How To Install HQPlayer Embedded On Ubuntu

[Miska]

If you use a NAA, you don't necessarily need my custom kernel. If you connect DAC directly to the HQPlayer server, then my custom kernel may be beneficial.

 

If you go with a stock kernel, I'd recommend switching over to Ubuntu's "lowlatency" flavor kernel instead of "generic" that comes as a default.

 

[Miska]

On 8/21/2021 at 10:23 AM, GMG said:

is this the same for Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Desktop?

 

and how do I get the Ubuntu to switch to this kernel?

 

Yes, it is the same on Ubuntu Server. It will switch automatically and leave the generic one as secondary option (in the GRUB boot menu).

 

If you for example want to get 1.5M PCM or DSD1024 out directly from the HQPlayer server, without a NAA, you need my custom kernel.

 

[Miska]

17 hours ago, GMG said:

I found the answer for the "audio" group:

# sudo adduser <username> audio

But have no clue how to manage the audio daemons ;-)

 

You don't need to do anything unless you are running hqplayerd under graphical desktop session. In normal headless Ubuntu Server setup, hqplayerd runs as user "hqplayer" which is created by the installation script and already belongs to "audio" group.

 

[Miska]

20 minutes ago, GMG said:

but actually I did not see HQPlayer listed as a user in audio group. 
 

fgrep -ie 'audio' /etc/group

 

Because it's "hqplayer" user's home group...

 

[Miska]

Do you actually have some AMD GPU? Installing the driver likely fails if it fails to load due to lack of suitable AMD GPU.

 

If you don't have AMD GPU, you only need to have the ROCm package repository added, and hqplayerd package will trigger package manager to pull the necessary library packages. You don't need to manually install anything.

 

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

Unless you have an AMD GPU, use Fedora...  rocm is a mess, and just to be clear, that's no fault of @Miska .

 

Now the generic Ubuntu build comes without ROCm support to make life easier. Only the "amd" build comes with ROCm support. So you can think of it as "AMD CPU & AMD GPU support" build. In fact I'm testing it on a machine that has Ryzen 7 5800X and Radeon RX 6700XT.

 

With the current ROCm release, I have this in my /etc/ld.so.conf.d/rocm.conf:

/opt/rocm/lib
/opt/rocm-4.3.0/lib
/opt/rocm-4.5.0/lib

Then run "ldconfig".

 

Works on current ROCm release. Likely gets broken again when they release next version and needs some little adjustments again.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

Does the performance benefit with an AMD CPU make it worthwhile to use this version?

 

If you have an AMD CPU, then certainly the AMD optimized version is better.

 

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

Can I use "sudo nano /etc/ld.so.conf.d/rocm.conf

 

and edit the file to make it work?

 

Yes, or just "sudo su -" yourself to make things easier. No need to prefix everything with "sudo" then.

 

That file doesn't exist by default, there are bunch of files there from ROCm kit, but none happen to be pointing to /opt/rocm-4.3.0/lib while one library is still from the old version...

 

[Miska]

Neither Nvidia nor AMD support Arch.

 

They support deb and rpm packaging system based distros.

[Miska]

8 hours ago, GMG said:

You will support Arch instead of so many users, and Archlinux will support the users instead of you.

 

My development tools don't support Arch. And Canonical (Ubuntu) and RedHat (Fedora) do the support just the same way as Arch.

 

[Miska]

23 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

(I did have to update the HQPlayerd file to hqplayerd_4.28.0-99_amd64.deb when following the steps and I didn't have issues except at the two points shown in the screenshots.)

 

I first encountered this error, at the sudo apt install rocm-dkms stage:

 

 

For the "non-AMD" buid, you don't need ROCm packages anymore. And even for the "AMD build" you need "rocm-dkms" only if you have an AMD GPU. If you don't have AMD GPU, the installation will likely fail, because the AMD GPU driver will fail to load without AMD GPU...

 

23 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

At the last step, I got this error:

 

 

At this point, I exited terminal.  HQPe doesn't show up on the network, as I feared.

 

It's web interface should show up, since it is up and running. The "OnNameLost" error is completely normal when you are running outside of desktop environment where you'd have D-Bus Session Bus available (for MPRIS).

 

So just check your IP address and try to point browser to http://yourip:8088/

 

[Miska]

8 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

To avoid clutter, I am inclined to try the non-amd version and leave out the ROCm instructions.  What is the name of the non-amd package and in which repository folder do I find it?

 

The package that has just build number, like "99" in 4.28.0 release, is the generic one. The package that has "amd" associated with the build number, like "100amd" in 4.28.0 release, is the "AMD" one.

 

8 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

Also, may I presume that I can ignore all of the Radeon and ROCM references in Chris' script?

 

Yes, you can.

 

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

How the heck do I create a music folder on Ubuntu Server 20.04.3 LTS, and then share that on the network so I can move music to it?

 

Install Samba server (smbd) and configure it to share the music. I have such shares set up as read-only. On my office i5 NUC server (running Debian 11) with Roon Core too I have setup share with pretty much stock /etc/samba/smb.conf with just following additional lines:

[music]
  comment = Music directory
  path = /music/music
  read only = yes
 

 

You can also manage Samba users with tools like smbpasswd

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Patatorz said:

i would like to move to a RT kernel as per Jussi recommendation. I’m running now the 5.10.75-jl+.

 

That is fine.

 

3 hours ago, Patatorz said:

> linux-image-lowlatency-hwe-20.04     5.11.0.43.47~20.04.21

 

This is also fine if you don't need any additional audio driver support stuff.

