intel arc support

[jsrk]

I would really like to see intel arc support because I think their powerful transcoding capabilities would come in very handy. Especially in the future when you can transcode to av1 to support browsers. In my understanding ARC is supported in the Linux Kernel 6.2 and up. Is there some sort of timeframe as to when Unraid would switch to such a kernel?

[GRRRRRRR]

Further to this, I want to express my extreme rage, that it's not based on Ubuntu. If it were, it would have the kernel already as well as even better power management.

 

I propose two flavors one older kernel one latest kernel and free switching between the two.

[jsrk]

On 2/7/2023 at 5:20 AM, GRRRRRRR said:

Further to this, I want to express my extreme rage, that it's not based on Ubuntu. If it were, it would have the kernel already as well as even better power management.

 

I propose two flavors one older kernel one latest kernel and free switching between the two.

 

I don't think we are entitled to every operating system supporting the hardware we want or certain technical decisions made in line with our personal perferences.

Having said that, you can make or download a kernel which supports ARC gpus and install it over the kernel you're currently using.

[jsrk]

51 minutes ago, GRRRRRRR said:

Your argumentation is based on ideology fallacy and bias. Your argument is invalid. Actually you have no argument. You said nothing that has to do with anything. It was pointless.

 

An unRAID system is ideally going to be better. How can it be better? By being based on Ubuntu and by having compatibility with mainline kernel.

 

If anyone has any argument against this let him speak and be destroyed in seconds.

 

Could you please point out the ideological fallacy and bias in my argument?

[GRRRRRRR]

That's for you to ponder on until you learn many things throughout the course of your entire life. Until then it is upon yourself to bring facts to an arguments and no bullsh.t.

[jsrk]

34 minutes ago, GRRRRRRR said:

That's for you to ponder on until you learn many things throughout the course of your entire life. Until then it is upon yourself to bring facts to an arguments and no bullsh.t.

I hail from a culture where it is customary for the accuser to explain the reasoning behind their charges, I assume you do not. You are right on one account though, I still have a lot to learn. Having said that, I wish you the best of luck on your campaign to get an Ubuntu flavored version of unRAID.

[GRRRRRRR]

Ha ha I defeat you in any argument of your entire culture before you start speaking. Your fallacy, bias, and lack of information, is evident on the first or second word. I am bored.

 

Anyway.

 

I assert Ubuntu mainline is the best cutting edge kernel to put on a Linux system to get fresh hardware support. The best Linux kernel is the one that has the most polishing done, testing and bugfixing, compatibility testing. Performance testing and tuning.

 

If you want the Intel stuff you get that. If you want additional stuff you fight it out with Intel to submit the correct patches to that Kernel.

 

If you have something to say we fight it out right here right now.

 

If unRAID wants to be a better distro, the only logical choise is to build ontop of, and in collaboration with, that existing system.

 

Anything else is illogical. I will not show the math that proves it. Calculate yourself. No 'campaign' as you called it needed.

 

The truth speaks for itself.

Edited February 9, 2023 by GRRRRRRR

[GRRRRRRR]

So for your need you can go with a VM and passthrough the GPU bro. I doubt it all the devs along the chains can sync to new hardware and new encoding so quickly unless Intel do it for them. And that software endeavor sounds risky. Much less risky to stick to mainline kernel and instigate fights with all kinds of corps and devs, whenever something is not working as expected.

 

It's a tricky thing the Intel thing they also speed it up with Re-BAR I don't know what happens to that with GPU passthrough?

 

Further to the Intel thing, they have the CPU acceleration what they call it media something.... deep-link, bro.

 

However bro I have checked that and the best encoding is H266 on CPUs it's suficciently better than av1 interestingly. But most decoders don't have it at all. I stress on CPUs same goes for av1 the quality for filesize is on CPUs not on GPUs. The GPU encoding makes bigger files.

Edited February 9, 2023 by GRRRRRRR

[Hoopster]

25 minutes ago, GRRRRRRR said:

I assert Ubuntu mainline is the best cutting edge kernel to put on a Linux system to get fresh hardware support. The best Linux kernel is the one that has the most polishing done, testing and bugfixing, compatibility testing. Performance testing and tuning.

