Plex with QuickSync - Truenas Scale

[CaputoDavide93]

Hi All,

I reviewd multiple posts in this forum and reserached a lot on google, however I cannot find my answer!

Current Setup

• 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-11400 @ 2.60GHz
• TrueNAS-SCALE-Bluefin
• Plex (Official Chart) - App

During some stress tests using Plex, it is clear the QuickSync transcoding is not in use. The CPU is always 100% even just to transcode subtitles.

There is any way that I can passthougt the iGPU of QuickSync in the container so I can take advantage of this tech ? I'm using TrueNas Scale, so no Jail available.
Please help!
Davide

 

[Kris Moore]

Sure! When you deploy the App, take a look at the GPU section and make sure you have it set to 'Allocate 1' like this.

On the Plex side you may need to check your settings as well, ensure that it is trying to use the GPU after that point.

 

[CaputoDavide93]

Many thanks! The solution was simpler than expected!

 

[aphexcloud]

Sure! When you deploy the App, take a look at the GPU section and make sure you have it set to 'Allocate 1' like this.

View attachment 65374

On the Plex side you may need to check your settings as well, ensure that it is trying to use the GPU after that point.

can you please elaborate on why there are up to 5 (in my case) and if adding the 5 will improve performance of the plex app when transcoding?

 

[Kris Moore]

Checked with our team, but that is a way to handle time-sharing of your GPU between Containers. So you would assign GPU 1 to container 1, GPU2 to container 2, etc etc.

 

[slayercft]

I know this is an older thread, but I'm having the same issue. However whenever I'm editing the plex app, theres nothing to click there. What am I doing wrong? I have it enabled from the Plex dashboard. I dont see any option in my bios (on an S1200RPS) pertaining to Intel Quick Sync

*TrueNAS-SCALE-22.12.3.2
*Truenas charts plex official 1.32.4.7195_1.7.52
*Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz (supports intel quick sync)

I tried playing a 4k movie earlier down to 1080, and cpu hit 100% load and got up to 85 ...It's like all the options to GPU configuration are just greyed out. I feel like this is something dumb that I've just wholly missed.

 

[Kris Moore]

That makes it sound like the onboard GPU isn't being recognized for some reason. Check /dev/dri/* and see if you have any devices there, and I'd suggest reviewing /var/log/messages to see if there are any messages at boot-up from the kernel about DRM/DRI not being able to initialize.

> cat /var/log/messages | grep i915

Barring that, you can open a bug ticket for us to investigate, but first thing to do is see if the kernel even recognizes that Xeon as having built-in GPU/Quicksync.

 

[slayercft]

That makes it sound like the onboard GPU isn't being recognized for some reason. Check /dev/dri/* and see if you have any devices there, and I'd suggest reviewing /var/log/messages to see if there are any messages at boot-up from the kernel about DRM/DRI not being able to initialize.

> cat /var/log/messages | grep i915

Barring that, you can open a bug ticket for us to investigate, but first thing to do is see if the kernel even recognizes that Xeon as having built-in GPU/Quicksync.

appreciate the reply! sorry for late response. I'm also very new to this, very little experience but am trying.

admin@truenas[~]$ sudo cat /var/log/messages | grep i915
admin@truenas[~]$ cd /dev/dri/
admin@truenas[/dev/dri]$ ls
by-path card0

Basically no response on the logs, and only shows card0?

following another thread, I think maybe its not detecting it. Seems it only finds one VGA controller, I assume my motherboards... Not sure how to proceed.

admin@truenas[/dev/dri]$ ls
by-path card0
admin@truenas[/dev/dri]$
admin@truenas[/dev/dri]$ ls -alh /dev/dri
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 80 Jul 18 00:48 .
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 6.2K Jul 18 00:49 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 Jul 18 00:48 by-path
crw-rw---- 1 root video 226, 0 Jul 18 00:48 card0
admin@truenas[/dev/dri]$ lspci | grep -i vga
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G200e [Pilot] ServerEngines (SEP1) (rev 05)
admin@truenas[/dev/dri]$

EDIT: updated to includ only one vga controller

 

[sretalla]

Maybe this adds something to the conversation:

PSA: How to Fix Quick Sync on newer Intel CPUs in SCALE

Okay, so this took awhile to figure out, and I want to thank @waqarahmed for giving me the command that ultimately got my Quick Sync working in TrueNAS SCALE and let me pass it through to my Apps. This post does not apply for those with nvidia cards. It only applies to those of us who...

www.truenas.com

 

[Kris Moore]

That Matrox sounds like a drop-in PCI video card, not your onboard Intel...

