GStreamer-VAAPI 1.16 and libva 2.6 in Debian

Debian has migrated libva 2.6 into testing. This release includes a pull request that changes how the drivers are selected to be loaded and used. As the pull request mentions:

libva will try to load iHD firstly, if it failed. then it will load i965.

Also, Debian testing has imported that iHD driver with two flavors: intel-media-driver and intel-media-driver-non-free. So basically iHD driver is now the main VAAPI driver for Intel platforms, though it only supports the new chips, the old ones still require i965-va-driver.

Sadly, for current GStreamer-VAAPI stable, the iHD driver is not included in its driver white list. And this will pose a problem for users that have installed either of the intel-media-driver packages, because, by default, such driver is ignored and the VAAPI GStreamer elements won’t be registered.

There are three temporal workarounds (mutually excluded) for those users (updated):

  1. Uninstall intel-media-driver* and install (or keep) the old i965-va-driver-shaders/i965-va-driver.
  2. Export, by default in your session, export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965. Normally this is done adding the variable exportation in $HOME/.profile file. This environment variable will force libva to load the i965 driver.
  3. And finally, export, by default in your sessions, GST_VAAPI_ALL_DRIVERS=1. This is not advised since many applications, such as Epiphany, might fail.

We prefer to not include iHD in the stable white list because most of the work done for that driver has occurred after release 1.16.

In the case of GStreamer-VAAPI master branch (actively in develop) we have merged the iHD in the white list, since the Intel team has been working a lot to make it work. Though, it will be released for GStreamer version 1.18.

Enabling HuC for SKL/KBL in Debian/testing

Recently, our friend Florent complained that it was impossible to set a constant bitrate when encoding H.264 using low-power profile with gstreamer-vaapi .

Low-power (LP) profiles are VA-API entry points, available in Intel SkyLake-based procesor and succesors, which provide video encoding with low power consumption.

Later on, Ullysses and Sree, pointed out that CBR in LP is ony possible if HuC is enabled in the kernel.

HuC is a firmware, loaded by i915 kernel module, designed to offload some of the media functions from the CPU to GPU. One of these functions is bitrate control when encoding. HuC saves unnecessary CPU-GPU synchronization.

In order to load HuC, it is required first to load GuC, another Intel’s firmware designed to perform graphics workload scheduling on the various graphics parallel engines.

How we can install and configure these firmwares to enable CBR in low-power profile, among other things, in Debian/testing?

Check i915 parameters

First we shall confirm that our kernel and our i915 kernel module is capable to handle this functionality:

$ sudo modinfo i915 | egrep -i "guc|huc|dmc"
firmware:       i915/bxt_dmc_ver1_07.bin
firmware:       i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26.bin
firmware:       i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_01.bin
firmware:       i915/kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin
firmware:       i915/bxt_guc_ver8_7.bin
firmware:       i915/skl_guc_ver6_1.bin
firmware:       i915/kbl_huc_ver02_00_1810.bin
firmware:       i915/bxt_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin
firmware:       i915/skl_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin
parm:           enable_guc_loading:Enable GuC firmware loading (-1=auto, 0=never [default], 1=if available, 2=required) (int)
parm:           enable_guc_submission:Enable GuC submission (-1=auto, 0=never [default], 1=if available, 2=required) (int)
parm:           guc_log_level:GuC firmware logging level (-1:disabled (default), 0-3:enabled) (int)
parm:           guc_firmware_path:GuC firmware path to use instead of the default one (charp)
parm:           huc_firmware_path:HuC firmware path to use instead of the default one (charp)

Install firmware

$ sudo apt install firmware-misc-nonfree

UPDATE: In order to install this Debian package, you should have enabled the non-free apt repository in your sources list.

