Posts by chewitt

Quote from atirage21

Why was not updated driver from r16 (r23) to r51 for mali ?

Panfrost made mali-bifrost irrelevant for LE images. The upstream LE repo is archived: https://github.com/LibreELEC/mali-bifrost

Not sure what the reboot issue is about (no issues here). Flakey bootloader?

The more reading I do on nouveau, the more obvious it is that anything before GeForce 8-series is uncharted territory. As the LE12 release used the nVidia 340.108 driver which also didn't support anything below 8-series, the obvious design decision is to simply not-support anything older than 8-series cards. That also removes the need to build with LLVM support (saves build time), and that avoids the runtime complexity of picking the right mesa back-end based on PCI card ID's.

I'll continue to look at the no-audio problem on my Xtreamer Ultra2 board, but that's probably an isolated issue.

Kodi log isn't useful, it doesn't contain anything about the kernel setup. Run "dmesg | paste" after clean boot (assuming CE has a paste function like LE).

If you used the backup function in the LE settings add-on it includes /storage/.kodi/addons in the backup so the restore reinstated the incompatible LE12 add-on version. Just uninstall the add-on (keeping config) and then install the correct one from the LE repo.

The VDPAU::Open: requested picture dimensions (1920, 800) exceed hardware capabilities ( 0, 0) is the result of building mesa without support for patent codecs (VC1, H264, H265) hence only the free codecs (MPEG1/2/4) work. Configuring mesa build options with -Dvideo-codecs=all gives working hardware decode. Please validate that with the 9400GT card and the latest image posted to my test share.

I'm not sure what mesa juju is required for fallback to LLVM on the older 6100/7300 cards. I need to find the Slackware mesa and Kodi build configs to see if I can spot the difference(s).

Quote from myksto

Well, everthing is Ok but Iptv simple client version 21.10.1.1 doesn't work, it simply says it's not compatible with LE 13 version

I'd guess that you first installed LE12 and the LE12 compatible version of iptv.simple, and have since bumped to LE13, but for reasons unknown the add-on has not self-updated to the LE13 compatible version. LE13 releases should be using 22.4.1.1 which exists in the LE (12.80.1) add-on repo.

Try doing a force refresh on the repo. If that doesn't work, manually delete the add-on (keeping config) and then manually reinstall the add-on from the repo. Kodi debug logs should contain errors if this fails, but the add-on is there and we don't mirror add-ons or do any fancy traffic management/blocking on servers, so the main reason for add-on updates/installs to fail is basic connectivity issues on the user end.

Please update to the Legacy image in my test share which should now have LLVM support. Please see if that runs on the 6100 or 7300LE cards? If yes, share a Kodi debug log.

NB: Firmware will download on the first boot of the image. Please also check it's present in /storage/.config/firmware/nouveau?

EDIT: I'm also interested to know if you have working audio output on the LE image?

info <general>: GL_VENDOR = Mesa
info <general>: GL_RENDERER = llvmpipe (LLVM 19.1.7, 128 bits)
info <general>: GL_VERSION = 4.5 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 24.3.4

^ The 7300 log shows it fails to evaluate VDPAU (because https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/VideoAcceleration.html shows 7-series is not currently supported) then falls back to llvmpipe, so it's not using nouveau. LE only builds mesa with nouveau, not with swrast or llvmpipe (although that could be changed) so this explains why you see the GUI.

info <general>: GL_VENDOR = Mesa
info <general>: GL_RENDERER = NV96
info <general>: GL_VERSION = 3.3 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 24.3.4

^ The 9400 inits VDPAU and uses nouveau, but:

2025-01-30 11:48:08.789 T:1589  warning <general>: VDPAU::Open: requested picture dimensions (1920, 800) exceed hardware capabilities ( 0, 0).
2025-01-30 11:48:08.789 T:1589     info <general>:  (VDPAU) Close
2025-01-30 11:48:08.791 T:1589     info <general>: VDPAU::Close - closing decoder context

^ The 9400 fails with the same error that I see on the LE image (which proves it's not LE related).

Quote from Johpin

MPlayer required only 35% CPU load on Slackware with 7300LE. For 9400GT the load is higher (more system) 75%

^ The interesting thing here is that llvmpipe appears to be more efficient at software decode than nouveau.

In summary: the Slackware image support and behaviour with nouveau/VDPAU is exactly the same as the LE image. Thanks for sharing the full logs, it really helped to un-confuse things

The firmware files required for newer nVidia cards are distributed as part of the vendor driver package which ships with a license that prevents separate redistribution of component parts of the driver. The approach taken by most distros is to package a script that downloads, extracts, and installs the firmware files where they need to be on first bood; so I've reworked the package to do the same. It does require a reboot to setup the firmware overlay from /storage/.config/firmware/nouveuu, but that's not too bad.

