Activating Plex hardware acceleration

[NasKar]

Interesting. No Intel graphics processor, and reference to a Xeon E3-1200 instead of your i3-4130T. That might be an lspci artefact.

To go further, I think you'd need to get with ASRock support and see whether the Intel iGPU is supported on this board, and how to enable it in BIOS if it is.

There was an option in the bios that I enabled to use integrated graphics and turn off external graphics card. I made that change before trying hw acceleration.

 

[Samuel Tai]

I have this same board. Integrated graphics in the BIOS means the ASpeed 2400 IPMI adapter, not the integrated graphics on the CPU, which is external graphics from the perspective of the BIOS.

 

[NasKar]

I have this same board. Integrated graphics in the BIOS means the ASpeed 2400 IPMI adapter, not the integrated graphics on the CPU, which is external graphics from the perspective of the BIOS.

So are you saying it won't work with HW acceleration?

 

[Samuel Tai]

I didn't say that. I'm just clarifying the labels in the BIOS. Try enabling external graphics in the BIOS; this should refer to the CPU's integrated graphics. When the BIOS says integrated graphics, it means the BMC remote VGA.

 

[NasKar]

I didn't say that. I'm just clarifying the labels in the BIOS. Try enabling external graphics in the BIOS; this should refer to the CPU's integrated graphics. When the BIOS says integrated graphics, it means the BMC remote VGA.

Ok I'll change the setting back to external graphics and try again. Thanks for the claification. I guess you cannot use hardware acceleration with your Xenon as it doesn't have a integrated graphics?

 

[Samuel Tai]

I guess you cannot use hardware acceleration with your Xeon as it doesn't have a integrated graphics?

That's correct. However, the 4 cores with HT do OK, and I don't see any stuttering dynamically transcoding to 1080p 12 Mbps.

 

[WeaselADHD]

I am currently trying to get this working with the following hardware: Supermicro X11SCH-F, Intel Core i3-9100. I am using Proxmox and virtualized Freenas (TrueNAS-12.0-BETA actually). I activated integrated graphics in the bios and get the following information when I use the command lspci:

Code:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 8th Gen Core 4-core Desktop Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [Coffee Lake S] (rev 08)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Skylake PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 08)
00:01.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Skylake PCIe Controller (x8) (rev 08)
00:02.0 Display controller: Intel Corporation 8th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Skylake Gaussian Mixture Model
00:12.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Thermal Controller (rev 10)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH USB 3.1 xHCI Host Controller (rev 10)
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Shared SRAM (rev 10)
00:15.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller (rev 10)
00:15.1 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller (rev 10)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH HECI Controller (rev 10)
00:16.1 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device a361 (rev 10)
00:16.4 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device a364 (rev 10)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SATA AHCI Controller (rev 10)
00:1b.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port (rev f0)
00:1b.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port (rev f0)
00:1b.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port (rev f0)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port (rev f0)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port (rev f0)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port (rev f0)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port (rev f0)
00:1e.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device a328 (rev 10)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device a309 (rev 10)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SMBus Controller (rev 10)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SPI Controller (rev 10)
02:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon] (rev 03)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I210 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I210 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
07:00.0 PCI bridge: ASPEED Technology, Inc. AST1150 PCI-to-PCI Bridge (rev 04)
08:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ASPEED Technology, Inc. ASPEED Graphics Family (rev 41)
09:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Device 1cc1:8201 (rev 03)
0a:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Device 1cc1:8201 (rev 03)

Am I correct that 00:02.0 Display controller: Intel Corporation 8th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model is my graphics component?

I do get some errors on the Proxmox side but at least I know I am passing through the correct device.

 

[Yorick]

Yes, that’s your iGPU. Odd name for it, and, a quick Google shows that’s indeed what it’s called.

 

[kdrisc01]

Hey all, thanks again for everyone's great work on this so far. I now have my new build up and running (details in signature). I can confirm that I have been able to get HW transcoding working in Plex (though I wish I could add a new motherboard/cpu to the list, but I ended going with what @Yorick has to be extra safe). However, I am running into some initial problems...and both seem to be additional symptoms of the devfs bug.

1. When I restart FreeNAS, the plex jail autostarts with a devfs_ruleset of 5, even though it's set to 10. I've worked around this for now by not auto-starting the jail with FreeNAS and manually starting it, which does cause it to start with a devfs_ruleset of 10.
2. This one is the real problem: after starting the plex jail for the first time after a Freenas reboot, I am able to perform plex hardware transcoding for only a few minutes before FreeNAS crashes. No bueno.

