intel-media-driver with Intel 1165G7 and Rocky 9
@Alberto just a quick follow up from last meeting, you had suggested installing the official Intel driver to get the most out of this CPU. I installed as per this kb <https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia>, everything seems OK (it shows up installed because I ran it again as an example, forgot to copy the output first time): [root@what ~]# dnf install intel-media-driver Last metadata expiration check: 2:11:34 ago on Wed 15 Feb 2023 03:49:21 PM. Package intel-media-driver-21.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 is already installed. Dependencies resolved. Nothing to do. Complete! Only thing I was wondering was how to verify that the OS is actually using the newly installed driver. After reboot, the Gnome settings app is reporting "Mesa Intel® Xe Graphics (TGL GT2)", I'm not 100% sure but I think that's what it was displaying before the install as well. In any case I'll keep using it and will report back if anything exciting happens. Thanks for the tip 🙂
On 2023-02-15 Chris Audet wrote:
[root@what ~]# dnf install intel-media-driver Last metadata expiration check: 2:11:34 ago on Wed 15 Feb 2023 03:49:21 PM. Package intel-media-driver-21.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 is
rpm -ql intel-media-driver-21.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 |grep ko.xz take the string between the last / and the ko.xz and do: lsmod |grep inteldrivermodname (change inteldrivermodname to the string) If you get output, it's loaded, and likely being used. If you want to see if it's really being used and have some fun (read: crash your video) then try rmmod inteldrivermodname (ugly but it shoudn't foobar your fs's or anything... can likely ssh into the box to reboot properly, or use magic-sys-rq keys) Forget GUI tools, GUIs suck! :-)
Forget GUI tools, GUIs suck Based 💪
Judging on the results from this kb <https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005520/graphics.html> the DRM driver appears to be loaded: bash-5.1$ lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display' 0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (rev 01) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3f19 Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 For completeness, here are the results from the suggested commands. I think I'm missing some of the expected output (possibly because this PC uses Wayland)? I tried to grep for 46, intel, and 2c2141cd33dfa6e4d8f1ad9fdc6cd2d1d380c7. bash-5.1$ rpm -ql intel-media-driver-21.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 /usr/lib/.build-id /usr/lib/.build-id/46 /usr/lib/.build-id/46/2c2141cd33dfa6e4d8f1ad9fdc6cd2d1d380c7 /usr/lib64/dri/iHD_drv_video.so /usr/share/doc/intel-media-driver /usr/share/doc/intel-media-driver/README.md /usr/share/licenses/intel-media-driver /usr/share/licenses/intel-media-driver/LICENSE.md /usr/share/metainfo/intel-media-driver.metainfo.xml bash-5.1$ lsmod | grep i915 i915 3321856 21 i2c_algo_bit 16384 1 i915 intel_gtt 24576 1 i915 drm_buddy 20480 1 i915 drm_dp_helper 159744 1 i915 drm_kms_helper 200704 2 drm_dp_helper,i915 cec 53248 2 drm_dp_helper,i915 ttm 86016 1 i915 drm 622592 14 drm_dp_helper,drm_kms_helper,drm_buddy,i915,ttm video 57344 2 ideapad_laptop,i915 On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 9:38 PM Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.ca> wrote:
On 2023-02-15 Chris Audet wrote:
[root@what ~]# dnf install intel-media-driver Last metadata expiration check: 2:11:34 ago on Wed 15 Feb 2023 03:49:21 PM. Package intel-media-driver-21.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 is
rpm -ql intel-media-driver-21.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 |grep ko.xz
take the string between the last / and the ko.xz and do:
lsmod |grep inteldrivermodname
(change inteldrivermodname to the string)
If you get output, it's loaded, and likely being used.