Verify the firmware are installed:

$ ls -1 /lib/firmware/i915/
bxt_dmc_ver1_07.bin
bxt_dmc_ver1.bin
bxt_guc_ver8_7.bin
bxt_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin
kbl_dmc_ver1_01.bin
kbl_dmc_ver1.bin
kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin
kbl_huc_ver02_00_1810.bin
skl_dmc_ver1_23.bin
skl_dmc_ver1_26.bin
skl_dmc_ver1.bin
skl_guc_ver1.bin
skl_guc_ver4.bin
skl_guc_ver6_1.bin
skl_guc_ver6.bin
skl_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin

Update modprobe configuration

Edit or create the configuration file /etc/modprobe.d/i915.con

$ sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
....
$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
options i915 enable_guc_loading=1 enable_guc_submission=1

Reboot

$ sudo systemctl reboot 

Verification

Now it is possible to verify that the i915 module kernel loaded the firmware correctly by looking at the kenrel logs:

$ journalctl -b -o short-monotonic -k | egrep -i "i915|dmr|dmc|guc|huc"
[   10.303849] miau kernel: Setting dangerous option enable_guc_loading - tainting kernel
[   10.303852] miau kernel: Setting dangerous option enable_guc_submission - tainting kernel
[   10.336318] miau kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: vgaarb: changed VGA decodes: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=io+mem:owns=io+mem
[   10.338664] miau kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_01.bin
[   10.339635] miau kernel: [drm] Finished loading DMC firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_01.bin (v1.1)
[   10.361811] miau kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware i915/kbl_huc_ver02_00_1810.bin
[   10.362422] miau kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware i915/kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin
[   10.393117] miau kernel: [drm] GuC submission enabled (firmware i915/kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin [version 9.14])
[   10.410008] miau kernel: [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20170619 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0
[   10.559614] miau kernel: snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_audio_component_bind_ops [i915])
[   11.937413] miau kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device

That means that HuC and GuC firmwares were loaded successfully.

Now we can check the status of the modules using sysfs

$ sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_guc_load_status
GuC firmware status:
        path: i915/kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin
        fetch: SUCCESS
        load: SUCCESS
        version wanted: 9.14
        version found: 9.14
        header: offset is 0; size = 128
        uCode: offset is 128; size = 142272
        RSA: offset is 142400; size = 256

GuC status 0x800330ed:
        Bootrom status = 0x76
        uKernel status = 0x30
        MIA Core status = 0x3

Scratch registers:
         0:     0xf0000000
         1:     0x0
         2:     0x0
         3:     0x5f5e100
         4:     0x600
         5:     0xd5fd3
         6:     0x0
         7:     0x8
         8:     0x3
         9:     0x74240
        10:     0x0
        11:     0x0
        12:     0x0
        13:     0x0
        14:     0x0
        15:     0x0
$ sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_huc_load_status
HuC firmware status:
        path: i915/kbl_huc_ver02_00_1810.bin
        fetch: SUCCESS
        load: SUCCESS
        version wanted: 2.0
        version found: 2.0
        header: offset is 0; size = 128
        uCode: offset is 128; size = 218304
        RSA: offset is 218432; size = 256

HuC status 0x00006080:

Test GStremer

$ gst-launch-1.0 videotestsrc num-buffers=1000 ! video/x-raw, format=NV12, width=1920, height=1080, framerate=\(fraction\)30/1 ! vaapih264enc bitrate=8000 keyframe-period=30 tune=low-power rate-control=cbr ! mp4mux ! filesink location=test.mp4
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
Got context from element 'vaapiencodeh264-0': gst.vaapi.Display=context, gst.vaapi.Display=(GstVaapiDisplay)"\(GstVaapiDisplayGLX\)\ vaapidisplayglx0";
Pipeline is PREROLLED ...
Setting pipeline to PLAYING ...
New clock: GstSystemClock
Got EOS from element "pipeline0".
Execution ended after 0:00:11.620036001
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Setting pipeline to READY ...
Setting pipeline to NULL ...
Freeing pipeline ...
$ gst-discoverer-1.0 test.mp4 
Analyzing file:///home/vjaquez/gst/master/intel-vaapi-driver/test.mp4
Done discovering file:///home/vjaquez/test.mp4

Topology:
  container: Quicktime
    video: H.264 (High Profile)

Properties:
  Duration: 0:00:33.333333333
  Seekable: yes
  Live: no
  Tags: 
      video codec: H.264 / AVC
      bitrate: 8084005
      encoder: VA-API H264 encoder
      datetime: 2017-12-07T14:29:23Z
      container format: ISO MP4/M4A

Misison accomplished!

References

Intel MediaSDK on Debian (testing)

Everybody knows it: install Intel MediaSDK in GNU/Linux is a PITA. With CentOS or Yocto is less cumbersome, if you trust blindly on scripts ran as root.