I'm wondering if there's anything I may have missed during my setup that could fix problem #1 (and therefore potentially resolve problem #2). The only thing I haven't tried yet is disabling VGA on the motherboard, but that step really seems optional. Any ideas are greatly appreciated!

 

[Samuel Tai]

1. When I restart FreeNAS, the plex jail autostarts with a devfs_ruleset of 5, even though it's set to 10.

Yes, this is the devfs_ruleset bug, where no matter what value you configure the jail with, at runtime it only uses 5.

 

[Yorick]

> This one is the real problem: after starting the plex jail for the first time after a Freenas reboot, I am able to perform plex hardware transcoding for only a few minutes before FreeNAS crashes.

That is worrisome. I have no smart ideas other than to say "not crashing here", on the same FreeNAS version. I did update BIOS (and IPMI) to the latest, but I'd be a bit shocked if that was related.

 

[kdrisc01]

Welp, I've tried updating the BIOS from 2.2a -> 2.3. And I've moved the jumper to disable onboard VGA...but still no luck. It seems to be stable longer now, even with multiple hw transcoding streams, but then everything crashes after maybe 15 minutes. I'll probably give the TrueNAS 12 beta a shot and see if that helps. If not, maybe I'll try to RMA my motherboard as an absolute last resort :(

 

[Yorick]

What are your CPU temperatures while you are streaming? Mine hovers right around 35C with a single 4k stream transcoded to 1080p.

 

[kdrisc01]

Same here, doesn't seem to ever get above 36C

 

[Yorick]

So it is not temperature. Does IPMI record memory errors?

Other than that the only ideas I have are yours: Motherboard or CPU. Anything on FreeNAS console or in logs when it crashes?

 

[kdrisc01]

No memory errors or even anything in the logs. I went ahead and gave the TrueNAS Core 12 beta a shot and it had no problem transcoding entire movies. I think for now I'll switch back to 11.3 until TrueNAS is in the RC phase in September and make the full switch then. In the meantime, no HW transcoding for me, but at least I'm ready!

 

[Dravinian]

Ok, spent a long time on this tonight....

This is lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 06)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x16 Controller (rev 06)
00:01.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x8 Controller (rev 06)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 9 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Controller
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 9 Series Chipset Family ME Interface #1
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (2) I218-V
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 9 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI Controller #2
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 9 Series Chipset Family HD Audio Control ler
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 9 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI Controller #1
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Z97 Chipset LPC Controller
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 9 Series Chipset Family SATA Controller [AHCI Mode]
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 9 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 [GeForce GTX 970] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 [GeForce GTX 970] (rev a1)
02:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 High Definition Audio Controller

I am running headless right now and it is way past my bedtime, so will check bios tomorrow.

I wanted to ask though, would having a GPU plugged in (two of them in fact) automatically turn off the iGPU?

This is an i7-4790k and I know it works with hw transcoding, and it is an ASUS Rampage VII motherboard, so no OEM trapping. This should work, but I don't see /dev/dri and I am wondering whether just unplugged the GPUs will trip the iGPU into action? (save me lugging around a monitor to the headless box).

 

[Yorick]

Yeah on consumer boards, when you unplug the PCIe GPU, then the iGPU comes into play. There may also be a BIOS setting, "Primary Graphics", which can be set to "CPU". That, as well, should do the trick, while allowing the GTX cards to remain for whatever passthrough purposes you have them.

I'd start with the NVidia cards removed, for ease of troubleshooting. Then try again with the BIOS setting and the NVidia cards in, assuming your intent here is to go for that bhyve passthrough functionality in 12.

 

[Yorick]

In 12.0 BETA, btw, lspci has an issue where it won't read pci.ids, even though that file exists. This can be solved, assuming FreeNAS has DNS and can reach the Interwebbers, by running lspci -q instead. Alternatively, pciconf -l -v.

 

[Dravinian]

Yeah on consumer boards, when you unplug the PCIe GPU, then the iGPU comes into play. There may also be a BIOS setting, "Primary Graphics", which can be set to "CPU". That, as well, should do the trick, while allowing the GTX cards to remain for whatever passthrough purposes you have them.

I'd start with the NVidia cards removed, for ease of troubleshooting. Then try again with the BIOS setting and the NVidia cards in, assuming your intent here is to go for that bhyve passthrough functionality in 12.

Took them out first thing, I can now see DRI / DRM in FreeNAS - just checking they are in the jail now, probably not, but hopefully I can get this working now that both are showing up.

Yep, both are now in my jail too.