Plex Server Version: 1.15.4.993
OS: Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS
Motherboard: SuperMicro X9SCL-O LGA 1155 Intel C202
CPU: Intel Xeon Processor E3-1265L v2
I cannot get hardware accelerated transcoding to work with my setup. The Xeon 1265 does support Quick Sync Video. However, the board manufacturer says “Per Intel’s spec, for platforms using C202/C204 PCH, Intel E3-12x5 series processors which have integrated graphics support are not recommended” in a footnote on their product page (link above), which may indicate that this is a difficult endeavor. The board also has Matrox G200eW dedicated graphics, as per the same page.
Unfortunately I don’t currently have access to the board’s BIOS, as my server is running headless and no monitor is attached nor readily available, so I cannot experiment with any settings there (which I intend to remedy this weekend).
I can see the following entries repeating in the Plex Media Server log:
Apr 24, 2019 20:23:54.245 [0x7f6e8affd700] WARN - Failed to find encoder 'h264_qsv'
Apr 24, 2019 20:23:54.245 [0x7f6e8affd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - No VA display found for device: /dev/dri/renderD128.
Apr 24, 2019 20:23:54.246 [0x7f6e8affd700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - Cannot load libcuda.so.1
Apr 24, 2019 20:23:54.246 [0x7f6e8affd700] WARN - avcodec_open2 returned -1313558101 for encoder 'h264_nvenc'
Any suggestions are welcome – thanks!
That CPU is seven years old. Really?
So? It’s Ivy bridge and supported.
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ls -la /dev/dri
Let me see what the video group and content is?
Also, is there an nVidia card in the box?
Hey Chuck – I was hoping for a response from you, seeing that you had responded to similar questions in the past 
Here’s the disappointing result:
user@NAS:~$ sudo ls -la /dev/dri
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 80 Apr 23 23:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 4940 Apr 24 20:55 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 Apr 23 23:34 by-path
crw-rw---- 1 root video 226, 0 Apr 25 00:29 card0
user@NAS:~$
And no separate graphics cards in the box, only the integrated onboard Matrox GPU.
This is an IvyBridge:
[chuck@lizum ~.10]$ ls -la /dev/dri
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 100 Apr 25 17:46 ./
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4480 Apr 25 18:18 ../
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Apr 25 17:46 by-path/
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 226, 0 Apr 25 17:46 card0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root render 226, 128 Apr 25 17:46 renderD128
[chuck@lizum ~.11]$
Yours isn’t being detected. Kernel is not speaking to the i965.
renderD128 is the key inode
Maybe some BIOS tinkering is necessary? Or a different kernel?
user@NAS:~$ uname -a
Linux NAS 4.15.0-47-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Wed Mar 13 10:44:52 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
user@NAS:~$
chuck@plexdev:~/git/postprocessor$ uname -a
Linux plexdev 4.15.0-45-generic #48-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jan 29 16:28:13 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
chuck@plexdev:~/git/postprocessor$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="18.04.2 LTS (Bionic Beaver)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS"
VERSION_ID="18.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=bionic
UBUNTU_CODENAME=bionic
chuck@plexdev:~/git/postprocessor$
Something isn’t coming through. Motherboard configuration have it disabled ?
Same exact output of that command on my end. I’ll grab a monitor this weekend to see what I can find in the BIOS. Let me have a look and I’ll report back. Any particular settings I should look for? Thanks so much for your time!
user@NAS:~$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="18.04.2 LTS (Bionic Beaver)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS"
VERSION_ID="18.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=bionic
UBUNTU_CODENAME=bionic
user@NAS:~$
Some motherboard chipsets will turn the iGPU (ASIC) off.
I believe there is an ASUS Rock (?) board out there where it’s outright disabled by firmware.
Gotcha. I’ll look through the settings and am also considering upgrading the BIOS anyway (for Spectre fix). My server has been headless for years, so this will be fun.
I’ll report back after – thank you sir!
FYI. Unless you run Windows… Don’t IMHO.
It is speculative branch restriction. the patch disables it and really kills performance
That’s good info! I actually already ran the spectre-meltdown-checker from here and it indicated I was not vulnerable anyway (I assume because the kernel already employs defensive mechanisms).
Thanks for that additional tip – I’ll just see what I can find in the current BIOS and just call it a day if I cannot get hw acceleration to work. Even though this CPU is old, it still manages to transcode several parallel streams (<=1080p) in my experience, so it’s plenty powerful as is.
1 Like
Linux isn’t vulnerable to much of anything. That’s why it’s used in mission-critical operations.
I have a i7-7700 (kabylake). Same number of streams but Superior quality over the Ivy.
I am about to build da Ryzen 9. Gonna be fun
I wish I had money to throw at this – would make a fun project building another server. My current one has been pretty good to me for many years already though. Big 4U case, currently filled with 13 x 4TB and 2 x 8TB NAS drives. Ubuntu OS itself is installed on two 250GB Samsung EVO 840 & 850 SSDs in a software RAID (md0) setup. Data drives (mentioned above) are using a scheduled quasi-RAID technology called SnapRAID (the two 8TB drives are the parity drives, and I am slowly switching the 4TB drives over to larger ones, as and when they start to fail). All data drives are pooled together and mounted under a single mount point using mergerfs (a fuse fs).
This thing keeps me entertained and it’s fun to try out new things (like hw transcoding trial & error)
Have fun building the Ryzen rig!
I am still running my 2012 i7-3740qm. I’ve been saving and it’s about time to retire this Aio machine.
I might jump in and hijack this thread a bit. I’ve recently just rented this machine (https://www.soyoustart.com/ca/en/offers/1804sysgame051.xml) which has an Intel i7-4790K, which theoretically should support hardware transcoding. But it does not seem to. Following the info here (https://github.com/desimaniac/docs/blob/master/enable_igpu_on_hetzner.md), I was able to determine that a different graphics driver is being used. Instead of seeing Kernel modules: i915 or Kernel driver in use: i915, I’m seeing Kernel driver in use: ast & Kernel modules: ast. Can anyone offer any insight into this?
PLEASE don’t hijack another person’s thread as it is not the best netiquette.
With DEBUG logging enabled, VERBOSE disabled,
Recreate the problem.
Download the ZIP log files from the server.
Attach these logs, with description again of the problem in a new thread.
Thanks.
Hey Chuck! So I got into my board’s BIOS settings today and looked through all available options for any graphics / video related settings. There is nothing regarding iGPU or ASIC. The only option I found was “Boots Graphic Adapter Priority”, which was set to “Offboard”. I switched it to “Onboard”, just to see if that changes anything. Upon reboot, there is still no “renderD128” in /dev/dri (same output as above still).
Is there anything else I should look for?
Thanks!
No… /dev/dri/renderD128 is what you need.