 

[Miska]

2 minutes ago, Patatorz said:

The 5.10.75-jl+ is not a RT one right ?

 

It is as much as the stock lowlatency kernel too.

 

On HQPlayer OS you can find realtime kernel. But using one means that you cannot have GPU offload because it breaks Nvidia driver (and the Nvidia driver knows this and refuses to work on realtime kernel).

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, jvvita said:

Thanks for this. Exactly what I had done before (following the guide up to the end of step 2). Still no go. Same libamdhip64 error. Rocm repo is added, as I can see them in sudo install update

 

Any clues?

 

Check that your ld.so config has path to /opt/rocm-x.x/lib

 

So for example create /etc/ld.so.conf.d/rocm.conf and add "/opt/rocm-4.5/lib" there and then run ldconfig (check the paths with corresponding ROCm release)

 

AMD packages should do this for you, but they've always had pretty horrid software quality (already in the ATI days).

 

[Miska]

4 hours ago, jvvita said:

ok. Success. After some hours of work, it came alive. This is the step-by-step for everyone to review and criticize

 

 

Note that you need the rocm-dkms (kernel driver modules) only if you have a compatible AMD GPU. Otherwise the driver will just fail to load and is unnecessary extra.

 

[Miska]

15 minutes ago, jvvita said:

Yes, I understand it. But I was unable to start hqplyerd service without installing both packages (rock-dkms and rocm-dkms). Only loading rocm repo was insufficient (I know it was loaded without any issue because ver 1GB of unneeded weight as installed when going install -f after installing hpqlayerd).

 

rock-dkms seem to be a pre-requisite of rocm-dkms, but apparently was deprecated from rocm debian repo. I could only find it as rpm package.

 

I have neither one installed on my Intel i5-10600 machine. That package only contains kernel modules and it is not related to running the application. In fact, in normal case trying to install that package on a machine without AMD GPU would just make the package installation fail.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, jvvita said:

when I ran sudo hqplalyerd -s, I got the error message, of the missing libamdhip64.so.4 shared library. systemctl enable would run fine. systemctl start would not start the service.

 

Did you have the ld.so config in place at that point? If that was missing, the said library is not found with current AMD's packaging.

 

1 hour ago, jvvita said:

Running ubuntu server 20.04, kernel 5.11.0-43-generic. Nothing else installed but ssh server.

 

Remember to switch to lowlatency kernel, either mine or stock Ubuntu one. Otherwise the system is not optimized for multimedia use.

 

[Miska]

On 1/4/2022 at 11:37 PM, sledwards said:

I just tried removing rocm-dkms on working setup and back to where I was before...no running hqplayerd process. Reinstalled rocm-dkms and it works again.

 

root@ubuntu-srv:~# dpkg -l | grep dkms
root@ubuntu-srv:~# systemctl status hqplayerd
● hqplayerd.service - HQPlayer Embedded daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/hqplayerd.service; enabled; vendor pre>
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2022-01-05 00:40:45 UTC; 1 day 12h ago
   Main PID: 803 (hqplayerd)
      Tasks: 52 (limit: 38126)
     Memory: 62.0M
     CGroup: /system.slice/hqplayerd.service
             └─803 /usr/bin/hqplayerd

 

As you can see, no any "dkms" packages installed. And hqplayerd running just fine.

 

What error do you get if you remove the dkms package and try to start hqplayerd?

 

[Miska]

On 1/4/2022 at 10:38 PM, jvvita said:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/opt/rocm/bin:/opt/rocm/rocprofiler/bin:/opt/rocm/opencl/bin' | sudo tee -a /etc/profile.d/rocm.sh

 

This part is unnecessary.

 

On 1/4/2022 at 10:38 PM, jvvita said:

sudo sh -c "echo '/opt/rocm/lib' >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/rocm.conf"

sudo ldconfig

 

Here you are trusting /opt/rocm symlink exists which is not necessarily the case. You should use the actual path of currently installed version. You will need to update this whenever rocm version changes.

 

[Miska]

53 minutes ago, sledwards said:

 

Just try to run "hqplayerd" as root from the command line.

 

[Miska]

8 minutes ago, sledwards said:

 

 

That is because you are missing valid path in /etc/ld.so.conf.d and it is not related to the kernel driver.

 

You can do "find /opt -name libamdhip64.so.4"

 

[Miska]

3 minutes ago, jvvita said:

So you did

 

Sudo nano /etc/ld.so.conf.d/rocm.conf

add "/opt/rocm-4.5.0/lib”

sudo ldconfig 

 

is this so?

 

Sounds correct yes.

 

[Miska]

29 minutes ago, pavi said:

after that, I used the following to identify and install the gpu driver (Nvidia 3080)

 

sudo apt install ubuntu-drivers-common

 

ubuntu-drivers devices

 

sudo apt install nvidia-utils-470-server

 

 

Note that for current HQPlayer releases, you need Nvidia GPU driver version >= 49x.

 

[Miska]

31 minutes ago, sledwards said:

How do we know when GPU driver needs update? Latest version of HQPe (4.28.3-107) was working fine on version 470 (CUDA 11.4). Updated to 495 and CUDA 11.5 and HQPe still runs fine.  Or is the fact its running doesn't ensure compatibility?

 

When the driver is too old, CUDA offload doesn't get enabled. You can see this from the web interface for example when you have playback ongoing. Currently Nvidia ships driver version 495.46 with CUDA 11.5.1 for Ubuntu.

 

Generally, if you stick to latest available driver, things should continue to work. HQPlayer is always built with latest CUDA available at the moment of release.