I'll have a look at building llvmpipe into the image as a fallback.

Q200 is external PHY to support 10/100/1000 chips, but the kernel does 'magic' to ensure it works with all varieties of PHY chip; the upstream kernel avoid magic and requires us to be specific. Q201 is for internal PHY boxes and supports 10/100 max.

The image only shows the Wireless/BT module so is not helpful. I'd need to see a pic of the entire board on both sides.

NB: The boot log under CE might also be useful, the log is quite verbose.

I'm not interested in compile issues and testing with newer Kodi because there are Kodi GitHub indications of VDPAU issues with nouveau being present for a long time. Patching FFMpeg just complicates the issue (and you have invalid/incomplete patches). Kodi GBM is not compatible with X11 so failure is probably correct/expected, and we know GBM without VDPAU is a dead-end so no need to test - the info just adds noise/confusion.

Please remove any xorg.conf and kodi.conf files from /storage/.config or /run locations and create /storage/.kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml to enable debug logging (even if Kodi does not start) and then reboot to capture a clean and more useful failure log. Please provide full debug logs (not snippets, which are not informative) showing 1080p/H264 media playback for:

a) Slackware-current on 7300LE

b) Slackware-current on 9400GT

c) Latest LE 'Legacy' image on 7300LE

d) Latest LE 'Legacy' image on 9400GT

Apologies for the rework. And I appreciate you are trying to be creative, but it's just confusing the task. Four full debug logs on standard Slackware and the latest LE image will be helpful.

Please check one of the older cards (6100 or 7300) on:

Slackware development image, working?

Current LE image, working?

Please pastebin a Kodi debug log from the Slackware install (9400GT card) to confirm the VDPAU error/issue is the same.

Quote from Johpin

Two version back Kodi was also shown with a Geforce 6100 (it was usable).

For clarity, are we talking about my image (two versions back) or Slackware?

The screenshot is from my image, or Slackware?

video=HDMI-A-1:d

This kernel boot param ^ will disable the DRM connector at boot time. I've no idea if it can be done post-boot through /sys, but that might be worth exploring.

NB: Reading https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/VideoAcceleration.html it's clear lots of older cards have no VDPAU support. Can you confirm this with the GeForce 6100 card under Slackware? (press 'o' on the keyboard during Kodi playback to check).

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/26238 might be involved. Team Kodi decided to not backport the fix to Omega because of the last-minute timing of the latest Omega release (it had already been built) and because if a little inconvenience inspires more people to workaround the issue by creating secure shares instead of insecure ones, that's a good thing.

I remembered that I have an Xstreamer Ultra2 board in my collection. It's an Atom/ION board with a GT520 (Fermi) card which is a little more recent than the 9400GT you have. It boots both images (GBM and Legacy) to the Kodi home screen without needing an xorg.conf or kodi.conf file creating. It does require some nVidia firmware blobs extracted from the vendor driver to silence a couple of system log messages and provide firmware for decoding. I created https://github.com/LibreELEC/nouveau-firmware earlier to address that, and the commits in my nouveau branch are revised to use it and remove VAAPI support.

The GBM image detects libva support and tries to use it during playback, and fails. Rebuilding without VAAPI support allows software decode playback to work. There is no VDPAU support because mesa reports ERROR: Feature gallium-vdpau cannot be enabled: VDPAU state tracker requires X11 support. during compile. I'll have a chat about VDPAU with mesa devs, but GBM without hardware decode makes no sense, so for now, further effort on GBM (Nouveau) stops.

The X11 image is also now built without VAAPI support and VDPAU is detected and attempted. All 1080p and H264 media I've tried currently fails with VDPAU::Open: requested picture dimensions (1920, 1088) exceed hardware capabilities ( 0, 0) but some 720p/SD resolution MPEG4 media is being hardware decoded properly. I'll have to query the error with Kodi folks.

LE requires two partitions to run from and /flash and /storage must be separate. As you can now drop the 'Nouveau' image that should make things easier for testing. Please remove any config that's been added to boot params or /storage or make a clean install so you are using a default image. Also focus only on the 9400GT card for now. I appreciate the old cards work on Slackware, but your Slackware install is using significantly older software versions and bisecting to find the breaking changes will be a major effort, so that's deferred to a future date.

NB: I've pushed an image that matches GitHub commits a few seconds ago. Please check all is okay with the Legacy image after the cleanup or fresh start.

LE10/11 use 'arm' userspace and LE12 uses 'aarch64' userspace. The LE11 settings add-on is not showing an update because there is no 'arm' update. This also stops users from blindly updating and experiencing crashes due to arch-incompatible binary add-ons.

To do an in-place update you will need to first uninstall all binary add-ons (keeping their config). Then manually download (wget) the LE12.0.2 .tar update file to /storage/.update and reboot to update. Once the update completes you can reinstall binary addons (to use aarch64 versions).