Activating Plex hardware acceleration

elorimer

Contributor
Joined
Aug 26, 2019
Messages
194
Switching to TrueNAS 13.0 from 12.0-U8.1 solved all problems with hardware acceleration. Cheers!
For me, somewhere along the way to 8.1 and the most recent plex software, my problems with Gemini Lake hardware transcoding were resolved. I stumbled on this by accident because I rebuilt my main pool with new drives, so reinstalled plex. I don't know why I even thought to try hardware transcoding.
 

DevilNAS

Dabbler
Joined
Feb 5, 2022
Messages
21
Switching to TrueNAS 13.0 from 12.0-U8.1 solved all problems with hardware acceleration. Cheers!
Great to know but now I am sold to SCALE. It's been working great!
 

Yorick

Wizard
Joined
Nov 4, 2018
Messages
1,912
In quick testing right now, without playing a movie all the way through, I can confirm. Where previously Plex would start playing and then "hang" when hw transcode was enabled on a Xeon E3, now it has no issues. I think I remember that Plex officially supports hw transcode on FreeBSD 13.x, so that'd make sense.

To get there I:
- Upgraded the jail to 13.1-RELEASE
- Ran pkg upgrade -y inside it
- Ran service plexmediaserver restart inside it
- No changes to the postinit script

The postinit script I am using is:

Code:
#!/bin/sh

echo '[devfsrules_bpfjail=101]
add path 'bpf*' unhide

[plex_drm=10]
add include $devfsrules_hide_all
add include $devfsrules_unhide_basic
add include $devfsrules_unhide_login
add include $devfsrules_jail
add include $devfsrules_bpfjail
add path 'dri*' unhide
add path 'dri/*' unhide
add path 'drm*' unhide
add path 'drm/*' unhide' >> /etc/devfs.rules

service devfs restart

kldload /boot/modules/i915kms.ko


The jail uses that ruleset 10.
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
577
So yea, we're all glad that plex hw transcoding now works. Unfortunately, there is still trouble with having both IPMI and hw transcode working together. It's either disable one of those two or the jail freezes from time to time and a SERVER RESET is necessary to get it working again...
Is there a solution inbound?


EDIT: Seems that the recent version has iGPU issues, still unresolved.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
577
So yea, we're all glad that plex hw transcoding now works. Unfortunately, there is still trouble with having both IPMI and hw transcode working together. It's either disable one of those two or the jail freezes from time to time and a SERVER RESET is necessary to get it working again...
Is there a solution inbound?


EDIT: Seems that the recent version has iGPU issues, still unresolved.
replying to myself to let you know, hw transcoding is again fixed for me since upgrading to plexmediaserver-plexpass-1.28.2.6103
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
577
replying to myself to let you know, hw transcoding is again fixed for me since upgrading to plexmediaserver-plexpass-1.28.2.6103
Seems, hw trancode is still unstable on 1.28.2.6151 and it's still freezing the jail (no restart possible) when I want IPMI also working.
Is this ever gonna be fixed on FreeBSD?

Code:
* Stopping pms
  + Executing prestop OK
  + Stopping services FAILED
ERROR:
 
Last edited:

SW77

Dabbler
Joined
Apr 1, 2017
Messages
16
I have also noticed that with Hardware transcoding enabled you can not do a coversion through Plex.
I'm using

Plex Version 1.28.2.6103​

 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
577
I filed a bug and according to @William Grzybowski it's an upstream FreeBSD issue where IX can't really do anything. Let's hope for improvements with U3.
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
577
Nothing changed with U3. TrueNAS Core and plex hw transcode is a tragedy.
 

elorimer

Contributor
Joined
Aug 26, 2019
Messages
194
yes it was working, and with everything updated it's not.
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
577
I'm pretty sure this is related to Core packing an old graphics driver for intel iGPUs.

pkg info drm-kmod says
Version : g20190710_1 is installed.

a driver package from 2019.

pkg search drm-kmod would provide us with
drm-kmod-20220907_1

But I'm not sure on how this would apply to my plex jail. Swapping the packages in the TrueNAS host could result in boot lock,
anyone can help?
 

Jorsher

Explorer
Joined
Jul 8, 2018
Messages
88
I should have Googled.

Have been wondering why I can't get hardware acceleration working. I completely removed my jail and started over, along with rebuilding the libraries, and it still wasn't working. I try to test it, Plex eventually throws a '1003 network' error, Plex process can't be stopped, jail can't be stopped even while forced.

@mistermanko it seems to be fixed now. drm-kmod should still hopefully be updated with future TrueNAS releases, but updating Plex to the latest version (I use PMS_Updater.sh) should fix it.
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
577
hw transcode on core is a lost cause. I switched to SCALE.
 

Jorsher

Explorer
Joined
Jul 8, 2018
Messages
88
OK.

For everyone else, hardware acceleration for iGPU on TrueNAS Core 13.0-U3.1 and Plex 1.30.0.6486 is working with the usual steps.
 

sretalla

Powered by Neutrality
Moderator
Joined
Jan 1, 2016
Messages
9,702
I note today that with Version 1.32.2.7002 of Plex Server:
(Transcoder) Removed support for Intel hardware transcoding on FreeBSD (#14281)
 

elorimer

Contributor
Joined
Aug 26, 2019
Messages
194

Yorick

Wizard
Joined
Nov 4, 2018
Messages
1,912
Kudos to them for waiting this long before dropping support. They could reasonably have done so 2 years ago.
 

rvassar

Guru
Joined
May 2, 2018
Messages
971
Looks like it's time to start figuring out a Proxmox container migration.
 

Mlovelace

Guru
Joined
Aug 19, 2014
Messages
1,111
Looks like I'll be moving my home build to Scale, though I thinks K3s is a bit unnecessary for my use case.
 
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