If you want to see if it's really being used and have some fun (read: crash your video) then try
rmmod inteldrivermodname
(ugly but it shoudn't foobar your fs's or anything... can likely ssh into the box to reboot properly, or use magic-sys-rq keys)
Forget GUI tools, GUIs suck! :-)
You’re not seeing any results because that’s not a kernel module. It’s also not an Intel video driver at all – see below. There is no newer/better intel video driver than what your distro provides – Intel is 100% explicitly clear about that. The official driver is whatever comes with the kernel, period. See How to Identify & Find Graphics Drivers for Linux* (intel.com)<https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005520/graphics.html>. The only supported way to get an updated Intel video device driver is to upgrade to a newer Linux kernel. The device driver is bundled with the kernel, and is version-locked to the kernel. iHD_drv_video is not a newer/better device driver for Intel video cards, it’s the Intel VAAPI driver, only used for video encoding and decoding and a handful of other acceleration tasks. (GitHub - intel/media-driver<https://github.com/intel/media-driver>) There’s a similar driver for (I think) older chips, GitHub - intel/intel-vaapi-driver: VA-API user mode driver for Intel GEN Graphics family<https://github.com/intel/intel-vaapi-driver>. The distro-provided, kernel-bundled, i915 Kernel DRI driver will continue to be used for everything that isn’t a VAAPI function. (There are plenty of other acceleration tasks the i915 driver handles on its, own, I don’t really understand why VAAPI has to be a separate thing that can’t be bundled into i915.ko, maybe it’s a licensing issue?) The test to see if the VAAPI driver is now functioning is to run the vainfo(1) tool. (On Debian, it’s contained in the “vainfo” package.) While Ubuntu-specific, this page describes checking for VAAPI support in more details: Enable Hardware Video Acceleration (VA-API) For Firefox in Ubuntu 20.04 / 18.04 & Higher | UbuntuHandbook<https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2021/08/enable-hardware-video-acceleration-va-api-for-firefox-in-ubuntu-20-04-18-04-higher/>. More VAAPI links are at vaapi (www.freedesktop.org)<https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/vaapi/>. Anything with an inefficient or slow H.264 implementation (how would this even happen in 2023???) could benefit from VAAPI acceleration, whether encoding, decoding, or transcoding. I’m not sure what else it could accomplish for you. Also remember that Intel accelerated video functions can sometimes be, even when they’re slightly faster, more power-hungry and heat-producing than the equivalent optimized CPU code – so in laptops or fanless builds, you’re probably better off not using VAAPI at all. Not very much uses VAAPI – mostly just video tools, including video players, and they have to be built with VAAPI support. One would hope that there’s a decent amount of widget re-use by now, and that e.g. your system-default video player could make use of this capability without any special configuration, but that’s far from guaranteed. VLC, naturally, supports VAAPI, but they note that using it can be worse than not using it (VLC VAAPI - VideoLAN Wiki<https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_VAAPI/>); other playback tools may not have the same problem. VAAPI just uses a different set of transistors to accomplish exactly the same task your CPU would normally do in “software”. If you don’t do H.264 playback or recording, VAAPI is probably pointless for you. The other instructions at RPMFusion’s Multimedia page may be somewhat useful, they add support for a variety of other codecs that your system (excluding VLC, as always…) might not currently support. If you don’t have a legacy collection of files that you can’t currently play, following these instructions isn’t going to change anything for you. I take issue with the last item on that page: randomly installing firmware packages from untrusted 3rd-party repos might improve some aspect of your system, or might break it completely instead – make sure you know how to back out that change using an emergency boot disk before running that command! I hate that I have to say this, but you probably don’t want to enable RPMFusion on any corporate system without checking with your company’s lawyer(s), or at least VP-level responsible people, first. Their entire existence is founded on shipping RPMs that Red Hat & the Fedora Project (mostly) *can’t* legally or technically include, not *don’t want to* - IMHO that’s a very serious misrepresentation by the RPMFusion project. As a personal user, I loved that there was a source of precompiled packages that followed RMS’ “software wants to be free” ideology, but as a corporate user, it’s… not necessarily toxic, but for sure problematic/questionable. This is totally a YMMV area – you may work for a small org. that has no chance of ever being on anyone’s target list and therefore doesn’t care, or you might work for some high-profile org. that needs to remain utterly beyond reproach at all times in all things: YMMV, as I said. -Adam From: Roundtable <roundtable-bounces@muug.ca> On Behalf Of Chris Audet Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2023 9:33 AM To: Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.ca> Cc: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable@muug.ca> Subject: Re: [RndTbl] intel-media-driver with Intel 1165G7 and Rocky 9