I seriously doubt Unraid is ever going to move to Ubuntu as its base Linux distro.  Of course, I would never say never and I have no inside information.  I have no idea why Limetech chose Slackware specifically, but,

• Unraid is more of a special-purpose appliance OS and is not a full Linux distribution.  It is intentionally lightweight and does not include many of the pieces included in a full Linux distribution
• Unraid loads from the USB drive into RAM on every boot.  It was designed at a time when lots of RAM was not a given and it needed to have a small RAM footprint
• Occasionally, more things are included in base Unraid (such as iperf3 and perl recently), but only when there is a specific perceived need
• The LImetech team is very small.  I don't think they have the manpower or interest in maintaining different Unraid distributions based on scaled-down Slackware and full Ubuntu

None of this is intended to argue against Ubuntu. It is simply an explanation based on my understanding of where Unraid is today and why that is the case based on historical need and design philosophy.

 

Limetech does understand the need to go beyond what the base system offers; thus the plugin system and the architectural changes to better support the inclusion of drivers such as the Nvidia graphics drivers.  Is it a perfect solution?  No, but it gets most people very close to where they want to be with a special-purpose NAS OS.  I don't think the intention is to ever make Unraid a full Linux distro.

[GRRRRRRR]

The bottlenecks in such projects is developers.

 

Best to get a big number of motivated developers onboard, with the ability to improve upon the system.

 

The business can align to this bottleneck. Corps do it all the time this is the main thing they do the cheeky ba$tard$.

 

I am too lazy to explain it. It's based on 'projections' and plays with 'demand' and later makes money.

 

There is no 'philosophy' behind those concepts the main philosophy distills to "don't be evil" which can translate to "protect humans" in the process of making the cash.

 

But that Mark Shuttleworth guy is a reasonable dude I gather and an enthusiastic as well.

 

So a Just Do It may work as well no need to do the math first.

[tjb_altf4]

On 2/1/2023 at 10:27 AM, jsrk said:

I would really like to see intel arc support because I think their powerful transcoding capabilities would come in very handy. Especially in the future when you can transcode to av1 to support browsers. In my understanding ARC is supported in the Linux Kernel 6.2 and up. Is there some sort of timeframe as to when Unraid would switch to such a kernel?

Kernel 6.2 isn't even stable yet, so we probably won't see it in the coming Unraid stable release.

Unraid typically releases on LTS kernels, which is currently 6.1 (and found in Unraid 6.12 beta).

Edited February 9, 2023 by tjb_altf4

[jsrk]

4 hours ago, tjb_altf4 said:

Kernel 6.2 isn't even stable yet, so we probably won't see it in the coming Unraid stable release.

Unraid typically releases on LTS kernels, which is currently 6.1 (and found in Unraid 6.12 beta).

I compiled a 6.2 rc kernel (with unraid patches) and put it on my distro, so now I can use the ARC card. I am happy with that. My request is basically fulfilled. I didn't even know there was a 6.12 beta. Thanks for that info.

[GRRRRRRR]

That's pretty cool. How did you do that?

 

How do you use it? With what containers, apps and stuff?

[jsrk]

6 hours ago, GRRRRRRR said:

That's pretty cool. How did you do that?

 

How do you use it? With what containers, apps and stuff?

 

The easy way:

download the kernel 6.2 from: github.com/DatPat/unraid_arc_g2

replace the downloaded files (bzImage, bzmodues and bzfirmware ) on your unraid usb-stick.

*you may want to set a static ip as some people had issues with their dhcp config

then reboot. then you should have the card available. you may then download a beta/unstable jellyfin build to use it.

 

 

The hard way:

download a 6.2 build of your choice from here github.com/thor2002ro/unraid_kernel

Add this to the .config file:

CONFIG_INTEL_MEI=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_ME=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_TXE=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_GSC=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_HDCP=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_PXP=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_WDT=m

compile

follow the easy way from here on out.

[Tornic]

@GRRRRRRR Holy shit, why are you so salty?

