NVIDIA

XBMC for Tegra with full HW acceleration

tuomas
XBMC at UltraHD resolution.
XBMC running at UltraHD resolution on Jetson TK1.

Thanks to Markus Tavenrath there is finally a fully accelerated Kodi (previously known as XBMC) for Tegra K1 based devices like the Jetson TK1. Some of the Kodi patches are already upstreamed and the rest will be hopefully soon. Jetson supports X.Org very well and things like XRandR based TV refresh rate changes work perfectly.

I have a simple lab power supply (Mastech DF17132) and I made some quick power measurements with it. I did only guestimate the typical reading instead of making multiple tests and calculating the averages. So the numbers should be close to the truth but not scientifically accurate. I replaced the power supply that came with the Jetson with the lab power, so I have not included the consumption of the Jetson’s external power supply in the measurements.

The on-demand CPU frequency governor does not provide proper CPU clocks for smooth Kodi UI and video playback, so all the Kodi tests have been run with all four CPU cores forced on-line and with performance governor.

My USB hub, USB keyboard and USB mouse consume about 0.84W. The very noisy fan takes about 0.72W. That is about 1.5W that is included in the numbers below but maybe should not as everybody use different USB devices and nobody can use that fan in an HTPC setup.

In full screen video test cases the TV’s refresh rate has been changed to 24Hz and when the XBMC UI is visible, the refresh rate is 60Hz for 1080p TV and 30Hz for 2160p TV (HDMI 1.4 limitation).

1920×1080 Sony TV
Test case Power consumption
Slim Login 3.36
XFCE desktop, idle, ondemand 3.36
XFCE desktop, idle, performance 3.72
Kodi main menu 5.40
Kodi full screen video 1080p24 5.16
Kodi full screen video 1080p60 6.00
Kodi full screen video 2160p24 5.40

In the table below, the resolution used for all the cases is Ultra HD or 2160p or 3840×2160. The term “4k” is misleading as people often really mean the Ultra HD and not for example 4096×2160.

3840×2160 LG TV
Test case Power consumption
XFCE desktop, idle, ondemand 3.72
XFCE desktop, idle, performance 4.08
Kodi main menu 5.52
Kodi full screen video 1080p24 (max gpu clocks) 6.96
Kodi full screen video 2160p24 (max gpu clocks) 6.96

I think decoding 1080p24 with 5.16W (or 3.7W without USB peripherals and the fan) is pretty good! Add 2 watts and you get 2160p.

After watching different trailers over and over I definitely would like to see movies being produced at higher FPS rates and distributed at higher bitrates instead of bumping the resolution from Full HD to Ultra HD. That 1080p60 looked awesome.

The biggest complaint I have about the Jetson, is the fan. The noise is way too loud even for development use, not to mention using Jetson as an HTPC in the living room. There is some discussion about using passive coolers in the NVIDIA forums.

For installation instructions and other tips see the Installing Kodi wiki page.

Steam on Debian Stable

tuomas

I like the idea of being able to play games on Linux, so the announcement of Steam for Linux was a big thing. Too bad Debian Stable has too old C-library for it. During the past year I’ve occasionally tried to get Steam running on Debian Stable (Wheezy) with usually little success. Currently I think installing Debian Testing (Jessie) to a chroot is the most easiest way. It is not as complicated as it may first sound.

One catch is that you need to be running the same version of NVIDIA’s drivers inside the chroot and outside of it so they need to be built.

On my gaming PC I use self-compiled kernel and the latest drivers from NVIDIA. On my media box in the living room I have some old integrated NVIDIA chip. Trine 2 runs nicely on my Gaming PC (GTX 760) and awfully on the integrated chip. I assume it’s about the chip and not about the different driver version (319.72 vs 331.20) and I doubt I’ll install the latest drivers just to verify that.

Update NVIDIA drivers from Jessie:
(Updated 11.06.2014)

Inside the chroot:

$ cd $HOME
$ mkdir nvidia
$ cd nvidia
$ apt-get source nvidia-driver

And then outside the chroot:

$ cd $HOME/nvidia
$ cd nvidia-drv-
$ dpkg-buildpackage -b
$ cd ..
$ sudo apt-get install -t wheezy-backports module-assistant
$ sudo dpkg -i *deb

It’s not mandatory to use Debian packaged NVIDIA drivers. Just be sure to install the same NVIDIA driver package inside the chroot that you are running outside with the 32bit OpenGL libraries. You should skip installing the kernel module inside the chroot:


$ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.20.run --no-precompiled-interface --no-runlevel-check --no-kernel-module --no-x-check --no-kernel-module-source --no-distro-scripts --no-nvidia-modprobe --accept-license

If you see “ERROR: Unable to create ‘(null)’ for copying (Bad address)” just hit OK several times. Also you may need to add /etc/ld.so.conf.d/nvidia.conf with “/emul/ia32-linux/usr/lib/” in it and run “sudo ldconfig” after adding it.

Create Jessie schroot

These instructions are adapted from https://wiki.debian.org/Schroot and assumes 64bit host Debian.

WARNING: removing schroot with “rm -rf” while it is active will delete your home directory as well! You should reboot and make sure there is nothing mounted inside the chroot before removing it.

Install schroot for chrooting and debootstrap for creating the Jessie root filesystem:


$ sudo apt-get install schroot debootstrap
$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/chroot/jessie

Create the Jessie rootfs (the last parameter is optional for faster downloads):


$ sudo debootstrap --include sudo jessie /srv/chroot/jessie http://ftp.[your country domain here].debian.org/debian/
$ sudo mkdir /srv/chroot/jessie/run/shm
$ sudo chmod 1777 /srv/chroot/jessie/run/shm

Configure Jessie schroot (note that you need to add your user account’s group name in there):

$ sudo vi /etc/schroot/schroot.conf


[jessie]
description=Debian Jessie (testing) 64-bit
directory=/srv/chroot/jessie
type=directory
groups=[your group name]
root-groups=root
aliases=default
personality=linux
preserve-environment=true


$ sudo vi /etc/schroot/default/fstab
# Uncomment /run/shm

The /etc/group is shared between the chroot and the host Debian. Rest of the instructions assume your account belongs to the sudo group:

$ sudo adduser [your user name] sudo

Finishing the schroot

Schroot into Jessie and verify sudo:


$ schroot
$ cat /etc/debian_version
# Should say Jessie
$ sudo -l
# Should show that you can run ALL

Configure APT to use non-free packages and multiarch with i386:


$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
# Append "non-free contrib"
$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
$ sudo apt-get update

Install Steam from Jessie and some dependencies:


$ export LC_ALL=C
$ sudo apt-get install python xdg-utils less libvdpau-dev libalut0 pciutils lsb-release libopenal1:i386 libvorbisfile3:i386 libglu1-mesa:i386 build-essential libgl1-nvidia-glx:i386 libgl1-nvidia-glx:amd64 steam
$ exit

The schroot is now ready and you can launch Steam directly from the host Debian:
(Updated 11.10.2014, See github issue for details)

schroot
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus start
steam

If you spot a mistake in the instructions do leave a comment below so I know to fix it.