c236 server board igd and ipmi question


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Hi, I recently decided to switch from my mini asrock j4205 box to something bigger ... I think to build on c236 chipset and xeon e3-1225 v6. I want board with ipmi.

 

i want to use intel IGD for plex/emby transcode and passthrough my GTX1050ti for my daily/gaming win 10vm. 

 

I can not figure out how three video controller will work (ipmi-aspeed, intel IGD, GTX1050ti)!

 

Suppose I bought a server board with only vga output for ipmi (asrock E3C236D4U), i set onboard primary graphics adapter (aspeed) in bios for passthough my gtx1050.

then i will activate i915 in go file....... Will i915 work whith aspeed set primary in bios???

 

i did tests on my home pc (i5-7400, GTX-1050ti, NO aspeed)! IGD was set as primary in bios, i915 activated in go file for plex, GTX1050ti-passedthrough VM! Everything works perfect, but what will be there if ASpeed video will be primary??? Sorry for my english =))

 

I'm afraid that I can not simultaneously use intel hd 630 and ipmi aspeed......

Edited by vanes
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I have two ASRock Rack boards, one with IPMI and one without.  The E3C226D2I board in my backup server has IPMI and the Aspeed AST2300 (BMC/Video).  In the board specs it says the following:

 

"Due to Graphics control by AST2300, E3-1200 series integrated graphics can't be used"

 

The CPU in that server is an Intel i5 4590 which has integrated graphics.  I can load the i915 drivers, but. there is no /dev/dri directory since the integrated graphics cannot be used.

 

lspci lists both the Intel integrated graphics and the AST2300, but, there is no way to enable the iGPU and disable the AST2300.  On this board, I cannot do Plex hardware-assisted transcoding

 

My other server has the C236 chipset and a Xeon E3-1245 v5 but no IPMI/Aspeed.  On this board, I can enable the hardware-accelerated transcoding in Plex and am actively using it.

 

The E3C236D4U specs do not state the same limitation with using integrated graphics and it has the AST2400 controller.  Perhaps it is possible to use both or to disable the AST2400 and use the integrated graphics.  That I cannot test.  Perhaps if you download the manual it will tell you if this is possible.

 

EDIT: Perhaps a board like the Supermicro X11SSH-CTF or similar (also C236 with AST2400 BMC/Video) will give you more control over graphics selection.

 

Edited by Hoopster
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I looked at the manuals from Asrockrack site and not a word there about intel HD graphics, just this:

236.jpg.8a869a4c2e69b02b2cb42d5801abd1a4.jpg

 

correct if I'm not right

If i set primary graphics adapter to onboard (i need it for passthrough), onboard vga option became inactive and i have Aspeed(primary)+Pci-e( vm passthrough) and no HD Graphics! But if i set primary graphics adapter to pci-e, onboard vga option became active and allow to use hd graphics??? Is intel hd graphics works only when primary adapter is pci-e??? my mind is broken %)

Perhaps a board like the Supermicro

i look at X11SAE-F

Edited by vanes
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Unless things have changed with 6.4, you can't pass through the onboard graphics.

You can use it for the unraid cmd line interface.  But plugin cards must be used for pass through.

If you pass through more than 1 graphics card, the cards must be different.

There are some demos on youtube.  Have a look at them.

 

Edited by Jessie
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when you write "onboard graphics" you mean aspeed 2400 or intel HD 630?

I don't want to passthrough aspeed 2400 or HD630 to vm

I need:

1. working ipmi

2. passedthrough to VM PCI-E GTX1050

3. working intel HD630 in unraid (activate i915 in go file for plex/emby transcoding)

 

Can it be realized on asrock E3C236D4U or some other MB on c236 chipset??

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2 hours ago, Jessie said:

Unless things have changed with 6.4, you can't pass through the onboard graphics.

You can use it for the unraid cmd line interface.  But plugin cards must be used for pass through.

 

If you are referring to the AST2400 or other "onboard graphics" for IPMI, this is probably true.  If you are referring to CPU integrated graphics, it appears that it can be passed through.  I am not passing through any graphics card to my Windows 10 VM, but, here are the options I have in the VM configuration:

image.png.dc542cb7ac2b15eaafe0bac9a22b38df.png

 

And here is a discussion started by jonp on passing through integrated graphics:

 

 

As the OP explained, he does not want to pass through integrated/onboard graphics, he will pass through a discrete PCIe card to his VM. He is just trying to figure out if a motherboard with "onboard graphics (AST2400 for IMPI)" can also utilize the "integrated graphics" in his CPU for Plex transcoding.

 

The only board I have with IPMI (C226 chipset) specifically states that integrated graphics cannot be used because of the AST2300 for IPMI.  I don't know if that changes with a C236 chipset and AST2400.