I don’t like CentOS, I feel it like if I were living in the past. I like Debian (testing, of course) and I also wanted to understand a little more about MediaSDK. And this is what I did to have Intel MediaSDK working in Debian/testing.

First, I did a pristine installation of Debian testing with a netinst image in my NUC 6i5SYK, with a normal desktop user setup (Gnome3).

The madness comes later.

Intel’s identifies two types of MediaSDK installation: Gold and Generic. Gold is for CentOS, and Generic for the rest of distributions. Obviously, Generic means you’re on your own. For the purpose of this exercise I used as reference Generic Linux* Intel® Media Server Studio Installation.

Let’s begin by grabbing the Intel® Media Server Studio – Community Edition. You will need to register yourself and accept the user agreement, because this is proprietary software.

At the end, you should have a tarball named MediaServerStudioEssentials2017R3.tar.gz

Extract the files for Generic instalation

$ cd ~
$ tar xvf MediaServerStudioEssentials2017R3.tar.gz
$ cd MediaServerStudioEssentials2017R3
$ tar xvf SDK2017Production16.5.2.tar.gz
$ cd SDK2017Production16.5.2/Generic
$ mkdir tmp
$ tar -xvC tmp -f intel-linux-media_generic_16.5.2-64009_64bit.tar.gz

Kernel

Bad news: in order to get MediaSDK working you need to patch the mainlined kernel.

Worse news: the available patches are only for the version 4.4 the kernel.

Still, systemd works on 4.4, as far as I know, so it would not be a big problem.

Grab building dependencies
$ sudo apt install build-essential devscripts libncurses5-dev
$ sudo apt build-dep linux

Grab kernel source

I like to use the sources from the git repository, since it would be possible to do some rebasing and blaming in the future.

$ cd ~
$ git clone https://github.com/torvalds/linux.git
...
$ git pull -v --tags
$ git checkout -b 4.4 v4.4

Extract MediaSDK patches

$ cd ~/MediaServerStudioEssentials2017R3/SDK2017Production16.5.2/Generic/tmp/opt/intel/mediasdk/opensource/patches/kmd/4.4
$ tar xvf intel-kernel-patches.tar.bz2
$ cd intel-kernel-patches
$ PATCHDIR=$(pwd)

Patch the kernel

cd ~/linux
$ git am $PATCHDIR/*.patch

The patches should apply with some warnings but no fatal errors (don’t worry, be happy).

Still, there’s a problem with this old kernel: our recent compiler doesn’t build it as it is. Another patch is required:

$ wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.8-rc2/0002-UBUNTU-SAUCE-no-up-disable-pie-when-gcc-has-it-enabl.patch
$ git am 0002-UBUNTU-SAUCE-no-up-disable-pie-when-gcc-has-it-enabl.patch

TODO: Shall I need to modify the EXTRAVERSION string in kernel’s Makefile?

Build and install the kernel

Notice that we are using our current kernel configuration. That is error prone. I guess that is why I had to select NVM manually.

$ cp /boot/config-4.12.0-1-amd64 ./.config
$ make olddefconfig
$ make nconfig # -- select NVM
$ scripts/config --disable DEBUG_INFO
$ make deb-pkg
...
$ sudo dpkg -i linux-image-4.4.0+_4.4.0+-2_amd64.deb linux-headers-4.4.0+_4.4.0+-2_amd64.deb linux-firmware-image-4.4.0+_4.4.0+-2_amd64.deb

Configure GRUB2 to boot Linux 4.4. by default

This part was absolutely tricky for me. It took me a long time to figure out how to specify the kernel ID in the grubenv.

$ sudo vi /etc/default/grub

And change the line GRUB_DEFAULT=saved. By default it is set to 0. And update GRUB.

$ sudo update-grub

Now look for the ID of the installed kernel image in /etc/grub/grub.cfg and use it:

$ sudo grub-set-default "gnulinux-4.4.0+-advanced-2c246bc6-65bb-48ea-9517-4081b016facc>gnulinux-4.4.0+-advanced-2c246bc6-65bb-48ea-9517-4081b016facc"

Please note it is twice and separated by a >. Don’t ask me why.

