SOLVED: PMS on Proxmox 7.2 (7.4) container with i915 hw accell?

[KFribert]

Server Version#: 1.32.4.7195
Player Version#:

Hi All
Back in '17 @ChuckPa made a small guide on how to get hw accelleration working on a LXC in Proxmox (PMS installation guide when using a Proxmox 5.1 LXC container).
It worked like a charm.
That was on PVE 5, and we’re long gone from that version.
I can see that pve has gone from cgroup to cgroup2, so I changed the container.conf to that:

lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 226:0 rwm
lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 226:128 rwm
lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 29:0 rwm
lxc.autodev: 1
lxc.hook.autodev: /var/lib/lxc/106/mount_hook.sh

That didn’t seem to help.
I then found this one:

PMS 1.29.x, Proxmox/LXC and HW-transcoding

I finally managed to make hw transcoding work with Proxmox and Plex in an LXC container with Jasper Lake CPU. I have managed to do this with other hardware, but these Jasper Lake CPU’s (N5105, N6005 etc.) have been causing me headaches previously. But no more! :). Update kernel within Proxmox host to 5.19: apt update apt install pve-kernel-5.19 Avoid simplefb claiming iGPU: nano /etc/default/grub add initcall_blacklist=sysfb_init within GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT after quiet Enable GUC…

where @quenthal explains how he got it working.

I found out that I could add the repo with the intel-media-va-driver-non-free with
apt-add-repository 'deb [arch=amd64] https://repositories.intel.com/graphics/ubuntu focal main'
When I try to install the intel-media-va-driver-non-free it tells me that it can’t install it due to failed dependencies
libc6 >=2.29
libccc-s1 >=3.0
libigdgmm12 >22.17+i419~u20.04

Now I’m stuck :-o
I have no idea where to go from there…

My PVE host is an older Intel i5-6260U NUC, so it does support quicksync, and I had it working back then.

[ChuckPa]

@KFribert

libccc-s1 >=3.0
libigdgmm12 >22.17+i419~u20.04

Plex doesn’t use external dependencies for Intel Compute anymore.
All that is now built in with PMS.

The quintessential thing you must do is guarantee the full passthrough.
I’ve seen a lot of folks get tripped up with the new ProxMox and, unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about it.

FWIW: I have QuickSyncVideo in a regular LXC on Ubuntu working without issue.

1. Create the GPU with the proper GID for access inside the container
2. Ensure udev sets up correctly on the host.

I know how I added it using lxc config commands. I’ll share what I can.

[KFribert]

Hi @ChuckPa
I know it’s not a supported setup, so I thankyou very much.
if I do this command:

lspci -nn
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [8086:1904] (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Iris Graphics 540 [8086:1926] (rev 0a)

but the vainfo just gives me

vainfo
error: can't connect to X server!
error: failed to initialize display

I tried getting some info from this article about GPU passthrough, but didn’t get any result from it:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough#GPU_passthrough
I then found this one:

How to Set Up GPU Passthrough on Proxmox (2023) - WunderTech

And that seems to be quite interesting, but that is for VM’s and not LXC, so is it now necessary to do it as a proper VM, or are you still using LXC?

[KFribert]

Using the Wundertech article, I could add the PCI device to a VM, not an LXC, but I’m not sure what to do with the ‘display’ setting in the VM (I only have the one GPU), and if I keep that there so I can see the console, I get this message:

Which I guess makes sense, as it tries to set up the GPU twice…

[KFribert]

I tried setting the display to none, that removed the conflict, and I could start the ubuntu VM, but it still doesn’t show the i915 hardware when I install plex to it…

[KFribert]

I found another article:

[solved] iGPU passthrough trouble - cannot access '/dev/dri/': No such file...

And that explained about my missing /dev/dri
So I reverted the changes made previously, removed the blacklist thing and the grub setting.
Now vainfo is happy:

vainfo
error: can't connect to X server!
libva info: VA-API version 1.10.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_8
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.10 (libva 2.10.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Skylake - 2.4.1
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointStats
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointStats
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointStats
      VAProfileH264MultiviewHigh      : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264StereoHigh         : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointEncPicture
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointVLD

Which is great, and if I then do a ls -l /dev/dri
I now see

root@pve:~# ls -l /dev/dri
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root         80 Jul 16 13:47 by-path
crw-rw---- 1 root video  226,   0 Jul 16 13:48 card0
crw-rw---- 1 root render 226, 128 Jul 16 13:47 renderD128

And I then reinstatted the lines previosly described into the 106.conf for the lxc:

lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 226:0 rwm
lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 226:128 rwm
lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 29:0 rwm
lxc.autodev: 1
lxc.hook.autodev: /var/lib/lxc/106/mount_hook.sh

I also tried with these instead of the ‘mount_hook.sh’ file:

lxc.mount.entry: /dev/fb0 dev/fb0 none bind,optional,create=file
lxc.mount.entry: /dev/dri dev/dri none bind,optional,create=dir
lxc.mount.entry: /dev/dri/renderD128 dev/renderD128 none bind,optional,create=file

which just mounts the hosts files into the lxc, and both versions works.

it shows
i915 Found
in the plex install now!
Why on earth didn’t it work when I just changed to cgroup2? I don’t know if a host reboot was necessary, but anyways, I’m happy again
Thankyou for the help @ChuckPa , you are a star!