Video Surveillance system on Ubuntu 8.04 with Zoneminder

In this scenario we will be using:

Hardy Heron ( Ubuntu 8.04 )
Packard Bell Easynote R0933
ZoneMinder 1.22.3 website
Panasonic BL-C1 network cameras

It is assumed that the machine is a fully working Lamp server.
If you don’t have that yet, here’s a quick setup.

First we need to install a few libraries to support Zoneminder :

sudo apt-get install libarchive-tar-perl libmime-perl libstdc++6 libjpeg62 ffmpeg
libarchive-zip-perl zlib1g libdate-manip-perl libwww-perl libdevice-serialport-perl

Afterwards, we grab the latest .deb from the repositories
http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/net/zoneminder

Installation should go on with no complications. If needed, fix broken dependencies with
sudo apt-get -f install

Instruct apache what to do with Zoneminder a force a reload:

sudo ln -s /etc/zm/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/zoneminder.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Finally point the browser at :http://your_server/zm

Technically this should be it.
I had a few problems though. After configuring a camera, i would get not video output whatsoever.
No images or events were being saved nowhere, and i kept getting the same errors on logs:

tail /tmp/zmwatch.log
08/04/2008 16:56:06.730254 zmwatch[10568].INF [Restarting capture daemon for New, shared memory not valid]
08/04/2008 16:56:07.058591 zmwatch[10568].INF ['zmc -m 3' starting at 08/08/04 16:56:07, pid = 10597]
08/04/2008 16:56:17.060594 zmwatch[10568].ERR [Can't get shared memory id '4b450003', 3: No such file or directory]
08/04/2008 16:56:17.061045 zmwatch[10568].INF [Restarting capture daemon for New, shared memory not valid]
08/04/2008 16:56:17.396844 zmwatch[10568].INF ['zmc -m 3' starting at 08/08/04 16:56:17, pid = 10610]
08/04/2008 16:56:27.398852 zmwatch[10568].ERR [Can't get shared memory id '4b450003', 3: No such file or directory]
08/04/2008 16:56:27.399334 zmwatch[10568].INF [Restarting capture daemon for New, shared memory not valid]
08/04/2008 16:56:27.731874 zmwatch[10568].INF ['zmc -m 3' starting at 08/08/04 16:56:27, pid = 10612]
08/04/2008 16:56:47.123690 zmwatch[10689].INF [Watchdog starting]
08/04/2008 16:56:47.124464 zmwatch[10689].INF [Watchdog pausing for 30 seconds]

Looking at the current allocated value of shared memory on my laptop:

cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmall
2097152

And the maximum i could get:

cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
134217728

(Log in as root. sudo -i, otherwise you won’t be able to)

echo 134217728 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmall
echo 134217728 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax

This solved my shared memory problem. To make these value permanent, edit /etc/sysctl.conf :

kernel.shmall = 134217728
kernel.shmmax = 134217728

Done, done, and done.