Ubuntu – Bumblebee setup on Dell XPS 15 9530 for dual monitors in Ubuntu 13.10

13.10bumblebeemultiple-monitorsnvidianvidia-optimus

I am trying to setup my Dell XPS 15 9530 to use dual monitors in Ubuntu 13.10. The machine has the Optimus chipset with an Intel 4th generation card and an nVidia GeForce GT 750M.

I followed the instructions on the Bumblebee tutorial (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee), but am stuck trying to actually get the nvidia card working and dual monitors to be detected. (Note: right now clicking on "detect displays" does not detect the monitor in my mini-displayport that windows detects. HDMI is not an option at the moment, although the port does exist)

When I try to set the nvidia-settings the following happens:

$ optirun nvidia-settings 
[   77.278444] [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG] (EE) No devices detected.
[   77.278495] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled.

The Bumblebee tutorial discusses this and says to edit /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia
and change the bus of the nvidia card. I have done this, and it still doesn't work. Please see the output below:

$ lspci | egrep 'VGA|3D'
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
02:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 750M] (rev a1)

Contents of /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia (ignoring comments):

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier  "Layout0"
    Option      "AutoAddDevices" "false"
    Option      "AutoAddGPU" "false"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "DiscreteNvidia"
    Driver      "nvidia"
    VendorName  "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BusID   "PCI:02:00.0"

    Option "ProbeAllGpus" "false"

    Option "NoLogo" "true"
    Option "UseEDID" "false"
    Option "UseDisplayDevice" "none"
EndSection

As far as I can tell, I have set the BusID correctly, but the card still doesn't work. I also tried installing nvidia-current from the ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates ppa, but this did not fix anything.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can get this thing working? Please let me know if there is any more information that I can provide.

Thank you for your help!

Best Answer

I spent a day doing this specifically on the XPS 15 9530. I finally got it working after looking at many different (and conflicting) sources. I started a write-up on it, which outlines how to get it to work. It is still a work-in-progress, but I hope the guide will get it working for you. As of right now, this guide covers it up to the point of getting Bumblebee to work. I have not done the multi-monitor setup yet, but I figure this will get you closer.

http://wiki.belmankraul.com/linux/mint16_bumblebee