LE9.2 RPi kernel 64-bit?

Parf · October 18, 2023 at 4:26 PM

Hi,

Does LE9.2 contain a 64bit kernel instead of the standard 32bit LPAE one?

I had problems running 4K films on LE9.2 as the OOM killer was being triggered. Im thinking with the GPU accelerated H265 decoding and a 64bit kernel, it will help with high bitrate 4K rips on LE9.2

Thanks

**chewitt** · October 19, 2023 at 9:25 AM

RPi4 on LE 9.2 has a 64-bit kernel and 32-bit userspace so that's not the problem or the solution. I'd suggest starting with an update to LE 11 or an LE 12 nightly to avoid all the issues found/fixed since the last LE 9.2 release (around two years ago).

Parf · October 24, 2023 at 9:35 PM

I work next door to the Sony plant that makes the Raspberry Pi's. I was in there today and they have an impressive teaching room where they offer courses so I'm thinking of signing up to learn more about the Pi. So I don't look like a complete noobie I have a few questions I'm hoping someone can answer.

In LE 10 and above the config says GPU_mem is set to 76MB as it says 76MB are needed for H264 decoder. I was told not to touch this as the Pi4 allocates GPU memory from the total memory when needed. In the distroconfig it has a line arm_64bit=1 which I assume tells the Pi4 to run in 64bit mode.

In LE 9.2.8 the config says GPU_mem is set to 320MB as it says at least 288M is needed for some 4k HEVC files. In the distroconfig it doesn't have the line arm_64bit=1 which is why I asked if 9.2.8 is 64bit.

I can only assume this is because of the different kernels and Kodi versions maybe? Is there a reason behind this as I only use the Pi4 as a media player for 4K rips?

Thank you

frakkin64 · October 24, 2023 at 11:03 PM

Fairly sure it is a 32-bit kernel, it's been a while. I think the issue is MMAL couldn't work with a 64-bit kernel & 32-bit user space (see here), I remember reading that way back when I was still using Raspberry Pi OS and running Kodi on that.

It could be an add-on as well, or any number of causes. But I think the point is LE 9.2 is no longer being maintained, so your not going to see any fixes unless you can find someone on the community maintaining it. So why not just upgrade?

LE12 nightlies work great as daily drivers, sure there are bumps in the road if you update frequently, but you can settle into a stable nightly and it works fine.

BTW, I realize the link I included doesn't exactly say that, I'll see if I can find where I read that.

BTW, "uname -a" will confirm for you on the shell in LE9.

$ git branch --remotes --contains 303d2b39c021ffbd7fece0db7822d8f5e0c1b73f

upstream/libreelec-10.0

upstream/libreelec-11.0

upstream/master

**HiassofT** · October 24, 2023 at 11:22 PM

LE 9.2 on RPi4 was a stop gap, using 32bit kernel and a franken-kodi which cross-breeded the old MMAL codec with the new GBM graphics stack. No one should be using that today

The reason we went for that was simply because the old graphics stack didn't support RPi4 and the new v4l2 decoders weren't ready yet. So we had to find some interim hack (which we knew would be throw-away) to get some release out.

64bit kernel in LE10 and now finally 64bit userspace as well in LE12 were the incremental steps we had to do to keep everything going (64bit userspace was held up because there wasn't a 64bit widevine library - which some people need for DRM stuff - available until recently).

so long,

Hias

Parf · October 25, 2023 at 9:21 AM

Now I understand. Thank you for the detailed explanation.

I will use LE12 from now on.