Category: CUDA

CUDA with unsupported GCC versions

slaanesh 1 Comment

When running the CUDA stack on a recent Fedora distribution, you’re very likely to hit the compatibility issue with the current GCC release not being yet supported by NVCC. This is quite easy to address, but not many people seem to know it.

At the moment of writing, CUDA 12.4 has GCC 13.x support, while Fedora 40 ships with GCC 14.

Since a few years I’ve been shipping a cuda-gcc package which appears as a drop in replacement for NVCC. It can be installed along with CUDA and the drivers from the Nvidia or multimedia repository or from a Fedora COPR if you are running the upstream CUDA packages provided by Nvidia.

This GCC version is hidden from the main path and is explicitly used by NVCC when compiling something. Installing the cuda-gcc-c++ package creates profile entries in /etc/profile.d that just do this:

# dnf -y install cuda-gcc-c++
$ cat /etc/profile.d/cuda-gcc.sh 
export NVCC_PREPEND_FLAGS='-ccbin /usr/bin/cuda'

Logout/login or reload your profile and you’re good to go.

This way, every time you invoke NVCC you are not using the system compiler but the one provided by the cuda-gcc package.

On a Red Hat Enterprise Linux based distribution you can achieve the same result by installting the development toolset of your choice and activating the environment for it. This is usually not an issue as NVCC is officially supported on those distributions.

HandBrake with NVENC support

slaanesh 5 Comments

After switching from libav to FFmpeg, the HandBrake developers quickly added NVENC encoder support to HandBrake. You can now select both NVENC for H.264/H.265 encoders in the drop down menu or with the command line interface:

$ HandBrakeCLI --help | grep -A12 "Select video encoder"
   -e, --encoder   Select video encoder:
                               x264
                               x264_10bit
                               nvenc_h264
                               x265
                               x265_10bit
                               x265_12bit
                               nvenc_h265
                               mpeg4
                               mpeg2
                               VP8
                               VP9
                               theora

With most GPUs I tried, even setting the slowest and costly preset results in the video engine not being fully utilized. Encoding times are cut to ~25%.

Awesome! No more ffmpeg command line black magic. You can now comfortably create your preset in the HandBrake gui and then use HandBrakeCLI through SSH on your awesome Plex Media Server. The build is available for both CentOS/RHEL 7 and Fedora.

CUDA 9.0, cuDNN 7.0 and Wayland support in Fedora 27

slaanesh 39 Comments

The Nvidia repository now contains packages for Fedora 27. This is with the release candidate of CUDA 9, and it contains also cuDNN at version 7.0, which is the only version supported with CUDA 9 at the moment of writing.

The updated cuDNN 7.0 library has been added also to the other branches, this means it will be automatically upgraded from version 6.0 to 7.0. If you still need one of the previous versions, just remove it and install one of the compatibility packages:

# dnf list cuda-cudnn*
Installed Packages
cuda-cudnn.x86_64                   1:7-1.fc26         @fedora-nvidia
Available Packages
cuda-cudnn-devel.x86_64             1:7-1.fc26         fedora-nvidia 
cuda-cudnn5.1.x86_64                1:5.1-2.fc26       fedora-nvidia 
cuda-cudnn5.1-devel.x86_64          1:5.1-2.fc26       fedora-nvidia 
cuda-cudnn6.0.x86_64                1:6.0-1.fc26       fedora-nvidia 
cuda-cudnn6.0-devel.x86_64          1:6.0-1.fc26       fedora-nvidia

CUDA 9 supports GCC 6.x and CLANG 3.9, so when it will be officially released, it will cover Fedora 25 and RHEL/CentOS compilers. With Fedora 27, there will be the usual need for a GCC compatibility package (like the compat-gcc53 package currently in the repository) as GCC is at version 7 and CLANG is at version 4.0.

I will try to provide a compat-gcc64 for Fedora 27+ at the time of the official CUDA 9 release.

Regarding the drivers, on Fedora 27 where Mutter 3.25+ is available, the modesetting part of the Nvidia drivers has been enabled by default, this means that at the login you can just select “GNOME” to run Gnome on Wayland. Please note that X 3D programs running on XWayland might not work properly.