 

[NickF]

admin@truenas[/dev/dri]$ lspci | grep -i vga
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G200e [Pilot] ServerEngines (SEP1) (rev 05)

That Matrox sounds like a drop-in PCI video card, not your onboard Intel...

Probably from ASPEED controller. I see it too on my H12.

@slayercft Since we are only seing the on-board VGA I'd assume there's a BIOS option you have disabled that turns off the IGPU. Apparently this may be the default

Enabling Intel GPU on Supermicro X11-SCA-F ?

I recently built a new machine for ESXi that is based on an Intel E-2278G (P630 graphics) and X11SCAF Supermicro motherboard. ESXi does not see the Intel GPU. Is there a setting in the Supermicro motherboard to make this function? Does the motherboard not support an iGPU (would seem a weird...

forums.servethehome.com

The default configuration of the motherboard in fact has the onboard graphics disabled and I had to do a couple of things to get it working.

Advanced->System Agent->Graphics Configuration->Internal Graphics.

Set this to ENABLED the default is DISABLED.
After doing this and rebooting I still couldn't get video out of the connected HDMI port. It is unknown by me if at this point the GPU would have been available to the hypervisor.

Go back into the Graphics Configuration and set Primary Display to IGFX (internal graphics). Now the HDMI port works and now the Intel video shows up in ESXi and (theoretically) can be passed through to a VM.

 

[slayercft]

That Matrox sounds like a drop-in PCI video card, not your onboard Intel...

Nope, theres only one PCI in the server and its my LSI raid card. I just opened it up to double check haha, but its been plugged into onboard video the whole time.

Probably from ASPEED controller. I see it too on my H12.

@slayercft Since we are only seing the on-board VGA I'd assume there's a BIOS option you have disabled that turns off the IGPU. Apparently this may be the default

Enabling Intel GPU on Supermicro X11-SCA-F ?

I recently built a new machine for ESXi that is based on an Intel E-2278G (P630 graphics) and X11SCAF Supermicro motherboard. ESXi does not see the Intel GPU. Is there a setting in the Supermicro motherboard to make this function? Does the motherboard not support an iGPU (would seem a weird...

forums.servethehome.com

The first thing i did when i ran into this was check the BIOS to see if it was disabled. That could be where my problem is. I was under the impression it was up to the actual CPU to support it or not, but I feel like its my mobo that dosent support it.
Only reason why i say this is that in my BIOS, there is like a full page of processor options, where it WOULD be...but isnt lol.

In fact the ONLY option in all of the BIOS pertaining to video....is enable or disable onboard video. I've tried it both ways lol.Heres a pic of the BIOS options pertaining to the CPU. It's an intel server board S1200RPS, and the ONLY option related to video is enable/disable onboard video (with a big warning saying if you disable this and do not have an addon PCI video card, there will not be any video displayed) haha. It also seems like intel pulled the bios updates for these boards, which is a shame

EDIT: added picture and update on bios

 

[oldmichael]

I just updated to Cobia recently and it was working fine for about a month but today I updated to the most recent version of cobia and my plex stopped working.

I noticed when I tried to update Plex to get it to work I got an error:
"values.gpuConfiguration.gpu.intel.com/i915: Invalid choice: 1"

So I went in and edited the GPU resource for intel to 0 (noticed there was no option to set it to "1" anymore)
Does that mean I can no longer use quicksync for some reason? Is there another way to set this? I dont have a video card I only use quicksync on my CPU. This is my only option now...

 

[Kris Moore]

That is strange. Recent updates haven't touched the GPU drivers or anything. Still using quicksync here as well. Is this setting only missing on Plex, or do other apps also show "0" for Intel GPU?

 

[oldmichael]

Actually I never tried to look cause I wasn't using the iGPU for anything but Plex before (maybe I should be?) but regardless, I just checked two other apps and I only have that one option "0" ....

 

[Kris Moore]

This sounds like the DRI device went away. Can you check if the render devices are available still?