Question on fedora optimus/bumblebee

wuqso · 11-05-2018, 06:55 PM

I have a laptop of Huawei matebook x pro. I tried to install the latest Fedora and bumblebee. I can find two graphics cards with lspci.

Code:

# lspci -vnn | grep '\''[030[02]\]'
6:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 620 [8086:5917] (rev 07) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
142:01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation GP108M [GeForce MX150] [10de:1d12] (rev a1)

But I cannot find /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch, which means that my laptop is not an optimus laptop with two VGA devices according to https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US...bee/index.html. I have installed switcheroo-control.

Code:

# rpm -aq | grep switcheroo
1773:switcheroo-control-1.1-6.fc29.x86_64

What's the problem?

ferrari · 11-06-2018, 04:22 PM

I don't have hybrid graphics, but what does the following report?

Code:

xrandr --listproviders

I would proceed with reading the advice in the following how to...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comm..._to_bumblebee/

wuqso · 11-06-2018, 07:25 PM

Thank you for your reply. That's the output of the command.

% xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x46 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 3 outputs: 4 associated providers: 0 name:modesetting

I'm sorry I cannot visit the webpage you mentioned.

ferrari · 11-06-2018, 07:40 PM

Quote:

I'm sorry I cannot visit the webpage you mentioned.

That's unfortunate.

I'll copy/paste the details.... here's the concepts written there about hybrid graphics...

Quote:

Concepts
Nvidia Optimus

Nvidia Optimus is an optimization technology created by Nvidia which, depending on the resource load generated by client software applications, will transparently and seamlessly switch between two graphics adapters within a computer system in order to provide either maximum performance or minimum power draw from the system's graphics rendering hardware.

If your Nvidia card's model ends with an 'm', then you most likely have an Optimus card. (eg: Nvidia 930m, Nvidia 940mx, etc)

On Fedora, you have 3 options of how you deal with an Optimus setup.

Disabling one of the devices in BIOS, which may result in improved battery life if the NVIDIA device is disabled, but may not be available with all BIOSes and does not allow GPU switching.

Using the official Optimus support included with the proprietary NVIDIA driver, which offers the best NVIDIA performance but does not allow GPU switching and can be more buggy than the open-source driver.

Using the third-party Bumblebee program to implement Optimus-like functionality, which offers GPU switching and powersaving but requires extra configuration.

ferrari · 11-06-2018, 07:41 PM

Here's the information posted re getting Bumblebee installed...

Quote:

Bumblebee

Bumblebee is a effort to make Nvidia Optimus enabled laptops work in GNU/Linux systems. Such feature involves two graphics cards with two different power consumption profiles plugged in a layered way sharing a single framebuffer.

Basically, what this does is that the discrete GPU (NVidia) is turned off when not in use and activated and turned on though ACPI calls when demanding OpenGL applications require the extra power the discrete GPU can give.

Demanding OpenGL applications might include such things as 3D games or 3D rendering software but would not include such things as a web browser or a video playback program like mplayer or VLC.

Pre-Installation
1. Verify if you have an Optimus Card

Open your terminal and run lspci -vnn | grep '\''[030[02]\]'

If it outputs 2 lines, then it means you have an Optimus system and you should read further on.

Example Output:

~ » lspci -vnn | grep '\''[030[02]\]'
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 520 [8086:1916] (rev 07) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation GM108M [GeForce 930M] [10de:1346] (rev ff) (prog-if ff)

2. Turn off "Secure Boot" in your BIOS

Boot into your BIOS, and look for the "Secure Boot" option.

Make sure that option is turned off.

Installing Bumblebee
1. Add the Bumblebee Repo

dnf -y --nogpgcheck install http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/itecs/public/bumblebee/fedora$(rpm -E %fedora)/noarch/bumblebee-release-1.2-1.noarch.rpm

2. Add the Unmanaged Nvidia Repo

dnf -y --nogpgcheck install http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/itecs/public/bumblebee-nonfree-unmanaged/fedora$(rpm -E %fedora)/noarch/bumblebee-nonfree-unmanaged-release-1.2-1.noarch.rpm

3. Download the Nvidia driver blob

Go to the Nvidia Unix Drivers page and download the "Latest Short Lived Branch" driver. As of writing this guide, the latest driver is: 381.22

This will download a .run file into your ~/Downloads directory. Keep it there for a little while.

4. Install Bumblebee

dnf install bumblebee-nvidia bbswitch-dkms VirtualGL.x86_64 VirtualGL.i686 primus.x86_64 primus.i686 kernel-devel

5. Copy the Blob

Remember that .run file you downloaded earlier?

Copy that file to /etc/sysconfig/nvidia/ directory. This is very important.

6. Reboot

Using Bumblebee

Now that we have Bumblebee installed, how do we use it?

To launch an application using your Nvidia Card, the syntax is:

primusrun [options] application [application-parameters]

For example, say you want to open a wine application using your Nvidia card, you will type:

primusrun wine application.exe

Launching Nvidia-Settings with bumblebee

When you're using bumblebee, you shouldn't open the nvidia-settings application directly.

Instead, you need to launch it with the following command:

optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8

Feel free to adjust the nvidia-settings.desktop file to reflect that command.

wuqso · 11-08-2018, 10:03 AM

Thank you very much for posting the instruction on the installation of Bumblebee. I followed the instruction of https://www.linux.ncsu.edu/bumblebee/ to do the installation. But that website doesn't emphasize to turn off the secure boot, as does in your website. After I turned off the secure boot, the bumblebee worked! So that's the key! Thank you very much!

ferrari · 11-08-2018, 11:53 AM

Glad to have been of help!