Wayland crashed - maybe VAAPI problem?

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1

Hello there,

I use Zorin 16.3. Sometime Wayland are crashed, when i use browser or electron based program (especially Ferdium)

In Ferdium, HW acc. are enabled and i run chrome with VAAPI support mode. It possible that is a known bug, a memory leak... Link

Both program (Chrome and Ferdium) are flatpak.

(side note, i also affect this problem with orher system, like Ubuntu, Fedora...)

2

Maybe using the .DEB package of Chrome instead of the Flatpak can help?

3

VAAPI not work native installation. libva too old in 20.04.

I tested it in Ubuntu 23.04, with fresh libva and native DEB installation, but the problem also exist. (and also on Fedora RPM install)

4

What video card do you have in your system?

Have you checked whether vainfo is installed? You can install it with sudo apt install vainfo. Running this will tell you what your system supports, and if the video card is supported.

f you installed NVIDIA proprietary driver via ‘Additional Drivers’ utility, this will only work when you choose ‘Intel (Power Saving)’ mode in NVIDIA Prime settings.

You can read up on troubleshooting this here

5

@337harvey

My (only )video card a integrated intel (IntelÂź HD Graphics 520 ).

vamp@vamp-HP-EliteBook-840-G3:~$ vainfo 
wl_drm@7: error 0: authenticate failed
VA error: wayland: Wayland roundtrip error: Protocol error (errno 71)
libva info: VA-API version 1.7.0
libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with invalid VADisplay, driver_name = (null)
vaInitialize failed with error code 3 (invalid VADisplay),exit

It is a known bug on libva, that fixed after 2.14.

But Zorin use a really old libva version:

vamp@vamp-HP-EliteBook-840-G3:~$ apt-cache policy libva2
libva2:
  TelepĂ­tve: 2.7.0-2
  Jelölt:    2.7.0-2
  VerziĂłtĂĄblĂĄzat:
 *** 2.7.0-2 500
        500 http://hu.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

It would be good to update libva to 2.14.0 (it is 22.04 version). But it basically not solve my initial problem, because it also happen ubuntu 23.04 and Fedora 38. (that systems are use much up-to-date libva)

6

Zorin doesn't use a "really old" version. It uses the version compatible to the Ubuntu 20 build, which is a stable release.

Zorin 17 will have the newer version of that library, as it will be based on Ubuntu 22. As you mentioned though, the age of it isn't the issue and you will still have the issue.

The issue is that this is not a standard. It is not developed for multiple hardware architectures as of yet.

Why is video acceleration so important? Isn't hardware acceleration enough? Does it make that much of a difference with it?

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7

I did some digging on how Wayland has been progressing in its changelogs.

https://wayland.freedesktop.org/releases.html

The short of it is: A bit slowly.

Developers have been gathering support for Wayland, but progress is still sluggish in relation to the service that Wayland seeks to provide.
Now, this does not mean that Wayland is responsible for the O.P.'s issue.
However, I suspect that it plays an important role.

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8

Normal videos, like youtube and similar site, the vaapi and hw decode are not so important.

The important part are Geforce Now and similar apps, like moonlight stream. If use sw decode, the delay sometime 2-3 sec or more... (it increase if you use it longer)

Of course it may help that Nvidia will make a native app to Geforce Now, but now on linux, only the browser method the only way.

By the way, that i play a youtube video with vaapi (hw decode) the CPU usage about 7-10%. Same video with sw decode use about 25-30% cpu. if i do other thing next to play youtube video on my notebook, the other apps sometime stutters a bit, if i use sw decode.

9

switch back to X11. I hope it solve the problem.

10

well seems x11 can not crash, but this bug seems still exist:

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1467689

If i close chrome, sometime need to wait 5-10 min the the system are responsable again.

No other way, need to wait that fix it chrome side...

11

Well, with disabled VAAPI and switch back to x11 seems solve the random freeze.

But now are no HW decode, so it use more CPU the youtube and other videos and Geforce now are unplayable in chrome. i hope soon fix VAAPI problem.

12

seems they fixed the VAAPI problem! I can not test it, because I don't have my notebook.

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/42d57d016f5fb6d2a1a354743b9be911c1be87e8

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