libcamerify causes motion daemon to create zombie processes

[Andrei Konovalov]

Hi Dale,

No, the ov5647 camera modules is also accessed through libcamera. And without libcamerify
motion isn't able to capture the video.

I doubt this is specific to the pi4 or the camera3 board.
IIRC, there are other differences between my setup and yours:
- I capture videos, not still frames
- 32-bit vs 64-bit OS
- do you use motion (like me) or motioneye?

Thanks,
Andrei

On 14.04.2024 06:54, Dale Magee wrote:
> 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!