hi all!

i’ve hit a wall here and could use your input if you have any thoughts!

i’m running Owncast latest via rootful Podman on a distro with SELinux.

i’m trying to implement hardware acceleration via the server’s AMD GPU, but it is not working.

i’ve turned VAAPI on in the web admin settings.

the container comes with ffmpeg 6 and libva.

For SELinux, i’ve run:

setsebool -P container_use_devices true

In my quadlet i’ve added:

[Container] AddDevice=/dev/dri Exec=apk add mesa

the devices appear rw in the container:

/app # ls -l /dev/dri total 0 crw-rw---- 1 root 486 226, 0 Jul 9 15:58 card0 crw-rw---- 1 root 489 226, 128 Jul 9 15:58 renderD128

here is the error i’m getting:

time=“2025-07-09T15:58:46Z” level=error msg=“[AVHWDeviceContext @ 0x7f96891c7cc0] Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).”

time=“2025-07-09T15:58:46Z” level=error msg=“Failed to set value ‘/dev/dri/renderD128’ for option ‘vaapi_device’: I/O error”

time=“2025-07-09T15:58:46Z” level=error msg=“transcoding error. look at data/logs/transcoder.log to help debug. your copy of ffmpeg may not support your selected codec of h264_vaapi owncast.online/docs/codecs/"

time=“2025-07-09T16:04:25Z” level=info msg=“Inbound stream connected from 192.168.0.235:42698”

time=“2025-07-09T16:04:25Z” level=info msg=“Processing video using codec VA-API with 3 output qualities configured.”

time=“2025-07-09T16:04:25Z” level=error msg=”[AVHWDeviceContext @ 0x7f8a2a047cc0] Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error)."

time=“2025-07-09T16:04:25Z” level=error msg=“Failed to set value ‘/dev/dri/renderD128’ for option ‘vaapi_device’: I/O error”

time=“2025-07-09T16:04:25Z” level=info msg=“Inbound stream disconnected.”

time=“2025-07-09T16:04:25Z” level=error msg=“unable to write rtmp packet io: read/write on closed pipe”

time=“2025-07-09T16:04:25Z” level=error msg="transcoding error. look at data/logs/transcoder.log to help debug. your copy of ffmpeg may not support your selected codec of h264_vaapi owncast.online/docs/codecs/"

in ADDITION, the Exec parameter in my quadlet isn’t actually installing mesa like it should. i still have to install it manually. podman ps does show the command, however.


any help to troubleshoot this would be most appreciated! thank you!