Ubuntu – Bumblebee on Ubuntu 13.04 with GeForce 750M and Driver 319

bumblebeedriversnvidianvidia-optimus

here is my story 🙂

i would like to get Bumblebee running with a NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 750M
and it does not work.
Basically optirun says Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU.

I tried many things suggested in here ending in a complete broke X server and unity after using nvidia-xconfig.
after a night of debuging my system runs again (i had to reinstall ubuntu-desktop package), but something with the onboard intel chip is now broke too: before i hat 60 fps at glxspheres (running on the intel chip), now its 25fps.

Because GT 750M is not supported in 304, i installed the 319/325 Driver and bumblebee as described here:Using Nvidia 319 with bumblebee
( ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa )

in the following i try to post as much usefull information as possible:

System:

Details:http://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/N550JV/#specifications
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 4700HQ Processor
Memory: DDR3L 1600 MHz SDRAM, DIMM 8G
Graphic onboard: Integrated Intel® HD Graphics 4600 and
Graphic nvidia: NVIDIA®GeForce® GT 750M with 2GB DDR3 VRAM
Kernel: 3.8.0-30-generic
OS: Ubuntu 13.04 x64

optirun –debug glxspheres

[36773.371123] [DEBUG]optirun version 3.2.1 starting…
[36773.371185] [DEBUG]Active configuration:
[36773.371198] [DEBUG] bumblebeed config file: /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf
[36773.371211] [DEBUG] X display::8 [36773.371223] [DEBUG] LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/lib/nvidia-325:/usr/lib32/nvidia-325
[36773.371236] [DEBUG] Socket path: /var/run/bumblebee.socket
[36773.371248] [DEBUG] Accel/display bridge: auto
[36773.371260] [DEBUG] VGL Compression: proxy
[36773.371273] [DEBUG] VGLrun extra options:
[36773.371285] [DEBUG] Primus LD Path: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/primus:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/primus
[36773.371349] [DEBUG]Using auto-detected bridge virtualgl
[36773.411550] [INFO]Response: No – error: [XORG] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0. Please

[36773.411588] [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU – error: [XORG] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0. Please

[36773.411593] [DEBUG]Socket closed. [36773.411613] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled.
[36773.411620] [DEBUG]Killing allremaining processes.

dpkg -l|grep nvidia

ii bumblebee-nvidia
3.2.1-1~raringppa3 amd64 NVIDIA Optimus support using the proprietary NVIDIA
driver rc nvidia-304
304.108-0ubuntu1~xedgers~raring1 amd64 NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU
library ii nvidia-319
325.15-0ubuntu1~xedgers~raring2 amd64 Transitional package for nvidia-319 ii nvidia-325
325.15-0ubuntu1~xedgers~raring2 amd64 NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU
library ii nvidia-persistenced
325.15-0ubuntu1~xedgers~raring1 amd64 Load the NVIDIA kernel driver and create device files ii
nvidia-settings-319
325.15-0ubuntu1~xedgers~raring2 amd64 Transitional package for nvidia-settings-319 ii
nvidia-settings-325
325.15-0ubuntu1~xedgers~raring2 amd64 Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver

lspci -k | grep nvidia

Kernel driver in use: nvidia

grep -Fn '(EE' /var/log/Xorg.8.log

15: (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
117:[ 36773.400] (EE) Failed to load module "kbd" (module does not exist, 0)
158:[ 36773.409] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0. Please
159:[ 36773.409] (EE) NVIDIA(0): check your system's kernel log for additional error
160:[ 36773.409] (EE) NVIDIA(0): messages and refer to Chapter 8: Common Problems in the
161:[ 36773.409] (EE) NVIDIA(0): README for additional information.
162:[ 36773.409] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device!
163:[ 36773.409] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failing initialization of X screen 0
168:[ 36773.409] (EE) Screen(s) found,but none have a usable configuration.
172:[ 36773.409] (EE)
176:[36773.409] (EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.8.log" for additional information.
177:[ 36773.409] (EE)

kern.log

Sep 22 09:39:34 talorion-N550JV kernel: [37308.550024] vgaarb: this pci device is not a vga device
Sep 22 09:39:34 talorion-N550JV kernel: [37308.550406] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: irq 50 for MSI/MSI-X
Sep 22 09:39:34 talorion-N550JV kernel: [37308.563424] NVRM: failed to copy vbios to system memory.
Sep 22 09:39:34 talorion-N550JV kernel: [37308.571915] NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x30:0xffffffff:720)
Sep 22 09:39:34 talorion-N550JV kernel: [37308.571923] NVRM: rm_init_adapter(0) failed