Forget GUI tools, GUIs suck Based 💪
Judging on the results from this kb<https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005520/graphics.html> the DRM driver appears to be loaded: bash-5.1$ lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display' 0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (rev 01) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3f19 Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 For completeness, here are the results from the suggested commands. I think I'm missing some of the expected output (possibly because this PC uses Wayland)? I tried to grep for 46, intel, and 2c2141cd33dfa6e4d8f1ad9fdc6cd2d1d380c7. bash-5.1$ rpm -ql intel-media-driver-21.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 /usr/lib/.build-id /usr/lib/.build-id/46 /usr/lib/.build-id/46/2c2141cd33dfa6e4d8f1ad9fdc6cd2d1d380c7 /usr/lib64/dri/iHD_drv_video.so /usr/share/doc/intel-media-driver /usr/share/doc/intel-media-driver/README.md /usr/share/licenses/intel-media-driver /usr/share/licenses/intel-media-driver/LICENSE.md /usr/share/metainfo/intel-media-driver.metainfo.xml bash-5.1$ lsmod | grep i915 i915 3321856 21 i2c_algo_bit 16384 1 i915 intel_gtt 24576 1 i915 drm_buddy 20480 1 i915 drm_dp_helper 159744 1 i915 drm_kms_helper 200704 2 drm_dp_helper,i915 cec 53248 2 drm_dp_helper,i915 ttm 86016 1 i915 drm 622592 14 drm_dp_helper,drm_kms_helper,drm_buddy,i915,ttm video 57344 2 ideapad_laptop,i915 On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 9:38 PM Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.ca<mailto:trevor@tecnopolis.ca>> wrote: On 2023-02-15 Chris Audet wrote:
[root@what ~]# dnf install intel-media-driver Last metadata expiration check: 2:11:34 ago on Wed 15 Feb 2023 03:49:21 PM. Package intel-media-driver-21.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 is
rpm -ql intel-media-driver-21.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 |grep ko.xz take the string between the last / and the ko.xz and do: lsmod |grep inteldrivermodname (change inteldrivermodname to the string) If you get output, it's loaded, and likely being used. If you want to see if it's really being used and have some fun (read: crash your video) then try rmmod inteldrivermodname (ugly but it shoudn't foobar your fs's or anything... can likely ssh into the box to reboot properly, or use magic-sys-rq keys) Forget GUI tools, GUIs suck! :-)
On 2023-02-18 Adam Thompson wrote:
You’re not seeing any results because that’s not a kernel module.
Ya, no .ko.xz, no kernel module in the rpm. Adam nailed it. But we should go back to Chris' main pain point, which you might have missed because he brought it up at the last meeting: (I think) he wants the hardware/software switching that some laptops do between discrete / onboard video auto-switching to work in linux. But now that we're reading all this detail, I'm a bit baffled because Intel doesn't really do a discrete / onboard thing at all, do they? Now, maybe Chris has a Intel-onboard / Nvidia-discrete laptop, which were somewhat common on the high-end in the past? And AFAIK no one ever got those to work with Linux (in X) without having a reboot in between and doing a bunch of driver disabling/etc. They were more a Windows thing. And I think (from other conversations) he doing this because games. Maybe it would be helpful if Chris told us his laptop brand / model, and confirm what the base issue is. P.S. Nice that Intel is trying to do linux drivers "right" (sans the auto-switching). I fight with the nvidia binary akmod issues every few years, and it's a real pain they don't just integrate it all into the kernel.
Ah, yes, much detail was omitted in the OP :-). Both nVidia and AMD have solutions for that under Linux, but IIRC they barely worked. I think nVidia's was called Optimus, can't recall the AMD name. The VAAPI driver may or may not help his system, but it sure won't do GPU switching! The nVidia binary drivers may work with Wayland, but as of ~12mos ago, the consensus was "just run X", and I can't find anything that says it's officially supported at all. The AMD story is barely even documented... typical. :-/ It was relatively rare in the wild to find switchable AMD GPUs in the first place. As usual, ArchLinux has top-notch documentation on the subject: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/hybrid_graphics Looks like if you want PRIME under Waytland, you may be pulling a Panasonic: just slightly ahead of your time! -Adam Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg> ________________________________ From: Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.ca> Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2023 11:18:14 PM To: Adam Thompson <athompso@athompso.net> Cc: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable@muug.ca> Subject: Re: [RndTbl] intel-media-driver with Intel 1165G7 and Rocky 9 On 2023-02-18 Adam Thompson wrote:
You’re not seeing any results because that’s not a kernel module.