Plex Media Player and MPV with CUDA

slaanesh 8 Comments

The Plex Media Player is now part of the multimedia repository for Fedora 25+. I works as a standalone player and also as the main interface for an HTPC setup, where the “TV interface” starts as the main thing when you power up your system.

Plex Media Player uses MPV in the background, so any compilation option that was added to MPV, is now also part of Plex Media Player by using the same libraries that were already available in the multimedia repository.

If you are using Gnome Software, you will also find it in the software selection screens.

To install it on Fedora, just perform the following commands:

dnf -y install plex-media-player

You will then find it along with the other applications in your menu.

Normal desktop interface

To get to the normal desktop interface just look for the Plex Media Player icon in your menu. You will be greeted with the familiar Plex web interface, with the main difference being that the player is local through the MPV library.

Enabling Plex Media Player startup at boot

If you are planning to do an HTPC installation, and would like to have Plex Media Player starting instead of the login screen the moment you boot the device, execute the following commands as root:

dnf install plex-media-player-session
systemctl set-default plex-media-player
echo "allowed_users = anybody" >> /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config

The first command installs the required files (services, targets and PolicyKit overrides). The second command instructs the system to load by default the Plex Media Player target; that is X immediately followed by the player itself. The third command allows the system to start the X server as the Plex Media Player user, otherwise only users logged in through a console or root can start it.

You will be greeted with the TV interface just after boot:

If you want to go back to your normal installation (let’s say Gnome), then revert back the changes (again type the following commands as root):

systemctl set-default graphical
sed -i -e '/allowed_users = anybody/d' /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
rpm -e plex-media-player-session

MPV with CUDA

This has been already available for a long time, but with FFmpeg 3.3, CUDA dynamic support loading is enabled also in MPV, so the hard dependency on the CUDA library is gone, and the binaries load the library dynamically:

$ strings /usr/bin/mpv | grep libcuda
libcuda.so.1
$ strings /usr/lib64/libmpv.so.1.25.0 | grep libcuda
libcuda.so.1

So assuming you have the Nvidia driver already installed with the appropriate CUDA part, you can then play a video with the following command line:

mpv --hwdec=cuda /path/to/video.file

And then check with nvidia-smi or with the Nvidia control panel if the video engine is being utilized:

If you want to enable that by default, just make sure your configuration file has something like this inside:

$ cat ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf 
#hwdec=vdpau
#vo=vdpau
hwdec=cuda

Big multimedia repository update (CUDA enablements, rebases, new software)

slaanesh 72 Comments

Merging of the Nvidia repository into Multimedia

The whole multimedia repository has been rebased with recent releases, and it now features FFmpeg 3.2 as the foundation. Most of the programs that suppport some Nvidia integration are now enabled and compiled with support for CUDA/NVENC/CUVID; leveraging the previous reorganization of CUDA 8 in the various subpackages.

This means that all the Nvidia packages are now included in the repository as well, so if you have an Nvidia card and you are interested in both repositories, you can just have the multimedia repository enabled. If you still just want the Nvidia stuff (as enabled in Fedora 25) then it’s still available as a separate repository; and that will not change.

Why all of this? Because I can’t keep them separated anymore. The Nvidia repository can exist on its own, but the multimedia one can’t, due to the dependencies and the constant rebases (also of main Fedora and CentOS/RHEL packages). You can use the Nvidia repository alone, if you just need that, or use the multimedia one if you need everything else.

The repository is now exposed also at this URL, and contains Delta RPM support:

https://negativo17.org/repos/multimedia

All repository files and configurations have been updated, so this means that in the future this would be the place where the metadata and repository information will be placed and any new installation will get the repository from there. If you are reading this blog post, you can switch now. I will add a negativo17-release package soon, along with a few mirrors; I’m sorting out the details now with the mirror owners.

FFmpeg and other CUDA enablements

To make proper use of the Nvidia hardware encode features (NVENC/CUVID) and CUDA kernel support (i.e. Blender GPU rendering) in the various programs you need the Nvidia driver installed (nvidia-driver-cuda), and for Nvidia Performance Primitives you require the CUDA driver and the NPP library package (cuda-npp).