Bumblebee.conf

KeepUnusedXServer=false
XorgConfDir=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.d

[bumblebeed]
VirtualDisplay=:8
KeepUnusedXServer=false
ServerGroup=bumblebee
TurnCardOffAtExit=false
NoEcoModeOverride=false
Driver=nvidia

[optirun]
Bridge=auto
VGLTransport=proxy
PrimusLibraryPath=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/primus:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/primus
AllowFallbackToIGC=false

[driver-nvidia]
KernelDriver=nvidia-319
PMMethod=auto
LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-319:/usr/lib32/nvidia-319
XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-319/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules
XorgConfFile=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia

[driver-nouveau]
KernelDriver=nouveau
PMMethod=auto
XorgConfFile=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nouveau

Here are my question(s):

How can i go back to my graphical system working as it did right after the installation of ubuntu?
How can i get Bublebee run on mys System (or what exactly did i wrong)?

Thank you very much for any help.

Gregor

—UPDATE/EDIT—

after the suggestions of lupopa i installed 12.04 sucessuflly. the problem now is that nvidia prime is not working. why it is not working is decribed here: Is a NVIDIA GeForce with Optimus Technology supported by Ubuntu? . So i think i have to stick with bumblebee wich is still not working 🙂

Best Answer

I was in the same situation as you few days back. I bought a new laptop Lenovo Y510P which had the following specs,

CPU: Intel Haswell Core i7 4700HQ
Memory: 8GB DDR3
Graphics Onboard: Integrated Intel® HD Graphics 4600
Graphic Nvidia: NVIDIA®GeForce® GT 755M

My advice (which I read in several places) is that you need to use the latest Ubuntu which in turn comes with the latest Linux kernel. I installed Ubuntu 13.10 (Unity) which comes with Linux Kernel 3.11.1 (at the time of writing this post).

Since I used Ubuntu 13.10, I had several advantages like not requiring to disable Secure Boot or anything. On inserting my installation CD, I pressed F12 to access the UEFI boot order, where I selected CD as the boot medium. I booted into the Live CD environment and things seemed to work well. So I installed it alongside with Windows.

After installing it, I rebooted which resulted in me getting a black screen after selecting Ubuntu from the Grub menu. I had to add the option -nomodeset. This was required since Ubuntu had defaulted to the nouveau drivers. Also I noticed that the brightness option was 0. So try increasing the screen brightness to see the ubuntu booting screen. However despite using the -nomodeset option, I still couldnt get into the login screen.

So I pressed Ctrl + Alt + F2 to get to the tty2 terminal. Here I logged in and installing the following,

sudo apt-get install bumblebee primus primus-libs-ia32:i386 linux-headers-generic

Then reboot the system. You will no longer need to add the -nomodeset option and was able to get to the login screen. I still have the issue of the brightness set to 0 on every boot. At this point, we are still using Intel HD4600 for all purposes alongside with the nouveau drivers.

On reading everywhere, the proprietary drivers for Nvidia are much better than Nouveau for new Nvidia graphic cards in terms of performance. So once logged in, I opened a terminal and executed the following,

sudo apt-get install bumblebee-nvidia nvidia-319 nvidia-settings-319

This will automatically pull in some additional packages as dependencies and ensure that bumblebee uses the nvidia proprietary drivers as default over nouveau. I did not have to edit any config files yet.

Bumblebee is currently our best option for Nvidia's Optimus technology. By default, Ubuntu uses Intel HD4600 for everything. If you want to run a game using Nvidia (not done automatically), append optirun --bridge primus to the command used to launch the game. Using this I am able to run Dota 2 on its highest setting and able to get 50-60 fps.

Hope this helped. I got all the information about bumbleebee at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee.

Note 1: At all costs, do not download the drivers from Nvidia's website and install them manually. If you do so, you will have to install the drivers again everytime there is a linux kernel update.