Copy MediaSDK firmware (and libraries too)

I like to use rsync rather normal cp because there are the options like --dry-run and --itemize-changes to verify what I am doing.

$ cd ~/MediaServerStudioEssentials2017R3/SDK2017Production16.5.2/Generic/tmp
$ sudo rsync -av --itemize-changes ./lib /
$ sudo rsync -av --itemize-changes ./opt/intel/common /opt/intel
$ sudo rsync -av --itemize-changes ./opt/intel/mediasdk/{include,lib64,plugins} /opt/intel/mediasdk

All these directories contain blobs that do the MediaSDK magic. They are dlopened by hard coded paths by mfx_dispatch, which will be explain later.

In /lib lives the firmware (kernel blob).

In /opt/intel/common… I have no idea what are those shared objects.

In /opt/intel/mediasdk/include live header files for programming an compilation.

In /opt/intel/mediasdk/lib64 live the driver for the modified libva (iHD) and other libraries.

In /opt/intel/mediasdk/plugins live, well, plugins…

In conclusion, all these bytes are darkness and mystery.

Reboot

$ sudo systemctl reboot

The system should boot, automatically, in GNU/Linux 4.4.

Please, log with Xorg, not in Wayland, since it is not supported, as far as I know.

GStreamer

For compiling GStreamer I will use gst-uninstalled. Someone may say that I should use gst-build because is newer and faster, but I feel more comfortable doing the following kind of hacks with the old&good autotools.

Basically this is a reproduction of Quick-start guide to gst-uninstalled for GStreamer 1.x.

$ sudo apt build-dep gst-plugins-{base,good,bad}1.0
$ wget https://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer/plain/scripts/create-uninstalled-setup.sh -q -O - | sh

I will modify the gst-uninstalled script, and keep it outside of the repository. For that I will use the systemd file-hierarchy spec for user’s executables.

$ cd ~/gst
$ mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
$ mv master/gstreamer/scripts/gst-uninstalled ~/.local/bin
$ ln -sf ~/.local/bin/gst-uninstalled ./gst-master

Do not forget to edit your ~/.profile to add ~/.local/bin in the environment variable PATH.

Patch ~/.local/bin/gst-uninstalled

The modifications are to handle the three dependencies libraries that are required by MediaSDK: libdrm, libva and mfx_dispatch.

diff --git a/scripts/gst-uninstalled b/scripts/gst-uninstalled
index 81f83b6c4..d79f19abd 100755
--- a/scripts/gst-uninstalled
+++ b/scripts/gst-uninstalled
@@ -122,7 +122,7 @@ GI_TYPELIB_PATH=$GST/gstreamer/gst:$GI_TYPELIB_PATH
 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
 export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
 export GI_TYPELIB_PATH
-  
+
 export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="\
 $GST_PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig\
 :$GST/gstreamer/pkgconfig\
@@ -140,6 +140,9 @@ $GST_PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig\
 :$GST/orc\
 :$GST/farsight2\
 :$GST/libnice/nice\
+:$GST/drm\
+:$GST/libva/pkgconfig\
+:$GST/mfx_dispatch\
 ${PKG_CONFIG_PATH:+:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH}"

 export GST_PLUGIN_PATH="\
@@ -227,6 +230,16 @@ export GST_VALIDATE_APPS_DIR=$GST_VALIDATE_APPS_DIR:$GST/gst-editing-services/te
 export GST_VALIDATE_PLUGIN_PATH=$GST_VALIDATE_PLUGIN_PATH:$GST/gst-devtools/validate/plugins/
 export GIO_EXTRA_MODULES=$GST/prefix/lib/gio/modules:$GIO_EXTRA_MODULES

+# MediaSDK
+export LIBVA_DRIVERS_PATH=/opt/intel/mediasdk/lib64
+export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=iHD
+export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="\
+/opt/intel/common/mdf/lib64\
+:$GST/drm/.libs\
+:$GST/drm/intel/.libs\
+:$GST/libva/va/.libs\
+:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
+

Now, initialize the gst-uninstalled environment:

$ cd ~/gst
$ ./gst-master
libdrm

Grab libdrm from its repository and switch to the branch with the supported version by MediaSDK.

$ cd ~/gst/master
$ git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/mesa/drm
$ cd drm
$ git checkout -b intel libdrm-2.4.67

Extract the distributed tarball in the cloned repository.

