libcamerify causes motion daemon to create zombie processes

[Dale Magee]

Hi Andrei,

That is indeed interesting, but I'm using a pi4 and a camera v3 module. 
IIUC the older camera modules don't need to use libcamerify at all - are 
you accessing the camera as a v4l device, or perhaps using the older 
MMAL interface? i.e maybe you're loading libcamerify but not actually 
using it?

I'd be interested to know, maybe it's something specific to the pi4 or 
the camera3 board.

Thanks,
Dale

On 13/4/24 23:39, Andrei Konovalov wrote:
> Hi Dale,
> 
> I don't have the answers to your questions. Just some information which 
> might help you (or not).
> 
> I have motion running for almost 4 weeks now, 711 videos have been 
> captured (motion detection is configured to
> record short videos, not to capture still images). And there are no 
> zombie processes so far.
> 
> Hardware:
>    RaspberryPi 3B board + RPi camera v1 (ov5647)
> OS:
>    Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32 bit, bookworm)
> kernel:
>    Linux version 6.6.20+rpt-rpi-v7 (debian-kernel at lists.debian.org) 
> (gcc-12 (Raspbian 12.2.0-14+rpi1) 12.2.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for 
> Raspbian) 2.40) #1 SMP Raspbian 1:6.6.20-1+rpt1 (2024-03-07)
> motion:
>    Version 4.5.1
> the ExecStart line from the motion.service:
>    ExecStart=/usr/bin/libcamerify /usr/bin/motion
> the version of the installed libcamera0.2 and libcamera-tools packages:
>    0.2.0+rpt20240215-1
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Andrei
> 
> On 13.04.2024 12:27, Dale Magee wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I was advised to take this issue to the mailing list.
>>
>> Please see the issue I raised at 
>> https://github.com/raspberrypi/libcamera/issues/129 and the other 
>> issues I linked to from there, which descrive the issue I'm having 
>> with a bunch of detail.
>>
>> I'm keen to get this resolved as it's causing major system instability 
>> for me, the entire system becomes unusable when it runs out of memory 
>> due to this issue.
>>
>> kbingham commented on the ticket that "Not many people use libcamerify 
>> - and the more correct route is to use libcamera API's directly, not 
>> go through libcamerify".
>>
>> The software I'm trying to use does not support libcamera, so that's 
>> not an option for me, unfortunately.
>>
>> Is there some other preferred method to make a raspberry pi camera 3 
>> show up as a v4l device, and thus able to be used with all the v4l 
>> software released over the last couple of decades? I've tried 
>> searching for something like that and all I've come up with is 
>> libcamerify, but maybe I've missed something?
>>
>> I see the patch kbingham points me to, but I'm not sure how I'd 
>> compile and install that on raspbian without causing issues/conflicts 
>> with the packaged version (e.g if I uninstall libcamera0 with apt, 
>> it's going to uninstall everything that depends on it, too, right?). 
>> Some guidance/resources on how to achieve that would be super helpful.
>>
>> Thanks!