Nvidia Optimus

[tonda102]

Hello. I am a new user of Manjaro Linux and I ran into a problem today. I am running a notebook with Nvidia Optimus system which is like a magnet for problems. It never works right. Even on Windows. My problem is that I tried to install the hybrid Bumblebee driver but it does not work at all. I have been searching many forums but nothing worked.

When I run nvidia-settings in bash it says:

ERROR: NVIDIA driver is not loaded
ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system

And when I run lspci -v it says:

01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM108M [GeForce 940MX] (rev ff) (prog-if ff)
!!! Unknown header type 7f
Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

I think it has something to do with the open source nouveau driver. Should I blacklist it? I have added a new conf file to modprobe.d folder with blacklist command so I think it should be blacklisted or is there anything more to do?

My specs:
Device: Acer Aspire A525-51G-51MN
CPU: Intel Core i5-7200U
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 940MX
OS: Manjaro Deepin ver. 18.0.4
Kernel: linux419

I tried to reinstall whole OS and select non-free drivers during instalation but it is still the same.

[michaldybczak]

@tonda102

When I run nvidia-settings

Looks like you didn't do your homework . On bumblebee you cannot access nvidia-settings directly, this won't work. You need to use:

optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8

Secondly, to check if Bumblebee is working:

$ optirun glxgears -info

or

$ optirun glxspheres32

Read:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee

This "!!! Unknown header type 7f" looks worrisome thou.

[tonda102]

Oh my. I have completely missed this Arch page! Thanks for mentioning it! Also "optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c" gives this output:

ERROR: Unable to find display on any available system

Which sounds really weird to me.

And "optirun glxgears -info" runs, but gives this error:

XIO:  fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":0"
      after 35 requests (35 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

Thank you again for your reply, kind sir

[tonda102]

Oh I am such an idiot glxgears -info runs just fine. Ignor that error xD

[AgentS]

@tonda102

Which sounds really weird to me.

Fairly! There 's a typo in the command. (courtesy of Discourse!)

optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8

If you still have problems, please explain.

[michaldybczak]

Ah, sorry, didn't notice that Discourse replaced the signs automatically. Modified my post to contain the correct command.

[tonda102]

It worked! It opened the settings. But it also gave me this warning:

(nvidia-settings:26885): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 20:28:32.399: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
GPU at BusId 0x1 doesn't have a supported video decoder

I've downloaded CS 1.6 to test it on. With "primusrun %command%" the game simply won't start.

But in Nvidia settings panel everything seems alright. It even shows the GPU temperature which for some reason doesn't work on my Windows 10. Only thing that seems odd there is the Display configuration which auto detects my display on 640x480 resolution.

[tonda102]

I will try to reinstall it according to this topic:

[HowTo] Set up PRIME (output offload) with NVIDIA proprietary driver

The latest versions of Xorg, kernel, and NVIDIA driver all support PRIME output but setting this up is a bit of a faff. What follows is a method to get this working on an Optimus-enabled laptop. 440xx update: If you have something which supports driver series 440xx then you should switch to video-hybrid-intel-nvidia-440xx-prime and ignore this guide (unless you want to use only the dGPU). Specify using the dGPU with e.g. prime-run glxinfo. Note: Fermi-based GPUs should use nvidia-390xx inste…

[michaldybczak]

Also, you must remember, that Bumblebee don't support Vulkan which is prevalent in Steam Play, so some games like Witcher 3 will return error (not supported Graphical Card), others may silently just won't work.
Try launching the CS on OpenGL (there are some parameters that you can add to a game launcher) or simpy install nvidia-xrun:

How to use Vulkan on Bumblebee - a guide to nvidia-xrun

Attention: This guide is meant for Bumblebee users on Arch-based systems and is based on my experiments and those source articles: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Nvidia-xrun 'https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/5t8qb3/guide_how_i_fixed_every_problem_i_had_with_nvidia/' Bumblebee is needed on all hybrid GPU machines (which are usually laptops) because it makes a system use Intel graphics by default, which saves battery power and allows for switching on discrete Nvidia card fo…

Of course, you can also manually set PRIME as recommended above or try optimus-manager (which I currently use), but before you do any of it, do system backup with timeshift so you could roll back in case something goes wrong. Messing with GPU drivers is always risky and certain solutions may not work for all hardware setups.

You may also simply try to run Steam in Bumblebee mode:

primusrun steam

Some won't recommend it and say that running each game with that command is better but in my experience it's usually the least hassle free usage. So if Bumblebee works and the game is not using Vulkan, it will run.
I also recommend installing steam-native package which often resolves potential Bumblebee issues as it adds OS native libraries and makes Steam use them (so they are newer than those bundles in with Steam).