This means that for most people NOT requiring CUDA support or not using an Nvidia video card, the following 2 packages will be installed anyway:

$ ls -alghs nvidia-driver-cuda-libs*.rpm cuda-npp*.rpm 
92M -rw-r--r-T. 1 mock 92M Nov 16 12:35 cuda-npp-8.0.44-6.fc25.x86_64.rpm
22M -rw-r--r-T. 1 mock 22M Nov 19 15:00 nvidia-driver-cuda-libs-375.20-1.fc25.x86_64.rpm

Both packages contain just libraries, and they will be on your system as much as other libraries for multimedia codecs you don’t actually need. Example, with most multimedia programs you will get Xvid libraries for opening Xvid files, even though the format is pretty much abandoned. Having them installed does not enable any unwanted feature in your system. Also, NPP libraries should decrease 50% in size in one of the next CUDA updates, being the monolithic version of the library being deprecated in favor of split functionality.

There are some patches being evaluated to make those libraries loadable at runtime, but they have not been merged yet and there’s no guarantee that they ever will. Also, they are available for FFmpeg but not for all the other programs where support has been enabled for; so depending on your installation, you might get them anyway.

As of today, from the Multimedia repository the following programs have been enabled with some Nvidia hardware enablement:

  • MPV (video decoding through CUVID)
  • FFmpeg (encoding through NVENC, decoding through CUVID and filtering through CUDA NPP)
  • Avidemux (encoding, through NVENC)
  • GStreamer (NVENC plugin)
  • Blender (GPU rendering)

VDPAU for decoding was already enabled where possible.
Of course anything that is using FFmpeg (like the GStreamer plugins) could theoretically benefit from the same enablements as in FFMpeg:

$ for i in encoders decoders filters; do
    echo $i:; ffmpeg -hide_banner -${i} | egrep -i "npp|cuvid|nvenc|cuda"
done
encoders:
 V..... h264_nvenc           NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... nvenc                NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... nvenc_h264           NVIDIA NVENC H.264 encoder (codec h264)
 V..... nvenc_hevc           NVIDIA NVENC hevc encoder (codec hevc)
 V..... hevc_nvenc           NVIDIA NVENC hevc encoder (codec hevc)
decoders:
 V..... h263_cuvid           Nvidia CUVID H263 decoder (codec h263)
 V..... h264_cuvid           Nvidia CUVID H264 decoder (codec h264)
 V..... hevc_cuvid           Nvidia CUVID HEVC decoder (codec hevc)
 V..... mjpeg_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MJPEG decoder (codec mjpeg)
 V..... mpeg1_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MPEG1VIDEO decoder (codec mpeg1video)
 V..... mpeg2_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MPEG2VIDEO decoder (codec mpeg2video)
 V..... mpeg4_cuvid          Nvidia CUVID MPEG4 decoder (codec mpeg4)
 V..... vc1_cuvid            Nvidia CUVID VC1 decoder (codec vc1)
 V..... vp8_cuvid            Nvidia CUVID VP8 decoder (codec vp8)
 V..... vp9_cuvid            Nvidia CUVID VP9 decoder (codec vp9)
filters:
 ... hwupload_cuda     V->V       Upload a system memory frame to a CUDA device.
 ... scale_npp         V->V       NVIDIA Performance Primitives video scaling and format conversion

I think this will be much appreciated for you users out there that are already using CUDA for deep learning and FFMpeg to process data 🙂

Rebases: FFmpeg, HandBrake, VLC, OpenH264, WebP (CentOS/RHEL), MPV.

A note on Blender: Blender with CUDA support is still at 2.78 built with CUDA 7.5, and not 2.78a built with CUDA 8; so no Nvidia Pascal GPU support. I’m working on it.

GNOME Software integration

Most of the graphical software is now enabled in GNOME software for Fedora 25, meaning that you can search stuff with a keyword and that if you have the repository enabled it will just pop-up:

gnome-software-handbrake

gnome-software-makemkv

gnome-software-vlc

There is still some packages that need AppStream metadata, but that will come.

