Debian 9.* HW-Transcoding

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Hello,

I want to build my own Plex Server but I am not sure which OS I should chose i would really like to install debian because its one of the cleanest linux distros but I am not sure if Plex and especialy HW-Transcoding will work on debian because Plex say “64-bit Ubuntu (16.04 or later) or 64-bit Fedora (26 or later) distributions. (Other distributions may be capable, but are not officially supported.)”

Does someone have experiences with Plex/HW-Transcoding in combination with Debian ?

Greetings

2

Don’t worry, Debian 9+ is just as well supported as Ubuntu 16.04+. HW transcoding with Intel Quick Sync will work on both distros equally well.

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3

I was testing with i7-8600 with p2000 on Debian 9.5 yesterday.

I could get the Nvidia P2000 GPU to be recognized (by OS and Plex) but couldn’t figure out what package was needed for Intel HW transcoding to be recognized by OS.

I went to Ubuntu 18.04 today and I can see both Intel and Nvidia. Still working on setting up Plex in Ubuntu so I haven’t seen if it sees it yet.

Edit: Just edit to note that all of my setups are headless with GUI

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4

PMS currently only supports encoding, not decoding, with Nvidia GPUs on Linux. For best results, make sure the Intel iGPU is mapped in Linux to /dev/dri/renderD128, thus PMS is able to utilize full transcoding.

5

HW Transcoding dont’t work, i have a new i5-7800, Debian 9, Plex Pass and PMS 1.13.5.5291 but it still won’t work

Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - Cannot load libcuda.so.1
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] WARN - avcodec_open2 returned -1313558101 for encoder 'h264_nvenc'
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - No VA display found for device: /dev/dri/renderD128.
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - Cannot load libcuda.so.1
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] WARN - avcodec_open2 returned -1313558101 for encoder 'h264_nvenc'
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - No VA display found for device: /dev/dri/renderD128.
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - Cannot load libcuda.so.1
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] WARN - avcodec_open2 returned -1313558101 for encoder 'h264_nvenc'
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - No VA display found for device: /dev/dri/renderD128.
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.640 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - Cannot load libcuda.so.1
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.641 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] WARN - avcodec_open2 returned -1313558101 for encoder 'h264_nvenc'
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:48.641 [0x7fb6cd3fd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - No VA display found for device: /dev/dri/renderD128.
Jul 28, 2018 11:00:58.257 [0x7fb6bcfff700] ERROR - Transcoder: Failed to delete session directory (boost::filesystem::remove: No such file or directory: "/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/Transcode/Sessions/plex-transcode-haw3tj5lhwl2xuwsk7myexk7-868ee6d7-41d7-465e-abfb-605cbd6202e3/chunk-stream0-00005.m4s")
6

@kobi97 The i7-7800X does not have a GPU so Quick Sync is not supported.

7

This is my CPU, maybe there are some packages left ?
I installed PMS and tryied it, nothing else…
Are you sure that debian is supported or do you know packages i have to install because debian only install opensource software maybe HW-T needs not opensource software ?

8

@kobi97 I hope you are now sure this is the correct CPU :wink: Bleeding edge hardware requires a rather bleeding edge kernel. In your case, you need at least a 4.13 kernel. Just install a the 4.16 kernel from stretch-backports. It’s package linux-image-amd64.

https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/

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I did not post i7-7800X that was @brandonm .
I really want to thank you, you are my hero it works fine :smiley:
THANK YOU!!!
One last question how can i later upgrade to the normal branch or should i stay with the backport ?

10

:wink:

Only use the kernel from backports. Moreover, you have to explicitly tell apt to use backport packages when you need them (with -t stretch-backports). Normally, apt ignores backports because of the package policies, If you did everything as described in the above tutorial. apt update or apt upgrade will only install updates from the regular repo automatically.

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Okay so i should always use the option -t stretch-backports when i upgrade the linux distro (features, security features…)

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No, the opposite. Only use it to cherry pick package updates you absolutely need. Security updates are provided by the stable repository. Feature upgrades will be provided by the next distribution release (e.g. Debian 10).

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Okay thx, so i installed only “linux-image-amd64” with this option and “linux-image-amd64” is only the kernel everything else is the unchanged debian 9.5 ?
And is this kernel stable or should i upgrade in the near future to a other kernel ?

14

This kernel is stable and you should get updates for this kernel from backports automatically. You don’t have to do anything special anymore. All other packages can stay at their Debian 9 version. When there is a required dependency for a new kernel apt will install this dependency automatically from backports.

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