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20 hours ago, vanes said:

236.jpg.8a869a4c2e69b02b2cb42d5801abd1a4.jpg

 

correct if I'm not right

If i set primary graphics adapter to onboard (i need it for passthrough), onboard vga option became inactive and i have Aspeed(primary)+Pci-e( vm passthrough) and no HD Graphics! But if i set primary graphics adapter to pci-e, onboard vga option became active and allow to use hd graphics??? Is intel hd graphics works only when primary adapter is pci-e??? my mind is broken %)

 

This is how I interpret this as well.  If Primary Graphics Adapter is set to "Onboard" the ability to enable or disable "Onboard VGA" is not displayed since you cannot disable the Primary Graphics Adapter.  If the Primary Graphics Adapter is set to PCI Express, you can enable/disable "Onboard VGA."  However, I assume the "Onboard VGA" referenced here is the AST2400.

 

This implies to me that the same statement made about my C226 board with AST2300 still applies.  With "onboard graphics" from an AST2300/2400, integrated graphics from a CPU cannot be used.  I wish I could test this, but, I cannot with the boards I have since my C236 board lacks IPMI/AST2400.

 

As I said in a previous post, I can find no way to utilize the HD 4600 graphics in the i5 4590 CPU in my C226/AST2300 board.  Because of the AST2300, no drivers are loaded by the BIOS for the integrated graphics even though I can load i915 there are no /dev/dri/ card0 and render128 drivers available for the integrated graphics.

 

@vanes You might get a better response if you posted your question in one of the threads about enabling hardware transcoding in Plex.  Perhaps someone there who has enabled hardware transcoding with IGD/QSV also has an IPMI board with AST2400/onboard graphics and can provide a more accurate answer.

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My common sense dictates that I need MB that support ipmi and have hdmi or displayport output =)

 

i read supermicro x11-sae-f manual and found that there are tons of vga/graphics/ settings:

https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/C236/MNL-1820.pdf

 

Onboard VGA Enable/Disable (JPG1)

 

Primary Display

Use this feature to select the graphics device to be used as the primary display. The options are Auto, IGFX, PEG, and PCIE.

 

Primary PEG

This feature allows the user to select the primary PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slot. The options are Auto, CPU SLOT6 PCI-E 3.0 X16, and CPU SLOT4 PCI-E 3.0 X8 (IN X16).

 

Primary PCIE (PCI-Express Graphics)

This feature allows the user to specify which graphics card to be used as the primary graphics card. The options are Auto, Onboard, PCH Slot3 PCI-E 3.0 X1, and PCH Slot7 PCI-E 3.0 X1.

 

Internal Graphics

Select Auto to keep an internal graphics device installed on an expansion slot supported by the CPU to be automatically enabled. The options are Auto, Disabled, and Enabled

 

It is necessary to study all this for a longer time, but it seemed to be that this board can do what i want.....

I will just need to set iGFX as a primary display and all will work!

@Hoopster , Thank you very much for your responsiveness.

Edited by vanes
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19 minutes ago, vanes said:

It is necessary to study all this for a longer time, but it seemed to be that this board can do what i want.....

I will just need to set iGFX as a primary display and all will work!

Yes, this looks very promising.  I think this board may give you the options you need.

 

I am sure others have or will have the same needs you do with respect to IPMI, integrated graphics and PCIe discrete graphics pass through.  Let us know how it goes.

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  • 1 month later...

I can confirm this works with a Supermicro X11SSH-F c236 chipset and an Intel Xeon CPU E3-1245 v6 on unRAID 6.5.1-rc3.

Initially I had trouble getting /dev/dri to show up but removed nomodeset from the syslinux append line and no need for i915.alpha_support=1.

 

My BIOS is Version: 2.1a which is needed for the Xeon v6:

iGFX2.png.9135c84aaa47c3bde48b71c85e0fa076.png

 

BIOS lies as there is no IGFX option but here's my current config below:

iGFX.png.6c3216bf774e86ace311d97178e5aaa1.png

 

In my go file I added this:

#enable module for iGPU and perms for the render device
modprobe i915
chown -R nobody:users /dev/dri
chmod -R 777 /dev/dri

I'm not sure if this is the proper way to do it but in my EmbyServer docker I added the device /dev/dri/renderD128 with +Add another Path, Port, Variable or Device

docker.thumb.png.ac676ce232085b8a9a12b74ba0492162.png

 

And in the Emby transcoding section I have it setup like this:

emby.thumb.png.e9114506aefcc32c62e904cb92b8f296.png

 

And this is is what htop looks like before and after. This is transcoding a 1080p to 720@1Mbps and also one movie was direct playing since someone started a movie.

 

without hardware acceleration:

emby2.png.1f9e1ad9d5db6c447e7f1f4baf0461a7.png

 

with hardware acceleration:

emby3.png.7d7bcff7820147b8525fc822dadd7f44.png

 

Also console redirection may not work with the iGFX as the main graphics in unRAID but will work up until unRAID loads plus all other IPMI functions do work. I think other c236 boards will work like the X11SSA-F,  X11SSI or X11SSM-F. I was looking at the X10SLH-F also which is a c226.

 

Also Emby does have a Quicksync option. I tried just adding the/dev/dri to the docker but I couldn't get that to work. I was able to get VAAPI to work as shown above. So if anyone knows a better way let me know.