As usual, feedback, bugs and comments are welcome.

CUDA 8, cuDNN, Nvidia drivers and GNOME Software metadata

slaanesh 48 Comments

GNOME software integration

The Nvidia driver repository has been updated with AppStream metadata. From Fedora 25 onward, you will be able to search for Nvidia, CUDA, GeForce or Quadro to make the driver, control panel and other programs appear in the Gnome Software window.

As far as I know, this should be enabled by default on Fedora 25.

gnome-software-nvidia

Thanks to Richard Hughes for helping out with the metadata.

I require proper 16:10 aspect ratio pictures for both NSight and the Visual Profiler running on Fedora, so if you want to contribute just drop me an email or open an issue on the CUDA package on GitHub.

Changes to the Nvidia driver packaging

The Nvidia driver can now be installed without nvidia-settings (the control panel utility) as requested by Red Hat, in preparation for the Gnome software integration. This means the dependencies have been reversed, and that to install the driver and the control panel you need to install nvidia-settings or the driver and nvidia-settings:

dnf/yum -y install nvidia-settings kernel-devel

The libglvnd package has been updated to the latest snapshot and now features all the changes that have been introduced by Adam Jackson for the Mesa GLVND integration in Fedora 25. This means that while installing you will be prompted to install/upgrade smaller packages that contain a subset of the libglvnd libraries, this includes EGL support for the recently released beta drivers version 375.10. For anything lower than 375.10 (so Fedora 23-24 and CentOS/RHEL 6/7 at the moment of writing this) Nvidia’s last official note on EGL is:

“libEGL.so.1, while not a proper GLVND library, depends upon the GLVND infrastructure for proper functionality. Therefore, any driver package which aims to support NVIDIA EGL must provide the GLVND libraries […]”

So for now, in Fedora 23, 24 and CentOS/RHEL 6/7:

$ rpm -q --requires nvidia-driver-libs.x86_64 | grep libglvnd
libglvnd-gles(x86-64) >= 0.1.1
libglvnd-glx(x86-64) >= 0.1.1
libglvnd-opengl(x86-64) >= 0.1.1
$ rpm -q --conflicts nvidia-driver-libs.x86_64 | grep libglvnd
libglvnd-egl(x86-64) >= 0.1.1

And for Fedora 25:

$ rpm -q --requires nvidia-driver-libs.x86_64 | grep libglvnd
libglvnd-egl(x86-64) >= 0.2
libglvnd-gles(x86-64) >= 0.2
libglvnd-glx(x86-64) >= 0.2
libglvnd-opengl(x86-64) >= 0.2

Not a big deal. This accommodates the ongoing modularization in Mesa but still preserves the original EGL libraries from Nvidia. The upgrade should be transparent and you should not notice any difference except some smaller packages being installed.

vulkan_500px_june16Vulkan is now part of Fedora, so on supported Fedora releases, the Vulkan loader and libraries can be installed and you do not need to do anything to enable support in the drivers. CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux do not have Vulkan yet. I’m not sure if it’s worth installing it by default along with the drivers, though.

Let’s assume you have a freshly installed Fedora 25 system with a recent Nvidia GPU and you want to:

