HW transcoding stopped working N100

Plex Media Server
1

Plex Server Version 1.41.3.9314
Kernal 6.8.0-40-generic
OS Linux Mint 21.3 (Jammy)

hw transcoding and tonemapping was working great.

I then followed the guide to move my metadata. I moved the metadata to an external drive.
Customizing your Plex configuration by ChuckPa

I tested plex and direct play is working fine however transcoding is now only software.

ls -la /dev/dri
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 100 Dec 26 12:20 .
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 4620 Dec 26 12:28 …
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Dec 26 12:28 by-path
crw-rw----+ 1 root render 226, 0 Dec 26 12:28 card0
crw-rw----+ 1 root render 226, 128 Dec 26 12:28 renderD128

ls -la /dev/dri/by-path/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Dec 26 12:28 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 100 Dec 26 12:20 …
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Dec 26 12:28 pci-0000:00:02.0-card → …/card0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Dec 26 12:28 pci-0000:00:02.0-render → …/renderD128

groups plex
plex : plex video render

lspci -k | grep -EA3 ‘VGA|3D|Display’
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 46d1
DeviceName: Onboard - Video
Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 7270
Kernel driver in use: i915

Any help please.

2

Do your debug level server logs covering the time of a Plex server start show anything? Typically there is a section that shows (attempted) discovery of available hardware acceleration.

Also, what do you have in your override.conf? For example, did you change the Plex user/group?

3

Mint has proven itself to be not suited for Plex server usage.
It’s fine for desktop use but doesn’t hold up to server use.

I can’t count how many times problems with Mint were immediately resolved by installing a vetted distro (Debian or Ubuntu)

4

override conf.

Customize Plex’s config

[Service]
Environment=“PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR=/mnt/usb-drive/plexdata/Library/Application Support”

These values are only needed if you wish to change user & group

User=plex
Group=plex

This is needed to change the default umask

UMask=0002 # this must be 4 digits of octal

5

Everything was working before I moved the metadata. Following your guide direct play continues to work but transcoding is software only.

6

Server DEBUG logs ZIP file please which captures a transcoding failure ?
(error / info logs are insufficient)

7

I have attached part of the logs which show the error. I’m sure it is easy to fix but i am unsure where to start
Plex Media Server.log (5.6 KB)

Reading the logs it says unsupported. But everything was working fine until I moved the metadata to an external drive. Plex still directs play and software transcodes…
Thanks

8

As part of moving your Plex Server “Application Support” directory you also moved your codecs. I’ve seen issues with codecs cause a variety of playback and recording issues, so I’d suggest deleting your codecs. This will cause your Plex server to re-download codecs as needed. To do this:

  1. Stop your Plex Media Server process.
  2. Open a command prompt and cd into the codec directory. In your case it should be “/mnt/usb-drive/plexdata/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Codecs”.
  3. There is a “.device_id” file in the “Codecs” directory. Make sure you don’t delete this file. In the next step you will be deleting a subdirectory of “Codecs” which will not delete the “.device_id” file. I’m just including this as a warning.
  4. There should be a subdirectory with a series of letters and numbers, followed by “linux-” and a specifier for your architecture - for your N100 I believe it will end with “linux-x86_64”. Delete this subdirectory that ends with “linux-x86_64”. (You can back it up elsewhere first if you want, but I have never seen a need to recover this.)
  5. Start your Plex Media Server service.

Check to see if hardware encoding is working.

9

Is the drive mounted with the exec option?

Codecs are stored in the metadata directory.
Codecs are executable library files (.so)

If noexec is asserted (default on most distros for non-boot drives) then they will not ‘execute’

10

I added exec option and i deleted the folders

e613bce-3d5ad59c62e771ae9cb5738e-linux-x86_64
EasyAudioEncoder-8f4ca5ead7783c54a4930420-linux-x86_64

when I rebooted i checked the drive has exec option and the folders I deleted reappeared.

Unfortunately I still cannot get hw transcoding to trigger.

I checked the logs and it comes with the same as errors as before.

11

would you please make certain DEBUG logging is enabled then,

  1. restart the server
  2. let it sit 2-3 minutes to stabilize
  3. start a playback attempt
  4. stop after 30 seconds
  5. download the logs ZIP file
  6. attach the ZIP file here.

I’ll look for why it’s not engaging

12

Plex Media Server.log (390.9 KB)

Thanks

13

You aren’t going to like this.

Jan 02, 2025 09:34:56.102 [130164249865016] INFO - Plex Media Server v1.41.3.9314-a0bfb8370 - Linux Mint AZW EQ x86_64 - build: linux-x86_64 debian - GMT 03:00
Jan 02, 2025 09:34:56.102 [130164249865016] INFO - Linux version: 21.3 (Virginia), language: en-US
Jan 02, 2025 09:34:56.103 [130164249865016] INFO - Processor: 4-core Intel(R) N100
Jan 02, 2025 09:34:56.103 [130164249865016] INFO - Compiler is - Clang 11.0.1 (https://plex.tv 9b997da8e5b47bdb4a9425b3a3b290be393b4b1f)
Jan 02, 2025 09:34:56.103 [130164249865016] INFO - /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server

Mint does not work with Plex. That’s why it’s not an approved distro.
Whether you get it to work or not is Hit-or-Miss.

Load Ubuntu or Debian and change the desktop manager (which is what Mint folks did but broke something else) and you’ll be fine.

14

I will redo with ubuntu server LTS 22.04. Is this the distro to use or ubuntu desktop version?

15

I use both Ubuntu desktop (my workstation - AlderLake ) and Ubuntu server (my NAS - Xeon w/ Nvidia).

Both are reliable

Personally, I like 22.04 over 24.04. Non-scientifically, it “feels” more stable.

16

Switched to Ubuntu Server 22.04. Everything working. Thanks