Desperate activating either NVIDIA or ARC GPU for Jellyfin

TrueNAS General
1

Hi all

Im struggling since months getting my Jellyfin to run well.
I have tried over 10 devices and ended up building a Threadripper system with both NVIDIA RTX 2060 and Intel Arc310 inside.

I want to get any of those to run in Jellyfin to use Hardware Transcoding but failed miserably every time after reinstalling many times my host system and also apps/containers/portainers/dockers using dozens of tutorials which are always lacking something important which makes it even more a pain.

Now I have no idea what to do any more because lets say if I want the RTX card to run I dont have any drivers for it and can not install them.

If i type nvidia-smi - it says it could not communicate with the drivers and to ensure latest drivers are installed and running.

I tried Apps - Configuration - Settings but there is no box to check for NVIDIA driver installation.

I also opened the app via portainer and went into the ENV settings to doublicate the Jellyfin app with NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES - all instead of void.

I even bypassed the restriction to use apt get with the Truenas CLI - but could not install any of the drivers using any kind of commands I could find on the internet.

Unfortunately this forum does not let me upload any kind of pictures or links to the errors. No idea how to do it.
Also, my keyboard does not let me copy any text from the Shell CLI console with Ctrl + paste. Its so dumb and not helping at all

I BEG you for help. Going crazy here

2

Did you also specify for the jellyfin container to use the nvidia runtime?

here’s my compose file which is working with nvidia:
you can ignore the labels and the proxy network if you don’t use traefik as reverse proxy and homepage as dashboard

  jellyfin:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/jellyfin:latest
    runtime: nvidia
    container_name: jellyfin
    environment:
      - PUID=568
      - PGID=568
      - TZ=Europe/Berlin
    deploy:
         resources:
            reservations:
              devices:
                - driver: nvidia
                  count: 1
                  capabilities: [gpu]         
    volumes:
      - /path/to/jellyfinconfig:/config
      - /path/to/series:/series
      - /path/to/movies:/movies
    ports:
      - 8096:8096
      - 8920:8920 #optional
      - 7359:7359/udp #optional
      - 1900:1900/udp #optional
    restart: unless-stopped
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.docker.network=proxy"
      - "traefik.port=443"
      - "traefik.http.routers.jellyfin.rule=Host(`jellyfin.my-vault101.com`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.jellyfin.entrypoints=https"
      - "traefik.http.routers.jellyfin.tls=true"
      - "traefik.http.services.jellyfin.loadbalancer.server.port=8096"
      - "traefik.http.routers.jellyfin.tls.certresolver=cloudflare"
      - "traefik.http.routers.jellyfin.middlewares=authentik@file"
      - homepage.group=Media
      - homepage.name=Jellyfin
      - homepage.icon=jellyfin.png
      - homepage.href=http://191.1.1.9:8096
      - homepage.description=Jellyfin Server
    networks:
      - default
      - proxy
networks:
    default:
    proxy:
        external: true
3

And when you’ve created your account you should have gotten a private message from the truenas bot for a tutorial. After completing the tutorial your trust level gets bumped and you will be able to post pictures and links.

4

Hi Lars. Thanks much, will do. But I think the most issue here is that I can not even get the NVIDIA GPU to run with the system where others can do it.

5

Often if there’s no checkbox to install the nvidia driver, the gpu is isolted for vm use. Have you checked if its isolated?

6

Hi Lars

I have read all mails but did not find any from the bot where I can do something or agree to anything so it lets me post pictures. Anyway maybe Im lucky even without doing so.

About isolating the GPU - I tried both, with isolated and without isolated GPU.

Also Im not sure my knowledge is high enough to understand how to do this:
“specify for the jellyfin container to use the nvidia runtime”

After googling I found a comment that said I need to install NVIDIA GPU drivers first but I failed to do so

7

that is only required if you use your own compose files. If you’re using the official app then it should be preconfigured with that runtime.

I’d start by, again checking if the gpu is isolated. If it is remove it from isolation as it can’t be used with apps if it is isolted (you may have to restart truenas in order for the change to take effect).
After the restart, the checkbox to install the nvidia driver should appear.

