# VA-API not working, no hardware H.264 decoding with UVD on ThinLinc **URL:** \ **Category:** Community Support\ **Tags:** tlserver\ **Created:** [30 July 2025 21:41 UTC](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/va-api-not-working-no-hardware-h-264-decoding-with-uvd-on-thinlinc/1689 "2025-07-30T21:41:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 2
**Author:** ![aaron](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.thinlinc.com/aaron/32/13_2.png) [@aaron](https://community.thinlinc.com/u/aaron)\ **Post date:** [30 July 2025 23:21 UTC](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/va-api-not-working-no-hardware-h-264-decoding-with-uvd-on-thinlinc/1689/2 "2025-07-30T23:21:33Z")
Hi @kszwaba, Thanks for the detailed report! The X server responsible for your ThinLinc session generally won’t have access to the GPU, even if the user has the correct permissions. So for example, if you want to run accelerated OpenGL applications in a ThinLinc session, you’d need to use something like [VirtualGL](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/is-it-possible-to-provide-server-side-graphic-acceleration-via-thinlinc/405). This is why `glxinfo` is showing a fallback to software rendering. ThinLinc shouldn’t affect things outside of a ThinLinc session, though. So if you’re unable to get sensible output from `vainfo` at the local console for example, then you would need to resolve this first. I’m not familiar with VA-API at all, so the following is pure guesswork 🙂 but if/when you have `vainfo` working at the local console, you might like to try unsetting the `DISPLAY` environment variable before running `vainfo` within the ThinLinc session. This will (hopefully) prevent it from trying to use ThinLinc’s X server for GPU access, and get it to use the console one instead. So something like: `DISPLAY= vainfo` or `DISPLAY=:0.0 vainfo` Note that you shouldn’t change the `DISPLAY` variable globally, for example by exporting it, since ThinLinc relies on this being set correctly. Let us know how you get on. --- _[View the full topic](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/va-api-not-working-no-hardware-h-264-decoding-with-uvd-on-thinlinc/1689)._