Solved Unable to get hardware acceleration to work on old Lenovo laptop

[Meinold]

Hello,

I freshly installed FreeBSD on an old Lenovo laptop with an Intel graphic card. But I cannot figure out why the hardware acceleration does not work and would therefore appreciate any help. Please see the relevant information below:

# uname -a
FreeBSD lenovo 14.3-RELEASE-p3 FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE-p3 GENERIC amd64

# pciconf -lv | grep -B3 display
vgapci0@pci0:0:2:0:    class=0x030000 rev=0x0e hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x0f31 subvendor=0x17aa subdevice=0x3986
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display'
    class      = display

• /etc/rc.conf
• /var/log/Xorg.0.log
• list of installed packages

I have the xf86-video-intel package installed, but I am not sure if that was a good decision…

# vainfo
Trying display: wayland
Trying display: x11
libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
libva error: vaGetDriverNames() failed with unknown libva error
vaInitialize failed with error code -1 (unknown libva error),exit

# mpv --hwdec=auto video.webm
● Video  --vid=1               (av1 1920x1080 60 fps) [default]
● Audio  --aid=1  --alang=eng  (opus 2ch 48000 Hz) [default]
[vo/gpu/libplacebo] Found no suitable device, giving up.
[vo/gpu/libplacebo] Failed initializing vulkan device
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to authenticate
MESA: error: ZINK: failed to choose pdev
libEGL warning: egl: failed to create dri2 screen
'-avx512er' is not a recognized feature for this target (ignoring feature)
'-avx512pf' is not a recognized feature for this target (ignoring feature)
'-avx512er' is not a recognized feature for this target (ignoring feature)
'-avx512pf' is not a recognized feature for this target (ignoring feature)
'-avx512er' is not a recognized feature for this target (ignoring feature)
'-avx512pf' is not a recognized feature for this target (ignoring feature)
[vo/gpu/opengl] Suspected software renderer or indirect context.
[vo/gpu/drm] VT_GETMODE failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
[vo/gpu/drm] Failed to set up VT switcher. Terminal switching will be unavailable.

The mpv player does not open that video file…

 

[VladiBG]

Check if there's a newer BIOS version on the Lenovo site.

 

[Meinold]

Check if there's a newer BIOS version on the Lenovo site.

I do not think that the problem is related to that, because hardware acceleration worked on that laptop with Linux.

 

[Crivens]

Did you load the i915 kernel module?

 

[Meinold]

Did you load the i915 kernel module?

Yes, I did. You can see that in the rc.conf.

 

[Erichans]

It looks like you have an intel "Bay Trail" CPU, what CPU do you have?
Am I correct that you don't have a seperate discrete GPU?

 

[Crivens]

What's in dmesg? Did i915 initialize or complain about something?

 

[Meinold]

It looks like you have an intel "Bay Trail" CPU, what CPU do you have?
Am I correct that you don't have a seperate discrete GPU?

Here is the CPU info:

Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU N2840 @ 2.16GHz

You are correct that there is no separate discrete GPU.

 

[Meinold]

What's in dmesg? Did i915 initialize or complain about something?

Here is the output of dmesg.

 

[Meinold]

I have made some progress, because I noticed that I had forgotten to set the LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME environment variable. So I have set it to i965 and now vainfo gives me the following result:

# vainfo
Trying display: wayland
error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is invalid or not set in the environment.
Trying display: x11
error: can't connect to X server!
Trying display: drm
libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
libva info: User environment variable requested driver 'i965'
libva info: Trying to open /usr/local/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_22
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.22 (libva 2.22.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Bay Trail - 2.4.4
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileNone                   :    VAEntrypointVideoProc

 

[Phishfry]

device = 'Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display'

This is the problem. Intel DRM driver does not support "Baytrail" beyond 'drm-510-kmod' driver. That driver version is only available on the 13.x branch.
So 13.5-RELEASE is last version to support i915kms on Baytrail/Z37XXX.

So no modesetting driver. The xf86-video-intel driver does work but it uses llvm pipe which is software based and slow. Same as scfb uses.

I have alot of Baytrail Graphics CPU platforms and I have been updating them to 13.5-RELEASE to prepare for the demise.

graphics/drm-510-kmod
Note the fixes on 12 May 2023 at the bottom of the freshports page.

graphics/drm-510-kmod: Update to drm_v5.10.163_6

- Fix i915kms on Baytrail/Valleyview hardware

 

[Meinold]

This is the problem. Intel DRM driver does not support "Baytrail" beyond 'drm-510-kmod' driver. That driver version is only available on the 13.x branch.
So 13.5-RELEASE is last version to support i915kms on Baytrail/Z37XXX.

So no modesetting driver. The xf86-video-intel driver does work but it uses llvm pipe which is software based and slow. Same as scfb uses.

I have alot of Baytrail Graphics CPU platforms and I have been updating them to 13.5-RELEASE to prepare for the demise.

graphics/drm-510-kmod
Note the fixes on 12 May 2023 at the bottom of the freshports page.

Thank you very much! That explains my problem.

 

[Phishfry]

It is possible that somebody submits PR and this gets fixed. I don't think the Intel DRM on Linux is broke for Baytrail. So maybe it is not imported well from Linux. I dunno the particulars.
It seems newer than SandyBridge graphics which are still working.

Fix i915kms on Baytrail/Valleyview hardware