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Category: OVH

Enabling the iGPU on an OVH Server running Ubuntu

At least on Ubuntu 22.04 OVH install images you’ll find that the integrated GPU on your CPU is either not detected or your application will report you don’t have the hardware enabled even when you have a CPU with an integrated GPU such as the E-2288G, and it’s enabled in the BIOS.

I have personally tested these motherboards and know the workaround is needed on them, so assume this problem is common to at least all ASRock boards:

ASRock Rack
E3C246D4U2-2L2T
E3C246D4U2-2T

You should not need this fix on the S1200SP motherboards you usually get with the 1245vX servers, these seem to handle the iGPU properly and/or the OVH image did not have the issue in the first place.

Don’t know your current motherboard version? You can query your current motherboard model with the “lshw” command on and Linux system.

Edit the grub default config file (/etc/default/grub) and remove the “nomodeset” option

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset iommu=pt"

Will become

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="iommu=pt"

Rebuild the GRUB config file.

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

Reboot the machine and you should now be able to use the iGPU, you can verify it’s loaded by looking for results when you ls the /dev/dri device.

ls /dev/dri/
by-path card0 card1 renderD128

Extra Credit: if you’re using the iGPU for video transcoding be sure to enable the full feature set on your CPU by installing the “intel-media-va-driver-non-free” package on your Ubuntu/Debian system.

OVH Dedicated server fails to upgrade to VMWare ESXi 7.0

Many people choose OVH for their low prices and relatively good network DDoS protection, and a lot of people probably choose to use ESXi when they got their server, however it seems that OVH added their own customisation when they made the ESXi image, when attempting to upgrade to 7.0 on a RISE NVMe server you may be presented with an error message resembling

VIB INT_bootbank_intel-nvme-vmd_1.*-1OEM.* requires 
vmkapi_2_2_0_0, but the requirement cannot be satisfied within the 
ImageProfile

The fix to this error is simple, but a bit hard to work out where to actually get the updated files:

SSH in to your ESXi host and change to a Datastore directory

# cd /vmfs/volumes/Datastore1/

Download the the new Intel NVMe vib, if your wget version freezes or the download fails you must use the vSphere web client to upload the vib, I’ll use the vib located on the Lenovo website, as I know this version works. By the time you’re reading this there may well be a new version of the driver so feel free to try something newer if you can find it.

# wget https://vmware.lenovo.com/content/2018_12/esxi_670_custom_vibs/esxi-670-vibs/INT_bootbank_intel-nvme-vmd_1.4.0.1016-1OEM.670.0.0.8169922.vib

Actually install the update, be sure to make backups!

# esxcli software vib update -v  "/vmfs/volumes/Datastore1/INT_bootbank_intel-nvme-vmd_1.4.0.1016-1OEM.670.0.0.8169922.vib"

Reboot the machine

# reboot

You should now be able to cleanly upgrade to ESXi 7.0 using the standard esxcli method.

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