Fedora 37 Multimedia Codec Problem

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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1

Hey,

So recently I found a YT video in my feed about a new feature when compiling mesa drivers that effectively allows distribution maintainers to disable hardware acceleration support in the driver.

This is important because I recently switched to Fedora, and I did not know about this until I watched this video. (Thanks Brodie Robertson for that information).

I followed the instructions to try to enable these HW acceleration features on my Radeon GPU in Fedora 37, but apparently I haven’t succeeded because Firefox crashes soon after it loads VA-API. Does anyone more experienced with Fedora know how I can fix this issue?

Here’s a rundown of what happens to cause Firefox crash.

[linuxdragon@FirnenMachine ~]$firefox
libva info: VA-API version 1.16.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_16
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
Gdk-Message: 16:16:04.976: Lost connection to Wayland compositor.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Crash Annotation GraphicsCriticalError: |[C0][GFX1-]: Receive IPC close with reason=AbnormalShutdown (t=33.6625) Exiting due to channel error.

This is reproducible by loading a website that subsequently loads the VA-API. It doesn’t cause a crash immediately, but if I keep playing video on that website for long enough, it will cause Firefox to crash.

2 Likes
2

Oh, by following some links, I was able to find this page from the Fedora Wiki:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firefox_Hardware_acceleration#Configure_VA-API_Video_decoding_on_AMD

Hopefully this helps others who may need this. My system seemed to accept the commands and change some things; but I don’t know if it’s fixed my Firefox crashing problem, so only time will tell.

3

Just wanted to give a quick update. I am still getting crashes from Firefox seemingly due to the multimedia codec problem. Keep in mind that this only happens on my Radeon-based system. I have an Intel-based laptop that doesn’t suffer from this problem at all, and most everything else is equal. For example, I use a user.js file in my Firefox profiles for each system that is identical, both systems are running Fedora KDE edition, and both use Wayland.