libva error: va_getDriverName() failed with unknown libva error,driver_name=(null)

[lattice0]

I'm doing a QT program and I'm getting this error on my Ubuntu (it's a VM):

libva error: va_getDriverName() failed with unknown libva error,driver_name=(null)

I tried all possible solutions on web and they didn't work.

I found that export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965 could work, but with it, I have the following errors:

libva error: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so init failed
libva error: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so init failed

What can be done?

[XinfengZhang]

I havent tried VM before, we need more information, could you help to enable LIBVA_TRACE and attach the report?

[ceyusa]

I don't think that any libva's driver was designed to work virtualized.

Perhaps somebody should try to develop a libva's driver that proxies to the call to the host libva's and composite with the virtualized video driver... but it sounds hard

[XinfengZhang]

if the HW is exposed, and can be access, work with i915, I think UMD driver can work with VM. it is transparent for UMD driver. from intel/media-driver#520 some one tried VM with virtual mediated pass-through GPU (Intel GVT-g). it works with i965.

[XinfengZhang]

of course, it also depend on which kind of VM @LucasZanella are using. just support several , such as KVM

[jnqnfe]

@XinfengZhang

I am experiencing this issue also, and I'm NOT using a VM!

I experience it using VLC both 3.0.x and 4.0-dev

VLC has three plugins for connecting to vaapi: wayland, x11 and drm; wayland and x11 have higher priority and so are tried first before falling back to drm. On my system, the wayland one ends early because the VLC window is not wayland (I don't think wayland support is complete yet); then the x11 one is tried, which experiences the issue reported here and thus fails; it then tries the drm one which works.

the following is the relevant portion of output from VLC trying the x11 one (with LIBVA_TRACE=1):

libva info: Open new log file 1.011659.thd-0x0000028f for the thread 0x0000028f
libva info: LIBVA_TRACE is on, save log into 1.011659.thd-0x0000028f
libva info: VA-API version 1.4.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns -1
libva error: va_getDriverName() failed with unknown libva error,driver_name=(null)

since when VLC tries the drm one it overwrites the trace file, I modified VLC 4.0-dev to deliberately break the drm one to stop it doing so thus I could see what it contained (as you asked for one); unfortunately it only contains this:

[58891.570032][ctx       none]==========va_TraceInitialize
[58891.570073][ctx       none]==========va_TraceTerminate

if I try using LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965 in addition, I get:

libva info: Open new log file 1.012657.thd-0x0000030b for the thread 0x0000030b
libva info: LIBVA_TRACE is on, save log into 1.012657.thd-0x0000030b
libva info: VA-API version 1.4.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns -1
libva info: User requested driver 'i965'
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_4
libva error: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so init failed
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1

with the same useless trace

contrastingly the output from the drm based attempt gave the following and works successfully (with just LIBVA_TRACE=1):

libva info: Open new log file 1.013329.thd-0x000007b1 for the thread 0x000007b1
libva info: LIBVA_TRACE is on, save log into 1.013329.thd-0x000007b1
libva info: VA-API version 1.4.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_4
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0

and this with LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965 LIBVA_TRACE=1:

libva info: Open new log file 1.013515.thd-0x000007e8 for the thread 0x000007e8
libva info: LIBVA_TRACE is on, save log into 1.013515.thd-0x000007e8
libva info: VA-API version 1.4.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: User requested driver 'i965'
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_4
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0

[roberto68]

I've simliar issue (chromium won't start) same error and I'm not on the Virtual machine, btw where can find the info about driver - i.e to specify driver name? I've intel UHD 620

[roberto68]

here's my output does anything here seem to be wrong?
vainfo libva info: VA-API version 1.4.1 libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0 libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/i965_drv_video.so libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_4 libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0 vainfo: VA-API version: 1.4 (libva 2.4.0) vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Kaby Lake - 2.3.0 vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSliceLP VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP VAProfileH264MultiviewHigh : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264MultiviewHigh : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileH264StereoHigh : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileH264StereoHigh : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointEncPicture VAProfileVP8Version0_3 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVP8Version0_3 : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileVP9Profile0 : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVP9Profile0 : VAEntrypointEncSlice VAProfileVP9Profile2 : VAEntrypointVLD

[p4vook]

Any updates on this? I'm experiencing this issue on wayland.

[XinfengZhang]

hi @pavel-the-best not sure whether my understanding correct. there are two issue

1. driver name issue, it should already been fixed with latest libva, such as 2.7.1
2. driver init issue. it is driver issue. or permission issue... it is not a libva issue

[ipr]

I am getting:
libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null)

This is with kernel 5.8-rc2+, Debian Bullseye, Mesa 20.1.1, gcc 9.3.0 and amdgpu driver.

Both Chromium and VLC have problems, Chromium won't show start page while VLC segfaults when playing video.

Edit: building and installing 2.8.0 fixes VLC but Chromium is still broken in 5.8-rc2+: it can't show even settings, just error.

[wangyan-intel]

@ipr Just want to clarify it. Chromium will broken when use VLC plugin to playback. Right? IMHO, Google doesn't provide media HW acceleration directly in chromium and there is one non-official patch from community. So I guess you use VLC plugin in chromium.

[grantcarthew]

Same issue here running OpenShot on Debian Unstable. Trying to export using the VA-API and it can't find the hardware device.

[LaserEyess]

I have this issue with an amd card. I am using mpv's vaapi video output driver for testing. Manually exporting LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi lets libva find the driver, but otherwise it fails with this exact same error.

To reproduce I do

LIBVA_TRACE=1 mpv --no-config --vo=vaapi any_file.mkv

I get the following error message:

[   0.035][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: Open new log file 1.000219.thd-0x0003129c for the thread 0x0003129c
[   0.035][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: LIBVA_TRACE is on, save log into 1.000219.thd-0x0003129c
[   0.035][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: VA-API version 1.9.0
[   0.035][e][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null)
[   0.035][e][vo/vaapi/vaapi] Failed to initialize VAAPI: unknown libva error

Trace file: https://0x0.st/i7c1.thd-0x0

Here is what does work:

LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi LIBVA_TRACE=1 mpv --no-config --vo=vaapi any_file.mkv

[   0.036][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: Open new log file 1.000815.thd-0x0003130f for the thread 0x0003130f
[   0.036][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: LIBVA_TRACE is on, save log into 1.000815.thd-0x0003130f
[   0.036][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: VA-API version 1.9.0
[   0.036][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: User environment variable requested driver 'radeonsi'
[   0.036][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
[   0.093][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_9
[   0.098][d][vo/vaapi/vaapi] libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
[   0.098][v][vo/vaapi/vaapi] Initialized VAAPI: version 1.9

Trace file: https://0x0.st/i7cI.thd-0x0

This file is the output of LIBVA_TRACE=1 vainfo: https://0x0.st/i7Z2.txt
Trace file: https://0x0.st/i7cl.thd-0x0

I can manually cause vainfo to fail, with a different error, by doing LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME= LIBVA_TRACE=1 vainfo

libva info: Open new log file 1.001222.thd-0x000314ab for the thread 0x000314ab
libva info: LIBVA_TRACE is on, save log into 1.001222.thd-0x000314ab
vaInitialize failed with error code -1 (unknown libva error),exit

Trace file: https://0x0.st/i7cU.thd-0x0

I'm using libva 2.9.1 and libva-utils 2.9.1

EDIT: On my laptop with an intel GPU, I do not get this issue. libva is properly detecting iHD and loading it.