Arch Linux

zshlhuppe

Member

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2018-06-05

Posts: 23

SOLVED - Installing VA-API and VDPAU

Hi gang - newbie Arch user here and loving it!

Today I installed a Radeon HD 6450 video board.

I tried to get video acceleration going by following instructions here:

        https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ha … stallation

The system boots fine. However, if I probe VA-API and VDPAU I get errors.

# vainfo

error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set in the environment
error: cannot connect to the X server

# vdpauinfo

vdapauinfo: cannot connect to the X server

I backtracked and removed all packages that I had installed, except one.

It appears that the package I need is libva-mesa-driver

Now I get this:

# vainfo

...
livbva info: VA-API version 1.1.0
...
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.1 (libva 2.1.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver ... for AMD CAICOS ...
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
...

Why do I still get X server connection failures?

I have been all through this system and cannot see what the problem is.

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Last edited by zshlhuppe (2018-06-17 14:37:58)

zshlhuppe

Member

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2018-06-05

Posts: 23

Re: SOLVED - Installing VA-API and VDPAU

Update:

I found an article about the AMD Radeon HD 6450 here:

    https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= … 6450&num=3

The author mentions that the board will work with, and I quote:

"[...] open-source Radeon DRM/KMS driver and Gallium3D. [...]

I am Googling for information and getting nowhere fast.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction from here?

Thanks!

Last edited by zshlhuppe (2018-06-17 04:26:09)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: SOLVED - Installing VA-API and VDPAU

How are you starting X? How do you log in? You have the drivers for the card likely already active that shouldn't be the issue. Are you starting a GNOME session? That will be on Wayland by default, switch that to Gnome on Xorg.

Also please post output in [ code ] tags and don't try to filter output to things that you feel are relevant, one might lose valuable context. FWIW what are the outputs of

pacman -Qs mesa
lspci -k
loginctl show-session $XDG_SESSION_ID

Last edited by V1del (2018-06-17 08:32:42)

zshlhuppe

Member

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2018-06-05

Posts: 23

Re: SOLVED - Installing VA-API and VDPAU

Hi V1del - I appreciate your response.

You are right. In the wee hours of the morning I finally figured out what you are saying. If I log into "Gnome on Xorg" I don't get the "protocol unspecified" errors.
That was when I knew that the issue is compatibility with Wayland. I am now running on the default Radeon driver with no add-ons. Hardware video acceleration
would be good to have I suppose but the system is quite nice as is. The Gnome shell has a lot of animations and they are nice and smooth.

The main reason I wanted hardware acceleration is for when I setup VMware Player. That is a topic for another day.

Thanks!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: SOLVED - Installing VA-API and VDPAU

That kind of hardware acceleration will be irrelevant for VMWare use cases. VDPAU and VAAPI are for video decoding and doesn't have a relation with OpenGL 3D hardware accel you might want to make use of in VMWare

zshlhuppe

Member

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2018-06-05

Posts: 23

Re: SOLVED - Installing VA-API and VDPAU

Hi V1del,

I agree that VMware is a separate use case from the desktop. I am coming to Arch from Debian running a GeForce series video card.
Nouvea was ok for the desktop but my VMs had little or no 3D support. Installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers fixed that problem.
I am getting off topic now so I will just say that I need to try VMware and see where I land with the default Radeon drivers.

Thanks!

Your Friend,

Len Huppe