Ya, no .ko.xz, no kernel module in the rpm. Adam nailed it. But we should go back to Chris' main pain point, which you might have missed because he brought it up at the last meeting: (I think) he wants the hardware/software switching that some laptops do between discrete / onboard video auto-switching to work in linux. But now that we're reading all this detail, I'm a bit baffled because Intel doesn't really do a discrete / onboard thing at all, do they? Now, maybe Chris has a Intel-onboard / Nvidia-discrete laptop, which were somewhat common on the high-end in the past? And AFAIK no one ever got those to work with Linux (in X) without having a reboot in between and doing a bunch of driver disabling/etc. They were more a Windows thing. And I think (from other conversations) he doing this because games. Maybe it would be helpful if Chris told us his laptop brand / model, and confirm what the base issue is. P.S. Nice that Intel is trying to do linux drivers "right" (sans the auto-switching). I fight with the nvidia binary akmod issues every few years, and it's a real pain they don't just integrate it all into the kernel.
@Adam great breakdown, thanks! *>Maybe it would be helpful if Chris told us his laptop brand / model* Lenovo Thinkbook 14 G2 ITL with Intel 1165G7 (no dedicated GPU, just Intel iGPU) *>and confirm what the base issue is* Thankfully there's no actual problem I'm trying to fix, as far as I can tell the Intel iGPU works great out of the box, including browser video decode. This was mostly a follow up from last month's meeting. It was suggested that the hardware might be too new for the kernel that ships with Rocky 9, and I was directed to look at the Intel stuff on this KB <https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia>. If no action is needed then then I'll just keep on truckin' 🙂 *>you probably don’t want to enable RPMFusion on any corporate system without checking with your company’s lawyer(s)* Good insight, I never considered this. This is a personal device but we've also got a handful of Rocky Linux VMs at work, so I will double check. On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 11:33 PM Adam Thompson <athompso@athompso.net> wrote:
Ah, yes, much detail was omitted in the OP :-).
Both nVidia and AMD have solutions for that under Linux, but IIRC they barely worked. I think nVidia's was called Optimus, can't recall the AMD name.
The VAAPI driver may or may not help his system, but it sure won't do GPU switching!
The nVidia binary drivers may work with Wayland, but as of ~12mos ago, the consensus was "just run X", and I can't find anything that says it's officially supported at all.
The AMD story is barely even documented... typical. :-/ It was relatively rare in the wild to find switchable AMD GPUs in the first place.
As usual, ArchLinux has top-notch documentation on the subject: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/hybrid_graphics
Looks like if you want PRIME under Waytland, you may be pulling a Panasonic: just slightly ahead of your time!
-Adam
Get Outlook for Android <https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg> ------------------------------ *From:* Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.ca> *Sent:* Saturday, February 18, 2023 11:18:14 PM *To:* Adam Thompson <athompso@athompso.net> *Cc:* Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable@muug.ca> *Subject:* Re: [RndTbl] intel-media-driver with Intel 1165G7 and Rocky 9
On 2023-02-18 Adam Thompson wrote:
You’re not seeing any results because that’s not a kernel module.
Ya, no .ko.xz, no kernel module in the rpm.
Adam nailed it. But we should go back to Chris' main pain point, which you might have missed because he brought it up at the last meeting: (I think) he wants the hardware/software switching that some laptops do between discrete / onboard video auto-switching to work in linux.
But now that we're reading all this detail, I'm a bit baffled because Intel doesn't really do a discrete / onboard thing at all, do they? Now, maybe Chris has a Intel-onboard / Nvidia-discrete laptop, which were somewhat common on the high-end in the past?
And AFAIK no one ever got those to work with Linux (in X) without having a reboot in between and doing a bunch of driver disabling/etc. They were more a Windows thing.
And I think (from other conversations) he doing this because games.
Maybe it would be helpful if Chris told us his laptop brand / model, and confirm what the base issue is.
