motion fails to start

Question

I have a freshly built motion (3.2.3), on a Mandrake 10.1 machine (a Via Mini-ITX).

When launched, I get output that ends with:

  "[0] Motion going to daemon mode"

But there is no motion process after that. Running 'motion -n' produces slightly different results, ending with:

  "[1] Thread is from /usr/local/etc/motion.conf"
  "[1] Thread started"
  "Killed"

I tried 'motion -d -n', but saw no additional output.

(as an aside, trying each of -d, d and q (not a valid option) all produce identical output - is the '-d' not being recognised?)

A simultaneous 'tail -f /var/log/messages' when executing motion outputs the same "Thread is from.." message, then a complaint from the kernel about the TV frequency being outside the range 44-958 (but it's set to 0 in my config).

The card is a Hauppauge tuner with composite input (proved to be working with XawTV). I have had a (much) older version of motion working with this same card in a lower spec machine (a P200MMX).

Edited to add motion.conf :

daemon on
setup_mode off
videodevice /dev/video0
input 1
norm 0
frequency 0
rotate 0
width 320
height 240
framerate 2
auto_brightness off
brightness 0
contrast 0
saturation 0
hue 0
roundrobin_frames 1
roundrobin_skip 1
switchfilter off
threshold 1500
threshold_tune off
noise_level 32
noise_tune on
night_compensate off
despeckle EedDl
smart_mask_speed 0
lightswitch 0
minimum_motion_frames 1
pre_capture 0
post_capture 0
gap 60
minimum_gap 0
max_mpeg_time 0
low_cpu 0
output_all off
output_normal on
output_motion off
quality 75
ppm on
ffmpeg_cap_new on
ffmpeg_cap_motion off
ffmpeg_timelapse 0
ffmpeg_timelapse_mode daily
ffmpeg_bps 500000
ffmpeg_variable_bitrate 0
ffmpeg_video_codec mpeg4
snapshot_interval 0
locate off
text_right %Y-%m-%d\n%T-%q
text_changes off
text_double off
snapshot_filename %v-%Y%m%d%H%M%S-snapshot
jpeg_filename %v-%Y%m%d%H%M%S-%q
ffmpeg_filename %v-%Y%m%d%H%M%S
timelapse_filename %Y%m%d-timelapse
webcam_quality 50
webcam_motion off
webcam_maxrate 1
webcam_localhost on
webcam_limit 0
control_localhost on
control_html_output on
track_type 0
track_motorx -1
track_maxx 0
track_iomojo_id 0
track_speed 255
track_stepsize 40
quiet on
sql_log_image on
sql_log_snapshot on
sql_log_mpeg off
sql_log_timelapse off

Video input was already set to 1. I tried it on 0 just to see what happened, but there was no change.

Environment

Motion version:	3.2.3
ffmpeg version:	n/a
Libraries:
Server OS:	Mandrake 10.1

-- TWikiGuest - 26 Oct 2005

Answer

You did not attach your motion.conf but my guess is that you have chosen an input number which is equal to the tuner input instead of the composite video input.

My guess is that you should use input 1 and that you now have input 0

-- KennethLavrsen - 28 Oct 2005

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A bractrace of gdb can be usefull, so edit Makefile and remove -O2 then make;make install , set motion in not daemon mode ( daemon off) and run motion with gdb ( gdb /usr/local/bin/motion ) . When motion exits type in gdb bt full and attach that info here.

-- AngelCarpintero - 29 Oct 2005

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Removing the -O2 switch made everything start working just fine. Not sure how much of a performance hit I'm suffering as a result. I'm going to try dropping the -march=i686 down to -march=i586 with -O2 back on for comparison (I'm not sure how many corners Via cut in this CPU). Thanks for the suggestions so far. -- TWikiGuest - 29 Oct 2005

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To compile motion in your machine you should use --without-optimizecpu to avoid problems because the autodectection CPU is broken for VIA cpus.

-- AngelCarpintero - 29 Oct 2005