Force Scale to pass new hardware to apps?

[IDtheTarget]

Hi! I'm running TrueNAS-SCALE-22.02.0 (fresh install) on a SuperMicro X12STH-LN4F with an Intel Xeon E-2356G and 64GB of ECC Ram. When I installed TrueNAS Scale, I did not know that the Intel QSV was disabled in the BIOS by default. After days of trying to figure out why the Apps wouldn't transcode using QSV, I finally figured out that the host wasn't seeing the Intel integrated graphics. So, after digging around, I found the BIOS setting that enabled the integrated graphics. I'm now seeing /dev/dri:
benjamin@athena:/$ ls -alh /dev/dri total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 80 Mar 19 09:40 . drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4.1K Mar 19 09:41 .. drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 Mar 19 09:40 by-path crw-rw---- 1 root video 226, 0 Mar 19 09:40 card0

However, when I try transcoding in either the TrueNAS official Plex app or the TrueCharts Jellyfin app, my CPU goes to 70% (for a UHD 4k movie), there's no button for me to edit the "GPU Configuration" in the Edit App three-dot menu, and when I go into the shell for each app I don't see a /dev/dri. I've tried to install vainfo on the host and in the apps (and considering how many graphics issues I see in the forum, *why* isn't vainfo installed by default?) but no avail.

lspci on the host shows the Intel QSV (device 4c9a):
benjamin@athena:/$ lspci | grep -i vga 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 4c9a (rev 04) 03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ASPEED Technology, Inc. ASPEED Graphics Family (rev 52)

But again, lspci isn't in the apps so I can't even verify if the app can see the GPU.

My current hypothesis is that the part of TrueNAS Scale that passes the GPU to the App only looks at the available hardware during install. I've already put a bunch of content in my pool, I'd rather not do a bare-metal reinstall if I can help it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Kris Moore]

Might be a bug or something we have to do to force it to re-detect. Can you open a ticket on https://jira.ixsystems.com with a debug file attached (System -> Advanced -> Save Debug). We can discuss more there and figure out the issue, or give you a workaround.

 

[IDtheTarget]

Might be a bug or something we have to do to force it to re-detect. Can you open a ticket on https://jira.ixsystems.com with a debug file attached (System -> Advanced -> Save Debug). We can discuss more there and figure out the issue, or give you a workaround.

Thanks! Yep, I'll do that as soon as I get home tonight!

 

[IDtheTarget]

Ticket created this morning. Weather took out my Internet yesterday afternoon.

https://jira.ixsystems.com/browse/NAS-115406

 

[impovich]

Hi @IDtheTarget, did you solve the issue in the end?

 

[IDtheTarget]

Hi @IDtheTarget, did you solve the issue in the end?

Yes and no.

I basically didn't have the time to mess with the server for a year, and when I came back to it Cobia had come out. I went through the upgrade process and now my QuickSync is showing up for my multimedia server apps (I'm using Emby now, Plex has just completely pissed me off).

I purchased the Emby lifetime license so I could do hardware transcoding, and it was working beautifully for a long time. Then it stopped working. I got so fed up that I purchased an Nvidia card. Then I couldn't get it's hardware transcoding to work, or even get the app to start. I finally figured out that, for some reason, you can only assign one GPU core (iow, one i915 core or one nvidia core) to the app. I don't know why they changed it. So the i915 may still work, I don't know. I'd had 3 cores assigned so I could hardware transcode to multiple TV's in my house at once.

Anyway, Cobia seems to have fixed the issue.

 

[Kris Moore]

@IDtheTarget - Ended up switching to Jellyfin here for the same reason. Emby being closed source scared me off a bit not wanting to repeat my Plex Experience in a few years :)

 

[IDtheTarget]

@IDtheTarget - Ended up switching to Jellyfin here for the same reason. Emby being closed source scared me off a bit not wanting to repeat my Plex Experience in a few years :)

I tried Jellyfin first, but I do most of my content viewing on Roku devices and the Jellyfin client kept giving me issues with the subtitles. Subtitles are critical to me due to hearing issues.

 

[winnielinnie]

For future reference (not sure if this also applies to Jellyfin on Roku, but it does for FireTV):

You can choose a third-party player (or backend), which resolves many playback issues on certain smart TVs. The VLC player / backend has given me the smoothest experience for Jellyfin on FireTV.