerge to compile and install the package

# emerge –quiet www-servers/cherokee

TIP: using the –quiet reduces the output produced by emerge, reducing the cpu consumption.

Now we will add php support to Cherokee. This is quite simple as portage do most of the work for us, you just need php compiled with FastCGI support. – This is my usual configuration:

edit /etc/make.conf
add “cgi gd ftp hash mysql opd sockets xml” to the USE variable

cgi – Add support for the cgi / FastCGI interface
gd – Adds support for media-libs/gd (to generate graphics on the fly)
ftp – Adds FTP (File Transfer Protocol) support
mhash – Adds support for the mhash library
mysql – Adds mySQL Database support
pdo – database access libraries sockets – Adds support for tcp/ip sockets
xml – Add support for XML files

Now we are now ready to emerge our package (this will take while to finish):

# emerge –quiet dev-lang/php

and start Cherokee Web Server:

# /etc/init.d/cherokee start

Cherokee + PHP should be working fine now, if you want to test it you follow this simple process:

# echo “<? phpinfo(); ?>” > /var/www/localhost/htdocs/test.php

open http://your_domain_or_ip_address/test.php and you should see a php report.

If everything is ok we remove the file:

# rm /var/www/localhost/htdocs/test.php

TIP: the phpinfo(); function can be a dangerous security issue! it displays sensitive information about our php configuration!

PART 2 : Zoneminder + ffmpeg + mpeg4 (divx) support on Gentoo Linux + Cherokee

Zoneminder is really cool video security and surveillance system, and it’s even cooler when you add ffmpeg with mpeg4 codec support!. For this guide I assume you have your video capture device, webcam, or video streaming service already up and running. First we modify our USE variable in make.conf:

edit /etc/make.conf with you favorite editor and add the following values to your USE varible:

“a52 aac encode ieee1394 imlib ogg sdl theora truetype v4l vorbis x264 xvid aalib alsa fbcon flac ggi libcaca bzip2 gif jpeg jpeg2k mp3 png tiff mpeg vhosts”

USE variables for media-video/ffmpeg

a52 – Enables support for decoding ATSC A/52 streams used in DVD
aac – Enables support for MPEG-4 AAC Audio
encode – Adds support for encoding of audio or video files eee1394 – Enable FireWire/iLink IEEE1394 support (dv, camera, …)
imlib – Adds support for imlib, an image loading and rendering library
ogg – Adds support for the Ogg container format (commonly used by Vorbis, Theora and flac)
sdl – Adds support for Simple Direct Layer (media library)
theora – Adds support for the Theora Video Compression Codec
truetype – Adds support for FreeType and/or FreeType2 fonts
v4l – Enables video4linux support
vorbis – Adds support for the OggVorbis audio codec
x264 – Enable h264 encoding using x264
xvid – Adds support for xvid.org’s open-source mpeg-4 codec

USE variables for media-libs/libsdl

aalib – Adds support for media-libs/aalib (ASCII-Graphics Library)
alsa – Adds support for media-libs/alsa-lib (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
fbcon – Adds framebuffer support for the console, via the kernel
flac – Adds support for the flac audio codec
cgi – Adds support for media-libs/libggi (non-X video api/drivers)
libcaca – Add support for colored ASCII-art graphics

USE variables for media-libs/imlib2

bzip2 – Use the bzlib compression library
gif – Adds GIF image support
jpeg – Adds JPEG image support
jpeg2k – Support for JPEG 2000, a wavelet-based image compression format
mp3 – Add support for reading mp3 files tiff – Adds support for the tiff image format

USE variables for www-misc/zoneminder

mpeg -Adds libmpeg3 support to various packages
vhosts – Adds support for installing web-based applications into a virtual-hosting environment

We unmask Zoneminder ebuild and it’s dependencies:

# echo “www-misc/zoneminder” >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

# echo “dev-perl/X10″ >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

Zoneminder ebuild needs apache user/group to finish installing, so we need create them (we will delete them later)

# useradd apache (this will create both user and group)

we are now ready to launch the emerge process for Zoneminder + ffmpeg

# emerge –quiet web-misc/zoneminder media-video/ffmpeg

NOTE: at this point you might see a webapp-config error, this is because you probably didn’t use vhosts USE variable, in this cases webapp-config runs automatically for user localhost, showing you this error:

* Fatal error: Your configuration file sets the server type “Apache”

* Fatal error: but the corresponding package does not seem to be installed!

if this happens, just ignore the error, we will copy the files by hand later.

we delete the apache user/group we created earlier

# userdel apache # groudel apache

webapp-config won’t work because we don’t have Apache installed, so we copy Zoneminder files manually:

# mkdir /var/www/localhost/htdocs/zoneminder/

# cp /usr/share/webapps/zoneminder/1.22.3/htdocs/* /var/www/localhost/htdocs/zoneminder/ -R

# cp /usr/share/webapps/zoneminder/1.22.3/hostroot/cgi-bin/* /var/www/localhost/cgi-bin/ -R

TIP: Gentoo always saves emerged webapps in /usr/share/webapps/

time to modify directory permissions so Zoneminder works with Cherokee:

# chown cherokee:cherokee /var/log/zoneminder/ -R

# chown cherokee:cherokee /var/run/zm -R

# chown cherokee:cherokee /var/www/localhost/ -R

Zoneminder needs a mysql database to store it’s data, let’s set things up!

We check if our hostname is configured in /etc/hosts

kp_1 ~ # vi /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost your_hostname

Now we run mysql first installation script

kp_1 ~ # /usr/bin/mysql_install_db

Installing MySQL system tables… OK

Filling help tables… OK

(etc)

time to set our mysql root password

kp_1 ~ # /etc/init.d/mysql start

kp_1 ~ # /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password ‘your_password‘

now we fill our sql data and set up database permissions

kp_1 ~ # mysql -p -u root < /usr/share/zoneminder/db/zm_create.sql

kp_1 ~ # mysql -p -u root zm

mysql> grant all on zm.* to ‘zoneminder’@localhost identified by ‘password’;

setting up our system information in /etc/zm.conf

ZM_PATH_BUILD=/usr/share/zoneminder

ZM_PATH_WEB=/var/www/localhost/htdocs/zoneminder

ZM_PATH_CGI=/var/www/localhost/cgi-bin

ZM_WEB_USER=cherokee

ZM_WEB_GROUP=cherokee

ZM_DB_HOST=localhost

ZM_DB_NAME=zm

ZM_DB_USER=zoneminder

ZM_DB_PASS=you_db_password_for_user_zoneminder

To avoid having low shared memory errors (usually happens) we modify our sysctl.com:

kp_1 ~ # vi /etc/sysctl.conf

kernel.shmmax=200000000

kernel.shmall=200000000

kp_1 ~ # sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf

kernel.shmmax = 200000000

kernel.shmall = 200000000

kp_1 ~ #

We set the permissions so user cherokee can read from video devices:

# usermod -G video cherokee

If needed, modify the following line with your video device(s):

# chmod 660 /dev/v4l/video0

restart involved services “just-in-case(tm)”:

# /etc/init.d/mysql restart

# /etc/init.d/cherokee restart

# /etc/init.d/zoneminder restart

Point your browser (preferably firefox, gives better streaming performance) to htpp://yoursite/zoneminder, You should now have a working Zoneminder system!

- Feel free to leave any comments, suggestions, bug reports, or any kind of feedback you want
I will try to answer most of your questions – This page will be updated periodically -

-=kp=-