Note 2: Do not install nvidia-current since it still points at nvidia-304 which is quite old. I still need to figure out how to install nvidia-325 since its a newer driver version and bring more performance improvements.

Note 3: I haven't added the ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa yet since it is not yet available for Ubuntu 13.10. However once it becomes available, I intend to add it to get the latest updates to the intel HD4600 since this card is quite new.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to get Bumblebee working with a GTX 660M

The Nvidia GTX 660M video card requires at least version 302.17 of the proprietary nvidia driver. You can get a newer driver by adding the ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates PPA and upgrading your nvidia driver:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Edit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf and change Driver= to Driver=nvidia. If the command modinfo nvidia-current says that no module can be found, then change KernelDriver=nvidia-current to KernelDriver=nvidia. After changing the configuration, either reboot or restart the Bumblebee daemon:

sudo restart bumblebeed

Note: not making the configuration changes so may cause optirun to show the below error message:

[ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: Could not load GPU driver
[ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled."

Good luck!

Ubuntu – Getting Nvidia GeForce GT 635M to work in 13.04

I have no experience with these drivers and I don't own such hardware but I will try to give some preliminary information and hopefully it helps a bit.

There is no special way that would provide higher reliability for something that was installed from .run file. If you want stability then always prefer installing software from Ubuntu repositories – not getting bleeding edge also means less bleeding. I have one tip though. With some run files there is an option to create deb-file from the installer. If you install that deb-file it is much easier to remove/replace it later. I have done it previously with ATI drivers but based on this answer it seems to be much more difficult with Nvidia drivers. There is a good guide about installing run files here.
Depends on so many things that it is best to try what works best on your system.
Proprietary drivers are called after nvidia and open source drivers are called nouveau. The rest that you have named are special extras for special hardware. Namely for Nvidia Optimus technology that you have in your laptop. Basically it means you have two graphics adapters – one lighter that is used on regular tasks and other much more powerful that is used when needed. For handling all that complexity extra software is needed and this is exactly what Bumbelbee is for. In theory one could use Bumbelbee both either with proprietary driver or nouveau driver. For Bumbelbee setup on Ubuntu see this. As I read from here you could check /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf file to see which driver Bumblebee is using. Primus and optirun/VirtualGL are pieces of software that help in 3D rendering (process of generating an graphical images) and Bumbelbee uses them to get its job done. Apparently as they claim Primus is newer and better alternative to VirtualGL. To read more about Primus and how to install it see this.
With proprietary driver you get GUI rather similar to Nvidia settings in Windows. With open source drivers you can use GUI settings managers that come with Ubuntu. In my experience both options work fine.
As I understand it from your comments then there is either a bug in your system or in Ubuntu in general or you either have too new hardware (its a sweet machine). The point is that if there are proprietary drivers allowed in your system but Ubuntu doesn't offer driver under Additional drivers then either hardware doesn't get detected or the driver in the repository doesn't support your hardware or something is broken. So it might also be a bug that you should report. In any case, looking at the current situation my advice would be to try set up nouveau with Bumbelbee and preferably start with fresh install as after “trying several things” tends to mess up things. All you need should be in the ppa:bumblebee/stable and Ubuntu repositories. Make sure you follow the Bumblebee guide in Ubuntu wiki. It is always good to try some already tried options again in a clean system when you know better what you are doing and what is what.

Other tips:

Use synaptic as advised by meteorainer as it is especially good tool for such troubleshooting situations. It is as surgical as you can get in package management without being command line guru.
When you try one driver see before that other driver is removed (in synaptic select to remove completely particular package or on command line use apt-get --purge remove package-name-goes-here). Having open source driver and proprietary driver installed at the same time is very likely to cause problems.
Keep track of what driver is being loaded. Especially when things are broken. The most important part of solving complex problems is having the data and in this case it means making good notes. There are various options for doing this. For an example you could use:

~$ sudo lshw -c video

or:

~$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 vga

If you still get stuck don't hesitate to expand your original question with new information.

Also if you find this answer useful click upper arrow in the upper left corner.

PS! If there is any incorrect information here let me know and I will edit my text.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to get Bumblebee working with a GTX 660M

Ubuntu – Getting Nvidia GeForce GT 635M to work in 13.04

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