8

I just got the media to be recognized, had to fight with permissions for an hour and it runs most of the media files but none of the UHD ones, those are giving me an error. If I deactivate hardware transcoding they work, but very very laggy and all of my Threadripper CPU cores are at 100%

And since I can not paste anything with a dot in it without the system flagging this as a link, I cant even share my config. Great.

To be honest I do not even know how to replace my config with yours. This is very frustrating for me after months of trial and error, this seems to be only possible for Linux gods

9

Im pretty sure if you type:
nvidia-smi
you are not getting the same error like me:
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn’t communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

10

Of course i don’t get the error because i was able to install the driver via checkbox in the app settings.
That is your big problem. If you can’t get the checkbox to appear you can’t install the driver.

11

Here are my specs:

OS Version:25.04.1
Product:X399 AORUS PRO
Model:AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X 12-Core Processor
Memory:63 GiB

45:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation DG2 [Arc A310] (rev 05)
Subsystem: Device 172f:4019
Kernel driver in use: i915
Kernel modules: i915, xe
46:00.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation DG2 Audio Controller
Subsystem: Device 172f:4019
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel
47:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU106 [GeForce RTX 2060 Rev. A] (rev a1)
Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd TU106 [GeForce RTX 2060 Rev. A]
Kernel driver in use: vfio-pci
Kernel modules: nouveau

45:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation DG2 [Arc A310] (rev 05)
47:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU106 [GeForce RTX 2060 Rev. A] (rev a1)

12

I just tried to run Dockge and compose a new container.

Got directly this error:

Error response from daemon: unknown or invalid runtime name: nvidia

13

Well yeah because the runtime gets installed with the Nvidia drivers.
Your first priority should be to get the driver’s to install anything else is pointless

1 Like
14

Thanks for trying to help.
I drained all my ressources trying to find any forum enty how to get the NVIDIA drivers to install and also Im drained mentally with this crap. I have already lost my job (and deserved that) spending so many time on forums trying to fix this stuff I use at home… I tried it first with Proxmox and now Im failing to do it with Truenas as well. After spending thousands of EUR on this hardware to get just simple Jellyfin to run. I could have spend it for years of Netflix.

I think Im done with Linux for good. For years Ive tried to replace Windows after being empowered with LTT videos etc. and failed every single time. I know it is me who is the problem, but having over 10 machines with 0 success doing anything I want cant be real and that frustrating. And for others it just works (c). I even offered money as Tip for help setting this all up on Reddit with 0 replies.
This is insane and again, frustrating.

15

All it should take is:

  1. make sure the gpu is not isolated for vm use
  2. in the apps tab top right corner configuration → settings → tick the checkbox for installing the nvidia driver
  3. wait for the install to finish and the docker backend restart
  4. tick checkbox in nvidia config to use the nvidia gpu

If this doesnt work for you there’s another some other config wrong with your system.

Edit: and yes it is really this simple.

1 Like
16

It’s a matter of priorities.

You’ve been given directions on what you need to do, (verify that the GPU is not isolated and then click to install the drivers).

Most of your replies have been only tangentially related to the advice and not been clear on what the current status is other than that it isn’t working for you.

17

Thanks for your reply: I have tried both stats. Isolate the GPU and untick the isolation so none of the GPUs are isolated. Same result, no box to tick for NVIDIA for me in Apps - Configuration - Settings.

I read something that it was implemented lately and it was preinstalled before. Perhaps I should have tried an early TrueNas edition but I wont start from scratch now after installing everything, setting up all permissions and copying 20TB of data to it one more another time.
My current only possible poxes to tick in Apps Configuration are:
Settings
Preferred Trains
stable
enterprise
dev
test
community

And I could add new Address Pools. Thats it.

18

Did you restart your truenas inbetween? There were cases where the box only appeared after a restart.

19

Yes sir

20

wait a minute, i think i can remember a case where it was not possible to install the driver when both an intel and nvidia gpu were present in the box.
Have you tried with only on gpu? either intel or nvidia?
Edit:
since the intel driver is part of the kernel you shouldn’t have to install anything for the intel card to work. Only a tickbox in the app config to use non nvidia gpus.