Posts by jbinkley60

  • Raspberry5: SSD instead of microSD “It’s time to ditch microSD”

    The point I was trying to make earlier in my post but got a bit off track with the numbers is that I agree with you. An SSD will help with storage I/O but most folks won't see much of a difference. I have a few Raspberry Pi devices and only one has an SSD, my test unit and that was mainly to see what was involved in adding an SSD. SD card reliability has improved but isn't at the level of SSDs. Reliability would be the main thing which would drive me to put an SSD in a Raspberry Pi.


    Jeff

  • Raspberry5: SSD instead of microSD “It’s time to ditch microSD”

    Quote from LeannLL

    Hi

    In Internet and Youtube I saw “It’s time to ditch microSD”

    I'm still new to Raspberry and co.


    A MicroSD card is much easier to use. Have you installed an SSD in your Raspberry 5? My main use case is streaming from Jellyfin server (network traffic). Can anyone say whether the performance is significantly better with SSD instead of SDcard?

    best regards

    <3

    I view the SSD vs SD card discussion more of a question of reliability vs. performance with Kodi / LibreElec but SD card reliability has improved significantly over the past 5 years. As mentioned above the main advantage of SSD for performance is disk I/O. I run Mezzmo, which is similar to your Jellyfin server, and have an endpoint performance Wiki page where I compare certain performance characteristics.

    The displaying of 150 items is mainly a function of computing power to parse the server response and display the items in LibreElec. The full sync compares disk I/O. This particular Raspberry Pi 5 being tested has an SSD in it for the Kodi database. If I switched it back to the SD card I suspect the performance would drop by 2-3X but the Mezzmo sync progress is a background process so the user is unlikely to see the difference. I am not sure how Jellyfin syncs the client to the server but I believe it does based upon the operating mode. If there is interest I can switch back to the SD card and post the comparison results ? The Raspberry Pi 4 listed is running an SD Card.


    Thanks,

    Jeff

  • OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

    So interestingly enough I upgraded VMWorkstation to 17.5 on my other server and Kodi running under Windows 10 on a Guest VM stopped working due to display driver issues. I ended up solving this the same way I did for the LibeElec OVAs. I had to do 3 things.

    First, change the VM hardware compatibility for the Windows 10 Guest running Kodi to VM Workstation version 12.0. Second replace the ATI video card with the nVidia video card and third add the same mks.enableGLRenderer = "TRUE" configuration line to the VM config file.


    Jeff

  • OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

    Quote from chewitt

    The DXxxRenderers config probably has no effect as DX display drivers are a Windows thing. Enabling GL should be be the only config item to have impact, though I'm wondering if that truly means GL (only)? as GBM images are using GLES not GL (as shown by logs that heitbaum shared).

    Yeah, you are correct. Only mks.enableGLRenderer = "TRUE" is needed. Interesting that it doesn't work with my ATI card only the nVidia card. At least I found a solution.


    Jeff

  • OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

    To update further, the trick of adding these 3 lines:

    mks.enableDX12Renderer = "FALSE"
    mks.enableDX11Renderer = "FALSE"
    mks.enableGLRenderer = "TRUE"

    only works with my nVidia 710 cards and not my ATI Radeon 5450 video cards. I had to put the nVidia card back in my 17.5 system and both OVAs started working. With the ATI card I get an error about a bad value with the mks.enableGLRenderer = "TRUE" statement. The good news is that I have more of the nVidia cards laying around and they are still available for purchase.

    I did some further reading and VM Workstation 17.5 wants video cards which support DIVX 11.1 and mine are older and limited to 11.0. I suspect that may be why others are working, depending upon the video cards and how new they might be.

    Jeff

  • OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

    I found an answer here. I had to add these 3 lines to the virtual machine VMX configuration file.

    mks.enableDX12Renderer = "FALSE"
    mks.enableDX11Renderer = "FALSE"
    mks.enableGLRenderer = "TRUE"

    With them both the 9.2.6 and 11.0.6 OVA run properly under VM Workstation 17.5. There are a number of reports on the Internet about the graphics changes which VM Ware introduced with 17.5.