  • Install the driver for gaming
  • Play Vulkan enabled games
  • Want to be comfortable with the control panel
  • Play 32 bit games on a 64 bit system
  • Play 32 bit Vulkan games on a 64 bit system
$ sudo dnf install nvidia-settings kernel-devel dkms-nvidia vulkan.i686 nvidia-driver-libs.i686
Last metadata expiration check: 0:33:49 ago on Mon Oct 24 14:14:30 2016.
Dependencies resolved.
=====================================================================================
 Package            Arch   Version                             Repository       Size
=====================================================================================
Installing:
 dkms-nvidia        x86_64 2:375.10-1.fc25                     fedora-nvidia   6.4 M
 libglvnd           i686   1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia   103 k
 libglvnd           x86_64 1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia   105 k
 libglvnd-egl       i686   1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia    44 k
 libglvnd-egl       x86_64 1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia    42 k
 libglvnd-gles      i686   1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia    29 k
 libglvnd-gles      x86_64 1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia    28 k
 libglvnd-glx       i686   1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia   114 k
 libglvnd-glx       x86_64 1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia   110 k
 libglvnd-opengl    i686   1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia    39 k
 libglvnd-opengl    x86_64 1:0.2.999-4.20161025git28867bb.fc25 fedora-nvidia    38 k
 libva-vdpau-driver x86_64 0.7.4-14.fc24                       fedora           61 k
 libvdpau           i686   1.1.1-3.fc24                        fedora           35 k
 nvidia-driver      x86_64 2:375.10-3.fc25                     fedora-nvidia   3.1 M
 nvidia-driver-NVML x86_64 2:375.10-3.fc25                     fedora-nvidia   397 k
 nvidia-driver-libs i686   2:375.10-3.fc25                     fedora-nvidia    15 M
 nvidia-driver-libs x86_64 2:375.10-3.fc25                     fedora-nvidia    14 M
 nvidia-libXNVCtrl  x86_64 2:375.10-1.fc25                     fedora-nvidia    26 k
 nvidia-settings    x86_64 2:375.10-1.fc25                     fedora-nvidia   935 k
 vulkan             i686   1.0.30.0-1.fc25                     updates-testing 1.5 M
 vulkan-filesystem  noarch 1.0.30.0-1.fc25                     updates-testing 8.0 k

Transaction Summary
=====================================================================================
Install  21 Packages

Total download size: 42 M
Installed size: 178 M
Is this ok [y/N]:

Note that the requirement on kernel-devel is still required as otherwise the package kernel-debug-devel is pulled in automatically in place of the normal non-debug package. There is bug opened on dnf/libsolv for this.

Changes to CUDA packaging

The CUDA packages hosted on the Nvidia repository are split into multiple subpackages, based on the library. For each library, you have the corresponding devel subpackage with the headers, the unversioned library symlink and the static library. Here, they were divided in one libs, one big extra-libs, one static and one devel subpackage for everything. Since I’m planning to enable CUDA/NVCUVID encoding/decoding in FFmpeg (I’m actually waiting to the dynamic loader patches to land in the 3.2 branch before enabling that) there should be a way to install just what is required by those functions and not the whole CUDA toolkit set of libraries.

So now, all the libraries are split into subpackages, much like in the original Nvidia CUDA repository. This allows you to install and build software relying on specific components without the need to install all the CUDA toolkit just to satisfy a library dependency. With the new packaging organization, the original cuda-devel and cuda-extra-libs will pull in all the specific subpackages giving you the same situation you are accustomed to. Also, for the same reason, static libraries have been included in each respective devel subpackage.

Example, just with the basic tools:

$ sudo dnf install cuda
Last metadata expiration check: 0:00:20 ago on Sun Oct 23 13:11:01 2016.
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package           Arch         Version               Repository           Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 cuda              x86_64       1:8.0.44-4.fc24       fedora-nvidia        95 M
 cuda-cufft        x86_64       1:8.0.44-4.fc24       fedora-nvidia        97 M
 cuda-curand       x86_64       1:8.0.44-4.fc24       fedora-nvidia        38 M
 cuda-libs         x86_64       1:8.0.44-4.fc24       fedora-nvidia       6.4 M

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  4 Packages

Total size: 236 M
Installed size: 469 M
Is this ok [y/N]:

The basic tools along with all the libraries (note that the NVML headers are included):

