Kodi 19 fails to start on old intel gpu with i915 because it loads the wrong libva_driver

  • Hello again.

    This is the continuation of this issue on kodi's github.

    Minimum opengl version for kodi 19 under linux · Issue #19521 · xbmc/xbmc · GitHub

    As lrusak suggested there, I open this thread to continue the discussion here. Also, I have found a few more minor issues while running the nightly builds the last ~10 days.

    Hardware specs.

    An old intel celeron t3000 and its intergrated gpu, plus 2gb of ram

    Code
    # lscpu | grep Model
    Model name:          Celeron(R) Dual-Core CPU       T3000  @ 1.80GHz
    # lspci -k 
    00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
    Subsystem: Lenovo Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
    Kernel driver in use: i915

    Libreelec version: The latest nightly as of today April 24th 2021, i.e. nightly-20210423-5701db2.

    Log: Any available log is mentioned in the issue's report in github.

    Steps: Also mentioned in the issue report.

    So, the suggested solution does work, but I think it would be nicer to have a script that "auto" selects the proper driver for libva based on the gpu driver that is used, e.g. something like this one

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    Also, could that variable be set to i915, because that is the driver the kernel uses for that gpu? I assume not, but I wanted to ask anyway.

    Moreover, I also assume that setting that variable in there overrides any other. I tested it on my niece's 10th gen nuc and it lacked hardware acceleration even on h264!

    One more minor issue on the above system is that it reports -1Mhz as the cpu speed under system info > hardware.

  • Then its libva's maintainers to blame for that "misconfiguration"? Great :(

    I will probably upgrade my main installation from 9.2.6 to 10beta2 tomorrow (or in the following days) and call it a day with the nightlies. Feel free to close this thread if you think there is no other thing to discuss about it.

  • I'm not really sure which misconfiguration you are talking about?

    The libva driver shouldn't crash when initializing on old hardware and should gracefully fallback to the older libva intel driver.

    A bug report should probably be made to the media-driver github repo about that.

  • lrusak

    Maybe the word misconfiguration is not the right one. But how shall I describe what you mention in the second sentence, which is what really happens? That is why I think the forementioned script is a good workaround, because it sets this parameter on the fly.

    Also, is there something can I disable under settings > player > videos > postprocessing that will help the situation? Like disable vaapi altogether? :/

    mglae

    Has this patch been added to le's code as of today? I just upgraded to today's nightly-20210425-999da98 and the problem is stil there.

  • Goodmorning everyone. I noticed earlier that 2 of yesterday's commits had to do with libva and intel.

    So, I just upgraded to the latest nightly (20210427-59c8aa4) and removed the forementioned lines from .config/kodi.conf to test it. And it worked!

    Thank you so much!

  • This is where I get the url of every new nightly build for x64 (the next morning) in order to manually update my existing installation. I have never noticed the releases.json folder file at the bottom though. Let me see what can be done... Brb.

    ---edit

    It worked. I simply entered the url under custom channels and the nightly build was instantly shown under available versions. Since the installed version (20210503-83202cd) is the same as the one in the repo, I will wait and see what will it do tomorrow.

    Edited 2 times, last by jim_p (May 5, 2021 at 7:02 AM).

  • As I am still waiting for releases.json to be renewed and include today's nightly upgrade (1da9953, after days with no new nightlies due to no new commits in github), I would like to report 2 things.

    1) For some reason and as seen on the screenshot, the update... mechanism thinks that the installed version is different/older than the one in the repo, although they are the same. That "10.0-" part at the front seems to mess things up.

    2) If I press yes there and allow the update, now that the forementioned file is no longer in the repo, no warning/error/notification pops up inside kodi to let the user know it failed. In the log however, the 404 error is clear

  • Can someone PLEASE update the releases.json file from test.libreelec.tv so as to reflect the new images and allow me to upgrade via libreelec settings? I have been waiting for this moment for an entire week and I can't do it because the most critical file has not been updated for the last couple of nightlies.

    • Official Post

    As I understand, it's a file that is not generated automatically, and also not everyone has access to edit the file.


    I know that a proper/working update channel would be nice, but for now it is what it is.

    There is still the option to update LibreELEC manually. No need to wait a week doing that.

  • Well... it was working a week ago... I suppose. Because I found out about it when I did my last manual update.

    I do know how to update manually (= download the update via wget inside the .update folder) and I have done so since I first started with the nightlies, but now I want to see how will it behave for the reason mentioned above (= the mismatch in the version number).

    Also, the option in libreelec configuration > updates > available versions leads to what I say above with the 404 error.

    Edited once, last by jim_p (May 11, 2021 at 11:59 AM).

  • jim_p The shown "New Version" string is defined by the update file.

    flubshi To get the expected result try:

    Code
     @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
     {
         "LEnightly-9.80": {
    -        "prettyname_regex": "^LibreELEC-.*-([0-9]+\\.[0-9]+\\-.*-[0-9]+-[0-9a-z]{7})",
    +        "prettyname_regex": "^LibreELEC-.*-[0-9]+\\.[0-9]+\\-(.*-[0-9]+-[0-9a-z]{7})",
             "prettyname_separators": [],
             "project": {
                 "Generic.x86_64": {