P.S. Nice that Intel is trying to do linux drivers "right" (sans the auto-switching). I fight with the nvidia binary akmod issues every few years, and it's a real pain they don't just integrate it all into the kernel. _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
Keeping in mind that RHEL (and thus Rocky, Alma, et al.) ships a specific kernel version and generally sticks with it throughout the lifespan of the distro version (Red Hat Enterprise Linux Release Dates - Red Hat Customer Portal<https://access.redhat.com/articles/3078>)… You may be able upgrade to newer kernels using e.g. the elrepo repositories. See How to Install Latest Linux Kernel in RHEL 8 (linuxshelltips.com)<https://www.linuxshelltips.com/install-linux-kernel-rhel-8/#:~:text=Installing%20Kernel%20in%20RHEL%208%20First%2C%20update%20your,-y%20install%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.elrepo.org%2Felrepo-release-8.el8.elrepo.noarch.rpm%20%24%20sudo%20rpm%20--import%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.elrepo.org%2FRPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org>. But now you’re getting far away from what’s well-supported. You would generally speaking be better off just upgrading to EL9, to get a newer kernel. Or Fedora. Or Arch or Gentoo if you need to be on the bleeding edge and either have no life, or want less of one. ;-) (There’s also LFS if you are seriously twisted. Don’t go there.) If your goal is compatibility with other systems, and it works well enough as-is, then yeah, leave it alone. The days of being able to mix and match versions of core software components are [mostly] about 15yrs in the past, by now, sadly. -Adam From: Roundtable <roundtable-bounces@muug.ca> On Behalf Of Chris Audet Sent: Saturday, March 4, 2023 12:40 PM To: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable@muug.ca> Subject: Re: [RndTbl] intel-media-driver with Intel 1165G7 and Rocky 9 @Adam great breakdown, thanks!
Maybe it would be helpful if Chris told us his laptop brand / model Lenovo Thinkbook 14 G2 ITL with Intel 1165G7 (no dedicated GPU, just Intel iGPU)
and confirm what the base issue is Thankfully there's no actual problem I'm trying to fix, as far as I can tell the Intel iGPU works great out of the box, including browser video decode. This was mostly a follow up from last month's meeting. It was suggested that the hardware might be too new for the kernel that ships with Rocky 9, and I was directed to look at the Intel stuff on this KB<https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia>. If no action is needed then then I'll just keep on truckin' 🙂
you probably don’t want to enable RPMFusion on any corporate system without checking with your company’s lawyer(s) Good insight, I never considered this. This is a personal device but we've also got a handful of Rocky Linux VMs at work, so I will double check.
On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 11:33 PM Adam Thompson <athompso@athompso.net<mailto:athompso@athompso.net>> wrote: Ah, yes, much detail was omitted in the OP :-). Both nVidia and AMD have solutions for that under Linux, but IIRC they barely worked. I think nVidia's was called Optimus, can't recall the AMD name. The VAAPI driver may or may not help his system, but it sure won't do GPU switching! The nVidia binary drivers may work with Wayland, but as of ~12mos ago, the consensus was "just run X", and I can't find anything that says it's officially supported at all. The AMD story is barely even documented... typical. :-/ It was relatively rare in the wild to find switchable AMD GPUs in the first place. As usual, ArchLinux has top-notch documentation on the subject: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/hybrid_graphics Looks like if you want PRIME under Waytland, you may be pulling a Panasonic: just slightly ahead of your time! -Adam Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg> ________________________________ From: Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.ca<mailto:trevor@tecnopolis.ca>> Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2023 11:18:14 PM To: Adam Thompson <athompso@athompso.net<mailto:athompso@athompso.net>> Cc: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable@muug.ca<mailto:roundtable@muug.ca>> Subject: Re: [RndTbl] intel-media-driver with Intel 1165G7 and Rocky 9 On 2023-02-18 Adam Thompson wrote:
You’re not seeing any results because that’s not a kernel module.
Ya, no .ko.xz, no kernel module in the rpm. Adam nailed it. But we should go back to Chris' main pain point, which you might have missed because he brought it up at the last meeting: (I think) he wants the hardware/software switching that some laptops do between discrete / onboard video auto-switching to work in linux. But now that we're reading all this detail, I'm a bit baffled because Intel doesn't really do a discrete / onboard thing at all, do they? Now, maybe Chris has a Intel-onboard / Nvidia-discrete laptop, which were somewhat common on the high-end in the past? And AFAIK no one ever got those to work with Linux (in X) without having a reboot in between and doing a bunch of driver disabling/etc. They were more a Windows thing. And I think (from other conversations) he doing this because games. Maybe it would be helpful if Chris told us his laptop brand / model, and confirm what the base issue is. P.S. Nice that Intel is trying to do linux drivers "right" (sans the auto-switching). I fight with the nvidia binary akmod issues every few years, and it's a real pain they don't just integrate it all into the kernel. _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca<mailto:Roundtable@muug.ca> https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
participants (3)
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Adam Thompson -
Chris Audet -
Trevor Cordes