$ sudo dnf install cuda-devel
Last metadata expiration check: 0:10:00 ago on Sun Oct 23 13:11:01 2016.
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package                 Arch       Version             Repository         Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 cuda                    x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      95 M
 cuda-cublas             x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      21 M
 cuda-cublas-devel       x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      38 M
 cuda-cudart             x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia     131 k
 cuda-cudart-devel       x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia     659 k
 cuda-cufft              x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      97 M
 cuda-cufft-devel        x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      73 M
 cuda-cupti              x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia     1.2 M
 cuda-cupti-devel        x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia     213 k
 cuda-curand             x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      38 M
 cuda-curand-devel       x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      60 M
 cuda-cusolver           x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      23 M
 cuda-cusolver-devel     x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia     4.1 M
 cuda-cusparse           x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      23 M
 cuda-cusparse-devel     x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      23 M
 cuda-devel              x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia     1.6 M
 cuda-libs               x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia     6.4 M
 cuda-npp                x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      91 M
 cuda-npp-devel          x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      47 M
 cuda-nvgraph            x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia     4.6 M
 cuda-nvgraph-devel      x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      12 k
 cuda-nvml-devel         x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      41 k
 cuda-nvrtc              x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia     6.6 M
 cuda-nvrtc-devel        x86_64     1:8.0.44-4.fc24     fedora-nvidia      16 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  24 Packages

Total size: 655 M
Installed size: 1.4 G
Is this ok [y/N]:

The nvidia-driver-NVML-devel package, which was including the NVML header (for libnvidia-ml.so) has now been made obsolete by the new headers, which are now part of CUDA 8. So the cuda-nvml-devel package will take care of that. Again, this is the same as in the Nvidia repository. Everything that was requiring the NVML header now refers to that package instead of the previous one. I will leave it for a few releases like that and then I will remove the Obsolete/Provides tags from the various SPEC files.

The header is also required for building the latest nvidia-settings from the 375.10 source, this has been taken into account making the CUDA package buildable on i686 but generating only the cuda-nvml-devel subpackage.

Extra stuff

In addition to the libraries bundled in the CUDA toolkit, also the cuDNN library for distributed neural networks is included in the repository.

As usual, you are welcome to open bugs / request stuff / comment on the GitHub repositories.

Fedora 24 and CentOS/RHEL 7 repositories

slaanesh 23 Comments

Fedora 24 repositories have been available for quite some time now, but here is the official statement that everything should be supported out of the box.

As part of the repository availability, I would like to say that starting from Fedora 24, the repositories are self-sustained and do not require RPMFusion to be enabled. I try to preserve compatibility between the two, so if you step into any problem just open an issue to the specific package on Github, send me an email or drop a message in the comment section of the various pages. Please note that “compatible” means that actually you shouldn’t get any conflict when installing packages, and not that I will not overwrite/obsolete the packages provided in the other repositories.

CentOS/RHEL 7 repositories have been available stand alone since the beginning and do not require external repositories to be enabled. Again, if an RPMFusion (or whatever will be mainstream at the moment) CentOS/RHEL 7 repository will appear, I will try to be compatible with it.

Scope of support

My basic idea is to have what I’m using normally everyday as a package in Fedora, enabling software combinations that would be otherwise impossible to distribute in official repositories due to license/patent issues. This for example includes NVENC (Nvidia Encoder) FFMPeg enabled builds that I use almost everyday.

Being a daily CentOS/RHEL 7 user I also want to support the latest and gretest of the same software on that platform, which also means rebuilding some official CentOS/RHEL 7 packages like VP8/9, VDPAU and VA-API libraries.

Due to the various package builds being different (or simply containing newer software releases) from what the other repositories offer, I also try to be completely independent, you can basically install the operating system and just use my repositories.

Build system changes

The (internal at the moment) build system uses Github as its primary system for storing the package information. There is a Negativo17.org public organization where all the work goes, so if you want to look at the development or the SPEC files, just browse to Github. If you have an issue or proposed change as well, you’re welcome to open an issue or create a merge request in the specific package Git page.

Skype Web Pidgin plugin

skype

The Skype repository used to contain purple-skype for Fedora and CentOS/RHEL distributions which at the time required an installed Skype to work. Now, I helped a new Fedora contributor into integrating the newly developed Skype web plugin, which is based on the Skype web client. The package in Fedora obsoletes and provides correctly the skype4pidgin plugin and as such I don’t need to provide anything else in the repository.

The installation instructions have been updated to reflect this.

