libcamerify causes motion daemon to create zombie processes

[Dale Magee]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I also happen to have a v1 camera 
running on an older pi. I bought these v3 cameras that I'm having 
trouble with because my v1 camera is so stable and reliable. It's got 
motion running it, it records video all the time, and it's definitely 
not got libcamera installed.

Perhaps that's a different model or something? IIRC it's a 5MP, v1 pi 
camera. The image quality isn't great compared to the v3 cameras I'm 
trying to use, but the stability is top-notch, has been running for years.

Cheers,
Dale

On 14/4/24 19:49, Andrei Konovalov wrote:
> 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!