$ tar -xv --strip-components=1 -C . -f ~/MediaServerStudioEssentials2017R3/SDK2017Production16.5.2/Generic/tmp/opt/intel/mediasdk/opensource/libdrm/2.4.67-64009/libdrm-2.4.67.tar.bz2

Then we could check the big delta between upstream and the changes done by Intel for MediaSDK.

Let’s put it in a commit for later rebases.

$ git add -u
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "mediasdk changes"

Get build dependencies and compile.

$ sudo apt build-dep libdrm
$ ./configure
$ make -j8

Since the pkgconfig files (*.pc) of libdrm are generated to work installed, it is needed to modify them in order to work uninstalled.

$ prefix=${HOME}/gst/master/drm
$ sed -i -e "s#^libdir=.*#libdir=${prefix}/.libs#" ${prefix}/*.pc
$ sed -i -e "s#^includedir=.*#includedir=${prefix}#" ${prefix}/*.pc

In order to C preprocessor could find the uninstalled libdrm header files we need to make them available in the expected path according to the pkgconfig file and right now they are not there. To fix that it is possible to create proper symbolic links.

$ cd ~/gst/master/drm
$ ln -s include/drm/ libdrm

libva

This modified a version of libva. These modifications messed a bit with the opensource version of libva, because Intel decided not to prefix the library, or some other strategy. In gstreamer-vaapi we had to blacklist VA-API version 0.99, because it is the version number, arbitrary set, of this modified version of libva for MediaSDK.

Again, grab the original libva from repo and change the branch aiming to the divert point. It was difficult to find the divert commit id since even the libva version number was changed. Doing some archeology I guessed the branch point was in version 1.0.15, but I’m not sure.

$ cd ~/gst/master
$ git clone https://github.com/01org/libva.git
$ cd libva
$ git checkout -b intel libva-1.0.15
$ tar -xv --strip-components=1 -C . -f ~/MediaServerStudioEssentials2017R3/SDK2017Production16.5.2/Generic/tmp/opt/intel/mediasdk/opensource/libva/1.67.0.pre1-64009/libva-1.67.0.pre1.tar.bz2
$ git add -u
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "mediasdk"

Before compile, verify that Makefile is going to link against the uninstalled libdrm. You can do that by grepping for LIBDRM in Makefile.

Get compilation dependencies and build.

$ sudo apt build-dep libva
$ ./configure
$ make -j8

Moidify the pkgconfig files for uninstalled

$ prefix=${HOME}/gst/master/libva
$ sed -i -e "s#^libdir=.*#libdir=${prefix}/va/.libs#" ${prefix}/pkgconfig/*.pc
$ sed -i -e "s#^includedir=.*#includedir=${prefix}#" ${prefix}/pkgconfig/*.pc

Fix header path with symbolic links

$ cd ~/gst/master/libva/va
$ ln -sf drm/va_drm.h

mfx_dispatch

This static library which must be linked with MediaSDK applications. In our case, to the GStreamer plugin.

According to its documentation (included in the tarball):

the dispatcher is a layer that lies between application and the SDK implementations. Upon initialization, the dispatcher locates the appropiate platform-specific SDK implementation. If there is none, it will select the software SDK implementation. The dispatcher will redirect subsequent function calls to the same functions in the selected SDK implementation.

In the tarball there is the source of the mfx_dispatcher, but it only compiles with cmake. I have not worked with cmake on uninstalled setups, but we are lucky, there is a repository with autotools support:

$ cd ~/gst/master
$ git clone https://github.com/lu-zero/mfx_dispatch.git

And compile. After running ./configure it is better to confirm, grepping the generated Makefie, that the uninstalled versions of libdrm and libva are going to be used.

$ autoreconf  --install
$ ./configure
$ make -j8

Finally, just as the other libraries, it is required to fix the pkgconfig files:d

$ prefix=${HOME}/gst/master/mfx_dispatch
$ sed -i -e "s#^libdir=.*#libdir=${prefix}/.libs#" ${prefix}/*.pc
$ sed -i -e "s#^includedir=.*#includedir=${prefix}#" ${prefix}/*.pc

Test it!