Skype is available only in 32 bit format, so on a 64 bit a 32 bit client will always be installed. Since the merging with MSN, the HTML welcome screen requires a 32 bit WebKit GTK build to start. This is not included in the 64 bit only CentOS/RHEL 7 repositories; so for this reason, if you are running CentOS/RHEL 7, it requires the multimedia repository to be enabled and have the dependency solved. This used to be self-contained in the Skype repository, but this is no longer feasible for me to mantain considering there is a different rebuild of WebKit GTK in the Multimedia repository.

Spotify Client

spotify-client

The Spotify repository used to contain FFMpeg for CentOS/RHEL distributions and a requirement on FFMpeg’s RPMFusion as a Fedora dependency. FFMpeg is no longer included in the CentOS/RHEL 7 repositories so the multimedia repository has to be enabled to have the dependency solved. As for Skype, this no longer feasible for me to mantain considering there is a different rebuild of WebKit GTK in the Multimedia repository.

Here as well the installation instructions have been updated to reflect the change.

aKMOD kernel module packages

The kernel binary module packages generated by aKMOD are now compressed with XZ, like in the original Fedora kernel packages that contain kernel modules. I’ve become a DKMS contributor, so, as time permits, I will add the same functionality to DKMS for Fedora distributions.

At the moment, this applies to Nvidia and X-Pad kernel modules.

Gstreamer plugins and multimedia libraries

The Multimedia repository now provides GStreamer (1.0) plugins for Bad, Ugly, libAV and VA-API plugin bundles with all options enabled. This is split into the following GStreamer runtime packages:

  • gstreamer1-plugins-bad
  • gstreamer1-plugins-ugly
  • gstreamer1-vaapi
  • gstreamer1-libav
  • gstreamer1-plugins-bad-fluidsynth (pulls in the whole FluidSynth distribution)
  • gstreamer1-plugins-bad-nvenc (x86_64 only, pulls in the Nvidia binary driver; and at the moment it does not work properly)

They all have an Epoch of “1”, due to the various reasons explained at the top. They are not yet available for CentOS/RHEL 7 due to time constraints; I will try to prepare them in the next weeks.

Fedora 24 OpenH264 repository

A note on the Fedora 24 OpenH264 repository. As described in its wiki page, there is an extra repository that can be enabled directly in Fedora 24 that allows you to install OpenH264, its relevant Gstreamer 1.0 plugin and a Mozilla plugin for Firefox. Following the same logic, at the moment the same Gstreamer 1.0 plugin is provided/obsoleted (in newer form) by the gstreamer1-pluings-bad package. There is a conflict for the OpenH264 binaries which I will address soon.

Converged multimedia repository with restricted codecs and binaries

slaanesh 2 Comments

As most of you have noticed, the HandBrake repository has been integrating more and more multimedia packages that are not related to HandBrake itself or to its supporting programs. The latest additions to it are the CUDA/FFMpeg enabled Blender package and some additional encoding options for FFMPeg.

This definitely puts a nail in the coffin of the “CUDA programs” repository that was previously treated as a separate repository. I’m not able to provide separate repositories for them as either you have a full blown multimedia collection with each component strictly tied to each other (Blender requires FFMPeg and Nvidia drivers, FFMpeg requires restricted multimedia libraries and Nvidia drivers, HandBrake requires the same restricted multimedia libraries of FFMPeg, etc.) or you just have the plain Fedora repositories with no license/patent encumbered options.

None of these packages can be distributed inside the main Fedora/RPMFusion repositories as they are presented here with current build options; mainly due to patent and licensing issues or simply because they are coupled with non open source software resulting in dubious licensed binaries.

Some of the packages might have hard dependencies on Nvidia components or libraries, while some other have a weak dependency on them. Whether you can enable support for those it’s usually just a matter of adding or not the Nvidia repository and the multimedia (HandBrake) repository at the same time.

Not all distributions are on par regarding features and packages, let’s say most of the development goes on to the latest Fedora release due to it being my daily desktop.

To install the CUDA enabled Blender, HandBrake, MakeMKV or the fully fledge FFMpeg binary just go to the appropriate page and follow the instructions.

I will probably also rename the repository into something more generic compared to what is currently called now; so suggestions are welcome!

