Introduction

This article explains how to activate the integrated iGPU on Intel processors, using a Linux OS. An iGPU can be used to render videos using FFMPEG.

Requirements

• A dedicated server with an Intel CPU
• An installed Linux operating system

Step 1 - Check CPU for compatibility

To check if the CPU in your dedicated server has an integrated graphics chip, you can look up the datasheet of the CPU. Intel provides a website for this purpose: https://ark.intel.com/. On this page you can search for the CPU. If there is a tab called "Processor Graphics" in the datasheet, then that CPU has an integrated iGPU.

Step 2 - Check if the iGPU is already activated

To check whether the iGPU is already active, the following command must be executed on the system:

ls -la /dev/dri

The following output confirms that the iGPU is disabled:

ls: cannot access '/dev/dri': No such file or directory

Step 3 - Enable the iGPU

To enable the iGPU, the following steps must be performed.

Open the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-hetzner.conf in an editor. In this file some entries must be commented out.

Here the entries blacklist i915 and blacklist i915_bdw have to be commented out with a # at the beginning of the line.

The edited entries should look like this:

### i915 driver blacklisted due to various bugs
### especially in combination with nomodeset
#blacklist i915
#blacklist i915_bdw

Step 4 - Adjust the Grub settings

The Grub bootloader configuration needs to be adjusted as follows.

In the file /etc/default/grub.d/hetzner.cfg the entry GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset consoleblank=0" must be changed. From this entry, the word nomodeset must be removed.

(On Ubuntu 18.04, the file is located at /etc/default/grub)

Here is an example of how the above entry must be changed.

Before editing:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset consoleblank=0"

After editing:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="consoleblank=0"

Next, the grub configuration needs to be saved, which is done with this command:

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

After restarting the server, the iGPU should be active.

Step 5 - Review the iGPU

The check can be performed with ls -la /dev/dri.

Now the output should look something like this:

drwxr-xr-x  3 root root       100 Mar  2 17:57 .
drwxr-xr-x 20 root root      4400 Mar  2 17:57 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root        80 Mar  2 17:57 by-path
crw-rw----  1 root video 226,   0 Mar 16 19:55 card0
crw-rw----  1 root video 226, 128 Mar 16 19:55 renderD128

Alternatively lspci can be executed, which provides more detailed information.

sudo lspci -v -s $(lspci | grep VGA | cut -d" " -f 1)

If the output contains the entry Kernel driver in use: i915 (penultimate line), then the iGPU is active.

Step 6 - Install Monitoring Tools (Optional)

To monitor the usage of the iGPU you can use the intel-gpu-tools.

To install type: sudo apt install intel-gpu-tools.

To run it type: sudo intel_gpu_top.

Conclusion

This article has covered how to enable the integrated iGPU on Intel CPUs and to monitor the utilization.

License: MIT