[GRRRRRRR]

Investing in IT since I can remember myself, can't get any profit whatsoever. Salary is high AF still not worth it at all and in the negative. No solution in sight other than building everything by my own two hands and defending everything with my own fists. Living a prison life to the problems in IT. Corporations produce crap products that do not work. Problems are multiplying exponentially. Everything is breaking all the time software hardware. Hardware is not performing. Irresponsible liars everywhere. Stupidity and chaos everywhere. Everything is being hacked. This is the reason and when I see someone lying, you know what is coming their way. Beyond Punishment. ☠️

[Clockwork Elf]

On 2/10/2023 at 1:54 PM, jsrk said:

 

The easy way:

download the kernel 6.2 from: github.com/DatPat/unraid_arc_g2

replace the downloaded files (bzImage, bzmodues and bzfirmware ) on your unraid usb-stick.

*you may want to set a static ip as some people had issues with their dhcp config

then reboot. then you should have the card available. you may then download a beta/unstable jellyfin build to use it.

 

 

The hard way:

download a 6.2 build of your choice from here github.com/thor2002ro/unraid_kernel

Add this to the .config file:

CONFIG_INTEL_MEI=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_ME=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_TXE=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_GSC=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_HDCP=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_PXP=m 
CONFIG_INTEL_MEI_WDT=m

compile

follow the easy way from here on out.

When stable unraid reaches kernel 6.2 will you have to do anything or just update as regular (possibly skip previous updates before 6.2)?

I am in the same boat currently( arc380/trying to encode most of my media in AV1 and decode if necessary on clients that don't support it), using Jellyfin as well and wondering if I should try your approach. The other option I've seen is running a VM with the necessary kernel but I've seen multiple people having issue with passing through the arc380. Have you had any additional problems since this post or is everything still fine? 

[GRRRRRRR]

Do not encode the AV1 on the GPU. Do that on CPUs to get the space savings and preserve the quality.

 

However, with this idea to decode for devices that don't support it, H266 is better.

 

With messing with the Kernel you introduce additional risks to your unRAID storage system as well as dilemmas like the ones you are asking.

 

Better to do your encoding on a separate system that can be reinstalled as needed, if you need to recompile the kernel, just to do the encoding.

 

However please stop falling into old traps, these problems should have been solved decades ago.

 

There are proper way of building things and improper way that will fall on your head with the first earthquake.

 

Stop building improper and stop suffering.

 

 

[xorinzor]

1 hour ago, GRRRRRRR said:

with this idea to decode for devices that don't support it

 

You are aware that the Arc A380 has both an AV1 encoder and decoder right?

 

1 hour ago, GRRRRRRR said:

There are proper way of building things and improper way that will fall on your head with the first earthquake.

 

Stop building improper and stop suffering

 

Are you seriously insulting victims of an ongoing disaster right now?

 

You should stop taking this topic off-track. It's a simple feature request, nobody is asking for different distro's and if you are you should open your own request.

Anything not directly related to this topic should be put in it's own topic.

 

  

On 2/10/2023 at 12:54 PM, jsrk said:

 

The easy way:

download the kernel 6.2 from: github.com/DatPat/unraid_arc_g2

replace the downloaded files (bzImage, bzmodues and bzfirmware ) on your unraid usb-stick.

*you may want to set a static ip as some people had issues with their dhcp config

then reboot. then you should have the card available. you may then download a beta/unstable jellyfin build to use it.

 

Will this have any effect on future stable-branch updates? As in, I understand the kernel will be overwritten, but would there be any actions I'd have to take before doing any updates?

Edited February 18, 2023 by xorinzor

[GRRRRRRR]

I have seen project fail and flourish and design and architectural ideas fail and flourish.

 

Rest assured I kick your ass in the right direction I do not want to insult anyone in the way you are suggesting. However if I have gutpunched THE RESPONSIBLE person for a problem then I have done what I wanted to do. So take any hurt feeling to the responsible person for an exact problem.

 

I am pointing out how things can be better actually addressing the root causes or exact decision points where the optimal solution is.

 

The thing I said is a metaphor or analogy "a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification."

