Nvidia hardware acceleration not working on Ubuntu 22.04 and Firefox

[RobertoAlda]

Hi, i can't make nvidia gpu hw decoding work in Firefox, plaese help me.

My system is:

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
Release:        24.04
Codename:       noble

My video card is Nvidia RTX4000 Ada SFF with 20Gb DDR6, with driver version 550.107.02

I have succesfully built nvidia-vaapi-driver project and file /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so is created.

I have set these enviroment variables in /etc/environment file:

export NVD_BACKEND=direct
export MOZ_DISABLE_RDD_SANDBOX=1
export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia

ffmpeg has vaapi in ffmpeg -hwaccels output.

After i've tried with no success the official Firefox, i've installed Firefox Nightly 132.0a1 (2024-09-16) (64-bit) Firefox flags are:

 media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled   = true
 media.rdd-ffmpeg.enabled     = true
 media.av1.enabled                    = true  (my video card has AV! hw decoding chip onboard)
 gfx.x11-egl.force-enabled    = false (i am using wayland)
 widget.dmabuf.force-enabled = true

I start it with these flags:

LIBVA_MESSAGING_LEVEL=1 \
MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 \
NVD_LOG=1  \
 firefox 

and when i open a H264 file or HEVC or AV1 it will not use hardware decoding.

This is the Output:

Gtk-Message: 17:02:17.021: Not loading module "atk-bridge": The functionality is provided by GTK natively. Please try to not load it.
libEGL warning: egl: failed to create dri2 screen

and this is the about:support page:

and nvidia-smi output is:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.107.02             Driver Version: 550.107.02     CUDA Version: 12.4     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA RTX 4000 SFF Ada ...    Off |   00000000:01:00.0  On |                  Off |
| 30%   51C    P2             27W /   70W |    1130MiB /  20475MiB |     10%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                              GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      2417    C+G   ...libexec/gnome-remote-desktop-daemon        609MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2480      G   /usr/bin/gnome-shell                          502MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      4497      G   /usr/bin/Xwayland                               3MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Plaes tell me how to make it work, if necessary i can use another browser like chromium, brave,... but i need it running on Ubuntu 22.04 or Ubuntu 24.04,

thank you.

sources: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1477892/firefox-refuse-to-use-gpu-hardware-acceleration-with-nvidia-gpu-how-to-fix

[elFarto]

No DRM device sounds like you're missing the nvidia-drm.modeset=1 kernel module parameter.

[RobertoAlda]

the nvidia-drm.modeset=1 kernel module parameter seems ok.

cat /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-graphics-drivers-kms.conf shows this:

# This file was generated by nvidia-driver-550
# Set value to 0 to disable modesetting
options nvidia-drm modeset=1

and

sudo dmesg | grep nvidia:

[    2.963662] nvidia: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[    2.963668] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
[    2.963671] nvidia: module license taints kernel.
[    3.026005] nvidia-nvlink: Nvlink Core is being initialized, major device number 235
[    3.026953] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: vgaarb: VGA decodes changed: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=none
[    3.105589] nvidia-modeset: Loading NVIDIA Kernel Mode Setting Driver for UNIX platforms  550.107.02  Wed Jul 24 23:24:27 UTC 2024
[    3.132074] [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Loading driver
[    3.951690] [drm] Initialized nvidia-drm 0.0.0 20160202 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 1
[    4.340382] nvidia_uvm: module uses symbols nvUvmInterfaceDisableAccessCntr from proprietary module nvidia, inheriting taint.
[    4.372141] nvidia-uvm: Loaded the UVM driver, major device number 511.

Maybe am i missing something?

[thesword53]

the nvidia-drm.modeset=1 kernel module parameter seems ok.

What is the output of

# cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset

?

[RobertoAlda]

The output of sudo cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset is: Y i added sudo because without it it gives me a permission error:

cat: /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset: Permission denied

[thesword53]

Try launching Firefox with MOZ_DRM_DEVICE=/dev/dri/renderD128 as a workaround

[RobertoAlda]

HW ACCEL WORKS IN FIREFOX, FOLLOW THESE STEPS:

TESTED ON: Ubuntu Desktop 24.04.1 LTS Kernale:6.8.0-45-generic Nvidia RTX4000 ADA SFF 20GB Nvidia drivers:Driver Version: 550.107.02 CUDA Version: 12.4 Firefox Nightly 132.0a1 (2024-09-22) (64-bit) Gnome desktop manager with Wayland

Install Firefox Nigthly Using apt

1. Download and install the repo key:

   wget -q https://packages.mozilla.org/apt/repo-signing-key.gpg -O- | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.gpg > /dev/null

2.add the apt repository by running the single command below:

echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.gpg] https://packages.mozilla.org/apt mozilla main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.list > /dev/null

This command will create the ‘mozilla.list‘ file under /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory and write the source line into it.

3.install the Nightly build of Firefox from that repository by running command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install firefox-nightly

Configure Flags:

Open firefox and go to url about:config Set these flags:

gfx.webrender.all = true
media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled = true
media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled = true

In /etc/environment:

export NVD_BACKEND=direct
export MOZ_DISABLE_RDD_SANDBOX=1
export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia

nvidia-vaapi-drievr is built (https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver)

MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 \ firefox-nightly