Missing firmware for Intel Arc DG2 (Alchemist, A380)

TrueNAS General
1

Hi, just updated to Dragonfish, installed Jellyfin as an app to test out transcoding, but they don’t seem to work.
While investigating why, I’ve stumbled upon this:

[   20.442240] i915 0000:0d:00.0: [drm] Local memory IO size: 0x000000017c800000
[   20.451760] i915 0000:0d:00.0: [drm] Local memory available: 0x000000017c800000
[   20.477288] i915 0000:0d:00.0: vgaarb: VGA decodes changed: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=none
[   20.492096] i915 0000:0d:00.0: [drm] Finished loading DMC firmware i915/dg2_dmc_ver2_08.bin (v2.8)
[   20.499246] i915 0000:0d:00.0: [drm] *ERROR* GT0: HuC firmware i915/dg2_huc_gsc.bin: fetch failed -ENOENT
[   20.511524] i915 0000:0d:00.0: [drm] GT0: HuC firmware(s) can be downloaded from https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/i915
[   20.535530] i915 0000:0d:00.0: [drm] GT0: GuC firmware i915/dg2_guc_70.bin version 70.5.1
[   20.557162] i915 0000:0d:00.0: [drm] GT0: GUC: submission enabled
[   20.567074] i915 0000:0d:00.0: [drm] GT0: GUC: SLPC enabled
[   20.577258] i915 0000:0d:00.0: [drm] GT0: GUC: RC enabled

AFAIK HuC firmware is what’s required for media encoding to work.
Did iX forget to update linux-firmware to a newer version to match 6.6 kernel?

2

Known issue. Upstream Debian packages hadn’t been updated yet to include those firmwares. You can work around it with details in this ticket in meantime to add the missing .bin file.

https://ixsystems.atlassian.net/browse/NAS-127365

3

Can’t iX just add this firmware file into a hotfix release?
A LOT of people were very excited for DragonFish since it would finally allow them to make proper use of their Arc GPUs, and it’s very disappointing that the only roadblock is missing firmware.
Yes, it can be easily downloaded and placed in the /usr/lib/firmware/i915 dir, but it won’t persist across updates which is very annoying to deal with.
It doesn’t have to be officially supported. Waiting for AT LEAST 24.10 to have media encode because of missing support from netdata is frankly silly.

1 Like
4

I’ll bug the team about it and see if it could land in a .1 or what the risk is.

4 Likes
5

Hi Kris. I’m running into the same issue. Did the team get back to you?

6

Yes, the firmware got included in 24.04.1, however due to a regression in the Linux version that got shipped, DG2 cards still don’t work properly under TrueNAS. I’ve contacted the team about it too and they said they will get back to me sometime this week with a test build with a kernel that has the fix for the regression.

1 Like
7

I really appreciate this detailed update!

8

@tannisroot @Joshua_La_Forge Quick update - this should hopefully be fixed with 24.04.2, I tested with a 4K60 HDR10 AV1 sample and an ARC A750 and it appears to be functioning as expected, including tonemapping. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
9

Thanks so much for updating on this. Looking forward to 24.04.2, then. Hope it comes soon!

10

Can I get the nightly update, or is there a way to go back to where arc cards work?

11

Nightly 24.04.2 and 24.04.3 with the fix have been out for a while.

12

Nightlies are available here:

However, note that nightly images may have a lot of “moving parts” in them; it’s not generally recommended for daily-driving.

The other option would be to revert to your 24.04.0 environment, manually apply the fix for the lru_gen bug and then manually install the DG2 firmware as described in NAS-127365.

13

Everything is working great now, thank. GPU works flawlessly, and I can now transcode with the best of 'em.

2 Likes
14

Thanks for confirming! Just ordered my own A380 that I plan to test with as well.

1 Like