 

You sir can not argue with me at all, I am sorry to say.

 

The poster wants to encode and decode I pointed him and others in the EXACT precise right direction without any deviation whatsoever + I have kicked all your asses along the way.

 

The kernel will be overwritten with each update unless the packaging system, if nay, clashes the versioning.

 

If you are in the situation of having to ask this question the Operating system have failed you and you should backtrack to where the wrong decision was.

[xorinzor]

@GRRRRRRR you need a serious reality check. Also tune down that attitude. 

I really do not care how high you think of yourself, there is absolutely no reason to act in the way that you are doing right now.

 

Either stick to the topic on-hand, or just don't respond at all. Nobody gains anything from these nonsensical posts.

[GRRRRRRR]

On topic, don't fall for that trap to use a custom kernel that you will need to manually work on on updates and troubleshooting.

 

Do the encoding on a separate machine with the kernel that will work.

 

And even then, on MF topic, do not even do the encoding, with the MF GPU, or loose the benefits of the codec.

 

What happened? Wanna argue about it? Put some facts on the table and we can talk. Otherwise, be comfortable in being destroyed in every which way you can think of arguing.

[ich777]

24 minutes ago, GRRRRRRR said:

On topic, don't fall for that trap to use a custom kernel that you will need to manually work on on updates and troubleshooting.

That's not entirely true, I have now built a semi custom version from Unraid (6.11.6-ce ) for myself because I'm testing currently Unraid with Intel ARC. If you build a version from Unraid with a custom Kernel properly you don't have to fear anything in terms of upgrades because if you build it properly then you can upgrade as usual with Upgrade OS in the Tools menu.

The actual downside to this is that Intel ARC support is currently only supported or better speaking stable in Kernel 6.2, all Kernel before since 6.0+ see a Intel ARC card as testing and you need to manually enable it by passing over a option to the Kernel module and even if you did that for example on Kernel 6.1.12 it won't work properly and you need to do  some really complicated workarounds.

 

Please remember the current stable Kernel is 6.1.12 (Unraid is usually based on the latest stable Kernel when a new Unraid version drops), Kernel 6.2-rc8 is currently mainline and will become stable in a week, at least if no further critical bugs or issues are appearing.

 

24 minutes ago, GRRRRRRR said:

Wanna argue about it? Put some facts on the table and we can talk.

I don't know what the issue is here in this thread, please calm down, ARC support is on it's way but only when the Kernel properly supports it.

 

 

BTW:

On 2/10/2023 at 12:54 PM, jsrk said:

Add this to the .config file:

You don't need all the Kernel modules to get ARC transcoding working properly, Unraid 6.12 will have everything what is needed to support the ARC GPUs but keep also in mind that at least Kernel 6.2 needs to be stable all previous versions need workarounds for ARC currently.

[xorinzor]

3 minutes ago, ich777 said:

Please remember the current stable Kernel is 6.1.12 (Unraid is usually based on the latest stable Kernel when a new Unraid version drops), Kernel 6.2-rc8 is currently mainline and will become stable in a week, at least if no further critical bugs or issues are appearing.

 

Awesome. This is useful information, thanks! I'll wait for that kernel to become available then, just in case. I can survive a week without utilizing the Arc A380 haha.

 

Do you know where these kernels can be found / tracked as they become available? I'll just keep an eye on that then.

[ich777]

12 minutes ago, xorinzor said:

Do you know where these kernels can be found / tracked as they become available?

If you mean the official Kernel versions itself, you can see it here.

If you mean my custom version from the Kernel 6.2-rc8 for (Unraid 6.11.6-ce )... I usually compile it for me for testing and these versions are not publicly available.

 

Maybe a public beta from 6.12 will be released SOON™, who knows...

 

12 minutes ago, xorinzor said:

I can survive a week without utilizing the Arc A380 haha.

I can spoiler you something (4x 4K HDR HFR simultaneous transcodes to various different h264 bitrates and resolutions):

 

But don't hold your breath on this, Kernel 6.2 must reach stable first and then it can be implemented into Unraid because Kernel 6.1 is as said experimental with ARC GPUs.

 

Hope that helps.