Edited by dmacias
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  • 3 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/22/2018 at 6:46 AM, vanes said:

I recently bought AsRock e3c236d2i and I can confirm that it allows to use intel video core, but only for video encoding/decoding, not for display....

 

Does IPMI work for you on this board at all? I have struggled to get IPMI working on my AsRock board as its so damn annoying with Java versions and other issues.

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5 minutes ago, witalit said:

Well I have a slightly different board and yes I get the same issue. When booting into unRAID screen is blank and the fix posted on other threads does not work.

 

I see most of unraid boot process till the i915 driver is loaded. Screen becomes black near the final part of the boot process...
If I don't load i915 (modprobe i915) everything works fine.

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i915 is not loading by default!

To activate it add this to go file

On ‎4‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 8:58 AM, dmacias said:

#enable module for iGPU and perms for the render device

modprobe i915

chown -R nobody:users /dev/dri chmod -R 777 /dev/dri

 

if I turn i915 off, I cant use intel hd graphics for plex/emby hardware transcoding

 

sorry for my English ?

Edited by vanes
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8 minutes ago, vanes said:

i915 is not loading by default!

To activate it add this to go file

 

if I turn i915 off, I cant use intel hd graphics for plex/emby hardware transcoding

 

sorry for my English ?

 

Ah I see thanks, I currently don't passthrough i915 to unRAID. Don't worry your English is good enough, I can understand quite clearly :-).

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3 hours ago, vanes said:

What board do you have?

Did you tried this?

 

if you don`t need i915, try to edit you syslinux append line like this:

append nomodeset initrd=/bzroot

 

Asrock E3C222D4U

 

In fact I managed to get it to show I previously with the fix above but I have issues with the IPMI tool, its absolute garbage on this BIOS. Also the Java version it runs on is so old I can't even find the version where the SSL certs work OK.

 

 

Edited by witalit
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4 hours ago, witalit said:

 

Asrock E3C222D4U

 

In fact I managed to get it to show I previously with the fix above but I have issues with the IPMI tool, its absolute garbage on this BIOS. Also the Java version it runs on is so old I can't even find the version where the SSL certs work OK. 

 

 

 

For my BMC/Java issues ASRock finally released a BMC update in November 2017 for the E3C226D2I board (and others) which means the board is now compatible with all recent versions of JAVA up to and including the latest available.  Before that, only 8.121 or prior could be used.

 

The latest BIOS update for the E3C226D2I (June 2018) also seems to have fixed whatever BIOS issue was requiring the use of "nomodeset" to avoid the IPMI video blanking problem with Linux Kernels higher than 4.13.

 

Your E3C222D4U is based on an older chipset, but, I can't imagine the JAVA compatibility issues with the BMC are much different on that board than on mine.  With your BIOS and BMC both stuck on 2015 releases, you will continue to have issues until ASRock updates them.  Hopefully, they have not decided that the C222 chipset boards are not worth updating.

Edited by Hoopster
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17 hours ago, Hoopster said:

 

For my BMC/Java issues ASRock finally released a BMC update in November 2017 for the E3C226D2I board (and others) which means the board is now compatible with all recent versions of JAVA up to and including the latest available.  Before that, only 8.121 or prior could be used.

 

The latest BIOS update for the E3C226D2I (June 2018) also seems to have fixed whatever BIOS issue was requiring the use of "nomodeset" to avoid the IPMI video blanking problem with Linux Kernels higher than 4.13.

 

Your E3C222D4U is based on an older chipset, but, I can't imagine the JAVA compatibility issues with the BMC are much different on that board than on mine.  With your BIOS and BMC both stuck on 2015 releases, you will continue to have issues until ASRock updates them.  Hopefully, they have not decided that the C222 chipset boards are not worth updating.

 

Thanks for the information. I am just writing an email to Asrock support now, hopefully they can assist or even update this firmware. Seems like these boards were released a similar time going by BIOS release dates. I really hope Asrock don't forget about this board and their support can assist. Will keep you guys in the loop, thanks Hoopster!

 

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Had a reply from Asrock with a link to download updated BMC (04.08.00) for E3C222D4U!!. That was a shock, wonder why its not on their website available to download, I will upload for anyone else who needs this weekend.

 

Well flashed the BMC via IPMI that seemed to go fine. Server reboots but I am unable to login to IPMI, it just hangs when I click login. Asrock have provided me with some recovery tool which I need to try so will report back.

 

Great news though Asrock support is rather responsive it seems, good to see.

 

 

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5 hours ago, witalit said:

Well flashed the BMC via IPMI that seemed to go fine. Server reboots but I am unable to login to IPMI, it just hangs when I click login. Asrock have provided me with some recovery tool which I need to try so will report back.

 

This happened to me as well when I flashed the new BMC bios via IPMI.  I had to attach a monitor and keyboard to the server, enter the BIOS and reconfigure the IPMI NIC. Flashing the BMC had messed up the IP address and IPMI configuration.  Once I did that, everything worked well and I have had no issues since.

Edited by Hoopster
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