Screenshot from 2015-12-11 19-20-27

Updated packages and new Samsung repository

slaanesh 5 Comments

As some of you may have noticed, a lot of updates and new stuff has been pushed.

Highlights from the updates

  • The Nvidia driver version 358.16 has been promoted as “Short Lived” for Fedora, and it has support for X.org Video ABI 20. So it is now the default for Fedora 21, 22 and 23.
  • Driver version 352.63 is the new “Long Lived” driver for RedHat/CentOS.
  • Both drivers have a fallback mechanism for the SELinux regression introduced in 358.09, so you don’t need anymore to disable SELinux for GDM refresh problems.
  • The legacy driver has been updated to 340.96, and this as well has been enabled for Fedora 23 as it also supports X.org 1.18
  • CDRtools after years of an alpha 3.01 has finally updated to… an alpha 3.02 😀
  • HandBrake has been updated to the very latest snapshot and is relying only on separate source tarballs that are not statically linked. Unfortunately some are of dubious licenses as usual. Please note that there are some issues with subtitle tracks embedded in Matroska files not being correctly interpreted.
  • The Nvidia NVML library and CUDA packages have seen some small update.
  • Steam has been updated to version 1.0.0.51 and has updated UDev rules for the Steam Controller. If you are one of the owners of such controller, you will find support out of the box. The same changes have also been pushed to the RPMFusion package.

New repository

There’s a new repository for Samsung printers, multifunction printers and scanners that carries the “Samsung Unified Linux Driver” for both the scanning and printing functions. Just by installing it and enabling the ports in the firewall should be enough to get every device running in no time. Refer to the appropriate page for details.

Fully fledged FFMpeg binaries

Also, due to popular request, there is now a custom built FFMpeg package that drops in as a replacement for RPMFusion ones and that enables linking and support for all the codecs/encoders/decoders that would result in an unredistributable binary. This is now available the HandBrake repository. The following codecs/encoders/decoders/transports have been enabled:

  • VP8 and VP9 de/encoding
  • WebP encoding
  • AAC (Fraunhofer, LibVO and other variants) de/encoding
  • OpenAL 1.1 capture support
  • BluRay reading
  • AMR-WB de/encoding
  • AMR-NB de/encoding
  • RTMP[E] support
  • H.264 encoding (OpenH264, Cisco variant)
  • OpenGL rendering
  • SSH transport
  • Fontconfig/fribidi text support

This sobstitutes the ffmpeg binary that was provided as part of the CUDA enabled programs, as it is now tied to all the other multimedia libraries available in this repository. The support for Nvidia H.264/H.265 hardware encoding/decoding is enabled here as well and the required packages are now installed through the use of RPM weak dependencies.

The package has a different Epoch so it is not overwritten by normal updates. The idea is to have all the possible codecs supported out of the box, so also expect HEVC kvazaar (H.265), Intel Quick Sync Video (H.265) hardware support through libmfx/mfx_dispatch, CIFS transport, and other stuff, as soon as I have more time.

The same repository will be used to host the CUDA and FFMpeg enabled Blender, as it makes no sense to have a separate repository for it. Either you have a full blown multimedia collection with each component strictly tied to each other, or you just have the plain Fedora repositories with no license/patent encumbered options.

Enjoy!

Fedora 23 packages now live

slaanesh 38 Comments

All the repositories have been updated for Fedora 23, so if you trigger an update, everything should update properly. CUDA enabled programs are still building.

A few notes:

  • HandBrake has been updated to a pre-release of 1.0 for Fedora 23. Updated x264/x265/FFmpeg libraries should give a speed bost to all encoding operations.
  • The Spotify 0.9.x repository has been removed. It will never receive updates anymore, and now the 1.x builds are on feature parity, including 32 bit support. If you haven’t upgraded, just do it now.
  • Nvidia drivers version 358.09 do not yet support X.org driver ABI 20, so you’re probably going to have some lock ups or random issues.
  • The SteamOS and X-Box replacement driver have been updated to the latest upstream.

Please let me know if you have any upgrade issue.