    Jeff

  • OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

    So the issue is definitely related to workstation 17.5. I loaded VM Workstation 15.5 on my Sandbox machine with the Nvidia GeForce 710 card. Both the 9.2.6 and 11.0.6 OVA loaded right up and came up with no issues. I then upgraded to VM Workstation 17.5 and both working VMs stopped working. I tried uninstalling 17.5 and installing it from scratch and still it doesn't work. I also tried pulling down the most recent version of 17, version 17.5.1 and that didn't work.

    Lastly, I loaded Workstation 16.2.5 and that works. So there is something with Workstation 17 which is causing the issue.

    Thanks,

    Jeff

  • OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

    So the mystery deepens. I replaced the nVidia card with an ATI Radeon 5450 card, the same that is in the 1`5.5 machine The problem persists with Workstation 17.5. So right now it appears to be something with Workstation 17.5 or something else with this particular machine.

    To isolate this once and for all, I have a third Sandbox test machine which has the same nVidia GeForce 710 card in it and the same hardware. I will install 15.5 on it, see if both the 9.2.6 and 11.0.6 OVAs work. If so, then I will do the in place Workstation upgrade to 17.5 and see what happens.

    I'll keep folks posted.

    Jeff

  • OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

    Quote from chewitt

    Use snapshots or clone the disk for experiments. Are you mapping the GPU in the VM or using the vmare GPU?


    Yeah, moving VMs across hosts and making copies is easy. I have VM workstation set for auto, which uses the VMware GPU. I cannot find a way to change the video card / GPU setting in VM Workstation. I did however take 2 debug logs in Kodi.

    The first is the Kodi 11.0.6 VM running on the 15.5 system with the ATI Radeon card.
    The second is the Kodi 11.0.6 VM running on the 17.5 system with the nVidia 710 card.

    It's the same VM just copied between systems to do the testing.


    Thanks,

    Jeff

  • OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

    Quote from chewitt

    The "Generic" image switched from Xorg to GBM graphics but IIRC the vmware GPU in the OVA should support that. However if the host GPU has been mapped through to the VM this will 100% fail on nVidia cards as there is no support for them without Xorg.

    NB: I've been told the virtual hardware version of the OVA needs bumping for Workstation 17.5 (and likely other recent versions) but that something which can be tweaked locally.


    I've tried every setting I can think of in the host OS and VM workstation Guest VM and can't get the Kodi OVA to work with Workstation 17.5. They work fine with 15.5. Worst case I do have a spare ATI Radeon card I can try swapping in the 17.5 system or I can upgrade the working 15.5 system to 17.5 and risk having 2 broken systems for Kodi :)


    Jeff

  • OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

    So I have been picking away at this very issue and have some information. I recently upgraded VM Workstation from 15.5.0 to 17.5 and I had a LibreElex 9.2.6 OVA that was running and stopped after the VM Workstation upgrade. It starts and goes to a black screen. I moved the OVA over to another machine still running VM Workstation 15.5 and it started working again. I also tried installing the LibreELec 11.0.6 OVA on the VM Workstation 17.5 machine and it hung after starting. I moved that OVA over to the VM Workstation 15.5 machine and it worked fine.

    So the issue is definitely related to Workstation 17.5 but there is also one other difference between the systems, which I believe may be the real issue. The Workstation 17.5 machine has an nVidia GeForce 710 card and the Workstation 15.5 machine has an ATI Radeon 5400 video card.

    I need to do some testing with either upgrading the 15.5 to 17.5 with the ATI card, swap out the nVidia card to an ATI card or if you want me to move a working OVA back to Workstation 17.5 and grab some Kodi logs, just tell me what you need. With 2 systems and working OVAs I can easily do testing. I'd like to get this working on Workstation 17.5


    Thanks,

    Jeff