At last we are in a position where it is possible to test if everything works as expected. For it we are going to run the pre-compiled version of vainfo bundled in the tarball.

We will copy it to our uninstalled setup, thus we would running without specifing the path.

$ sync -av /home/vjaquez/MediaServerStudioEssentials2017R3/SDK2017Production16.5.2/Generic/tmp/usr/bin/vainfo ./prefix/bin/
$ vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 0.99.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: User requested driver 'iHD'
libva info: Trying to open /opt/intel/mediasdk/lib64/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_32
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.99 (libva 1.67.0.pre1)
vainfo: Driver version: 16.5.2.64009-ubit
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: <unknown entrypoint>
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: <unknown entrypoint>
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               : <unknown entrypoint>
      VAProfileH264Main               : <unknown entrypoint>
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               : <unknown entrypoint>
      VAProfileH264High               : <unknown entrypoint>
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointEncPicture
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          : <unknown entrypoint>
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileVP9Profile0            : <unknown entrypoint>
      <unknown profile>               : VAEntrypointVideoProc
      VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointVideoProc
      VAProfileNone                   : <unknown entrypoint>

It works!

Compile GStreamer

I normally make a copy of ~/gst/master/gstreamer/script/git-update.sh in ~/.local/bin in order to modify it, like adding support for ccache, disabling gtkdoc and gobject-instrospections, increase the parallel tasks, etc. But that is out of the scope of this document.

$ cd ~/gst/master/
$ ./gstreamer/scripts/git-update.sh

Everything should be built without issues and, at the end, we could test if the gst-msdk elements are available:

$ gst-inspect-1.0 msdk
Plugin Details:
  Name                     msdk
  Description              Intel Media SDK encoders
  Filename                 /home/vjaquez/gst/master/gst-plugins-bad/sys/msdk/.libs/libgstmsdk.so
  Version                  1.13.0.1
  License                  BSD
  Source module            gst-plugins-bad
  Source release date      2017-11-23 16:39 (UTC)
  Binary package           GStreamer Bad Plug-ins git
  Origin URL               Unknown package origin

  msdkh264dec: Intel MSDK H264 decoder
  msdkh264enc: Intel MSDK H264 encoder
  msdkh265dec: Intel MSDK H265 decoder
  msdkh265enc: Intel MSDK H265 encoder
  msdkmjpegdec: Intel MSDK MJPEG decoder
  msdkmjpegenc: Intel MSDK MJPEG encoder
  msdkmpeg2enc: Intel MSDK MPEG2 encoder
  msdkvp8dec: Intel MSDK VP8 decoder
  msdkvp8enc: Intel MSDK VP8 encoder

  9 features:
  +-- 9 elements

Great!

Now, let’s run a simple pipeline. Please note that gst-msdk elements have rank zero, then they will not be autoplugged, it is necessary to craft the pipeline manually:

$ gst-launch-1.0 filesrc location= ~/test.264 ! h264parse ! msdkh264dec ! videoconvert ! xvimagesink
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
libva info: VA-API version 0.99.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: User requested driver 'iHD'
libva info: Trying to open /opt/intel/mediasdk/lib64/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_32
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
Redistribute latency...
Pipeline is PREROLLED ...
Setting pipeline to PLAYING ...
New clock: GstSystemClock
Got EOS from element "pipeline0".
Execution ended after 0:00:02.502411331
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Setting pipeline to READY ...
Setting pipeline to NULL ...
Freeing pipeline ...

\o/

Boosting WebKitGTK+ compilation for armhf with icecream

Some time ago I needed to jump into the fix-compile-test loop for WebKitGTK+, but in the armhf architecture, speaking in terms of Debian/Ubuntu.

To whom don’t know, WebKitGTK+ is huge, it is humongous, and it takes a lot of resources to compile. For me, at first glance, was impossible to even try to compile it natively in my hardware, which, by the way, is an Odroid-X2. So I setup a cross-compilation environment.

And I failed. I could not cross-compile the master branch of WebKitGTK+ using as root file system, a bootstrapped Debian. It is supposed to be the opposite, but all the multiarch thing made my old and good cross-compilation setup (based on scratchbox2) a bloody hell. Long story short, I gave up and I took more seriously the idea of native builds. Besides, Ubuntu and Debian does full native builds of their distributions for armhf, not to say that the Odroid-X2 has enough power for give it a try.

