[SOLVED] i915 Iris Xe system says no hardware acceleration but direct rendering = yes?

[katzen]

Hello,
I installed Debian 11 on Samsung Book2 360 which is using Intel video chip (Iris Xe, i915 driver). I solved all firmware issues but two problems remain:
1) On startup a message pops up saying "Check your video drivers, Your system is currently running without video hardware acceleration." But glxinfo says that direct rendering is enabled. I'm not sure what this is about?
2) I cannot change screen brightness, I can write to /intel/brightness and when I adjust brightness on keyboard those values change but screen brightness remains the same.
I'd appreciate any ideas on how to solve these issues.
Thanks!

[Aki]

Hello,

I installed Debian 11 on Samsung Book2 360 which is using Intel video chip (Iris Xe, i915 driver). I solved all firmware issues but two problems remain:
1) On startup a message pops up saying "Check your video drivers, Your system is currently running without video hardware acceleration." But glxinfo says that direct rendering is enabled. I'm not sure what this is about?

It could be a message from cinnamon [1]. You are probably running graphic rendering in software [2]. You can check with the following command (inxi program must be installed):

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inxi -Gxxxz

.
2) I cannot change screen brightness, I can write to /intel/brightness and when I adjust brightness on keyboard those values change but screen brightness remains the same.

Your computer is equipped with an OLED screen. See this previous thread [3].

---
[1] https://sources.debian.org/src/cinnamon ... n.js/#L511
[2] https://sources.debian.org/src/cinnamon ... n.js/#L466
[3] viewtopic.php?p=770843#p770843

[katzen]

Hello Aki,
Thank you for taking the time to respond. With your help I was able to solve the second issue (screen brightness). I installed icc-brightness which seemed like a simpler option and that worked well. I can now use keyboard brightness keys to control brightness on my laptop.

As for the first problem (software rendering) I ran the command you provided (inxi -Gxxxz):

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Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] vendor: Samsung Co
    driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-12.2 ports: active: eDP-1 empty: DP-1,
    DP-2, DP-3, HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:46a8 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: SunplusIT 720p HD Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
    bus-ID: 3-6:6 chip-ID: 2b7e:b563 class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter>
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.20.11 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: swrast gpu: i915 display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.00x11.22")
    s-diag: 582mm (22.93")
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: Samsung 0x4156 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 166
    size: 294x165mm (11.57x6.5") diag: 337mm (13.3") modes: 1920x1080
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 Mesa 20.3.5 renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 11.0.1 256 bits)
    compat-v: 3.1 direct-render: Yes

I'm not sure if this means I'm running video using the GPU or in software mode?
EDIT: I found this online:
"llvmpipe is CPU rendering, but shows as direct rendering (glxinfo | grep "renderer")"

I installed xorg/xserver intel drivers and i915 video driver is not showing any errors in dmesg:

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[    3.703549] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] HuC authenticated
[    3.704512] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] GuC submission enabled
[    3.704513] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] GuC SLPC enabled
[    3.705008] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] GuC RC: enabled
[    5.013084] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20201103 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0
[    5.022263] fbcon: i915drmfb (fb0) is primary device
[    5.047086] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] fb0: i915drmfb frame buffer device
[    6.162074] mei_hdcp 0000:00:16.0-b638ab7e-94e2-4ea2-a552-d1c54b627f04: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_hdcp_component_ops [i915])
[    6.297888] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_audio_component_bind_ops [i915])
[    7.258187] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] Selective fetch area calculation failed in pipe A

I tried to choose different Cinnamon options when logging in (cinnamon or default Xsession, not cinnamon software) but that didn't make any difference.
EDIT: It looks like there is some kind of a problem with i915 driver, neither vainfo nor intel_gpu_top commands want to display any data.
But I'm not seeing any explicit errors in log files, and it looks like the GPU driver is loaded correctly:

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lspci -nnk | grep -A 3 VGA | grep -E "VGA|driver"
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] [8086:46a8] (rev 0c)
	Kernel driver in use: i915

Any ideas as to what I could check next?
Thanks!

[stevepusser]

Alder Lake requires a newer Mesa than is available for Bullseye or in bullseye-backports. I backported Mesa 22.0.5 on a Bullseye base for MX Linux AHS, and users with that hardware confirm that it works, but with Debian, you will have to use Debian 12 Bookworm (currently testing).

[katzen]

Hello Steve,
Thank you for that bit of advice, I did a full upgrade to testing (Bookworm) and video hardware acceleration is working:

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Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] vendor: Samsung Co
    driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-12.2 ports: active: eDP-1 empty: DP-1,
    DP-2, DP-3, HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:46a8 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: SunplusIT 720p HD Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
    bus-ID: 1-6:6 chip-ID: 2b7e:b563 class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter>
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.9 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915 display-ID: :0
    screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.00x11.22")
    s-diag: 582mm (22.93")
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: Samsung 0x4156 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 166
    size: 294x165mm (11.57x6.5") diag: 337mm (13.3") modes: 1920x1080
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: Mesa Intel Graphics (ADL GT2) <<<<<<<<<<
    direct-render: Yes

Everything else seems to work fine too, bluetooth audio and wifi (which gave me trouble before).
Thanks a lot!

[vividtunestorm]

Hello,

I was running into the same issue on a Framework 13, 12 Generation Intel Core. Happy to report that upgrading to Bookworm also resolved the issue for me as well. Running kernel package linux-image-6.1.0-7-amd64:6.1.20-2.

Before:

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> inxi -Gx
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 
           Device-2: Realtek Laptop Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus ID: 1-7:2 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting 
           unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 2256x1504~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 11.0.1 256 bits) v: 4.5 Mesa 20.3.5

After:

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> inxi -Gx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-P Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
    arch: Gen-12.2 bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Device-2: Realtek Laptop Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-7:2
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.9 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915
    resolution: 2256x1504~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: Mesa Intel Graphics (ADL GT2)
    direct-render: Yes
 

Thanks for the suggestion! It took a while to track this down this issue.

[stevepusser]

Doubly solved, then.