It is worth to mention that I could not use Yocto/OE or buildroot, though I would love to use them, because the target was a distribution based on Debian Sid/Ubuntu, and I would not afford a chroot environment only for WebKitGTK+.

With a lot of patience I was able to compile, in the Odroid, a minimalist configuration of WebKitGTK+ without symbols. As expected, it took ages (less than 3 hours, if I remember correctly)

Quickly an idea popped out in the office: to use distcc. I grabbed as many board based on ARMv7 I could find: another Odroid-X2, a couple Pandaboards, an Arndaleboard, and an IFC6410, installed in them a distcc compilation setup.

And yes, the compilation time went down, but not that much, though I don’t remember how much.

Many of the colleagues at the office migrated from distcc to icecream. Particularly, Juan A. Suárez told me about his experiments with icecc and his Raspberry pi. I decided to give it a shoot.

Icecream permits to do cross-compilation because the scheduler can deliver, into the compilation host, the required tool-chain by the requester.

First, you should have one or several cross tool-chains, one for each compilation tuple. In this case we will have only one: to compile in X86_64, generating code for armfh. Luckily, embdebian provides it, out of the box. Nevertheless you could use any other mean to obtain it, such as crosstool.

Second, you need the icecc-create-env script to create the tarball that the scheduler will distribute to the compilation host.

    $ /usr/lib/icecc/icecc-create-env \
          --gcc /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc-4.7 \
                /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-g++-4.7

The output of this script is an archive file containing all the files necessary to setup the compiler environment. The file will have a random unique name like “ddaea39ca1a7c88522b185eca04da2d8.tar.bz2” per default. You will need to rename it to something more expressive.

Third, copy the generated archive file to board where your code will be compiled and linked, in this case WebKitGTK+.

For the purpose of this text, I assume that the board has already installed and configured the icecc daemon. Beside, I use ccache too. Hence my environment variables are more or less like these:

CCACHE_PREFIX=icecc
CCACHE_DIR=/mnt/hd/.ccache # /mnt/hd is a mounted hard disk through USB.
PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:..    # where Debian sets the compiler's symbolic links

Finally, the last pour of magic is the environment variable ICECC_VERSION. This variable needs to have this pattern

<native_archive_file>(,<platform>:<cross_archive_file>=<target>)*.

Where <native_archive_file> is the archive file with the native tool-chain. <platform> is the host hardware architecture. <cross_archive_file> is the archive file with the cross tool-chain. <target> is the target architecture of the cross tool-chain.

In my case, the target is not needed because I’m doing native compilation in armhf. Hence, my ICECC_VERSION environment variable looks like this:

ICECC_VERSION=/mnt/hd/tc/native-compiler.tar.gz,x86_64:/mnt/hd/tc/arm-x86-compiler.tar.gz

And that’s it! Now I’m using the big iron available in the office, reducing the time of a clean compilation in less than an hour.

As a final word, I expect that this compilation time will be reduced a bit more using the new cmake build infrastructure in WebKitGTK+.

Debian’s mutt with notmuch support

One of my weekend tasks was to reorganize my email environment. For reading email I use mutt, configured to grab the email from an IMAP server. For sending email, I have a minimal exim setup securely relaying to a smart host.

Mutt is a great email browser, but it is very bad at handling IMAP. Besides, I started to need searching through all my email. The solution for the first problem is offlineimap, a program wrote in Python, that “synchronizes emails between two repositories”. It downloads my email from the IMAP server into my laptop, so I work in my email locally, and if I delete an email locally, offlineimap will delete it in the next sync operation.

The solution for the second problem, the search, is notmuch, which is a email indexer, enabling fast searches among a vast mail collection. So, once new mail arrive (or is deleted) with offlineimap, notmuch (de)indexes it.

But another problem appear: how to query to notmch in an integrated way with my mail reader? One solution is provided by mutt-kz, a fork of mutt with notmuch support tightly integrated.

But I use Debian, and I like its package management. So I needed to craft a Debian package for mutt-kz.

I grabbed the Debian’s repository for mutt and re-based, one by one, the patches from mutt-kz.

The result is stored in this repository.

And now, I can query notmuch in mutt and immediately browse the result set.