bumblebee-git (AUR) bbswitch always ON

Morv · 2016-10-17 22:25:59

Edit: Switched to using nouveau/PRIME, because there seem to be some issues with current kernels and bbswitch/bumblebee, and nouveau turns off the Nvidia card by itself when not used. Only negative aspect is that the Nvidia card is basically not usable because the clocks aren't adjusted to the load. This is fine for me though, it was only about battery drain in my case.

Hi,

I'm using a Lenovo Thinkpad W541 with Nvidia K2100M and wanted to get Bumblebee running. The installation is an EFI installation.

I installed bumblebee from usual Arch repo first but then read that it is being unable to turn off the Nvidia GPU(which I noticed and checked for).
So I uninstalled bumblebee and installed bumblebee-git from AUR.

While bumblebee itself works with optirun, it never turns off the Nvidia GPU.
Whatever I do, even manually running

sudo tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<OFF

,

cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch

returns

0000:01:00.0 ON

.

I checked for some dmesg messages and lsmod output:

dmesg | grep nvidia
[    2.829230] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
[    2.838307] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: enabling device (0004 -> 0007)
[    2.838423] nvidia-nvlink: Nvlink Core is being initialized, major device number 242
[    2.853147] nvidia-modeset: Loading NVIDIA Kernel Mode Setting Driver for UNIX platforms  370.28  Thu Sep  1 19:18:48 PDT 2016
[    3.161750] [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Loading driver
[    4.605250] [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Unloading driver
[    5.214898] nvidia-modeset: Unloading
[    5.234931] nvidia-nvlink: Unregistered the Nvlink Core, major device number 242

dmesg | grep bbswitch
[    4.604764] bbswitch: version 0.8
[    4.604769] bbswitch: Found integrated VGA device 0000:00:02.0: \_SB_.PCI0.VID_
[    4.604772] bbswitch: Found discrete VGA device 0000:01:00.0: \_SB_.PCI0.PEG_.VID_
[    4.605011] bbswitch: detected an Optimus _DSM function
[    4.605020] bbswitch: Succesfully loaded. Discrete card 0000:01:00.0 is on
[    5.258737] bbswitch: disabling discrete graphics

lsmod | grep nvidia
nvidia_modeset        765952  2
nvidia              11866112  56 nvidia_modeset

when running optirun and returns nothing when optirun doesn't run.

optirun --status
Bumblebee status: Ready (3.2.1-42-ged7551a). X inactive. Discrete video card is on.

So, to summarize: The driver is loaded upon start, then unloaded by bbswitch when it finds the Nvidia GPU. dmesg is telling me that bbswitch is disabling the Nvidia GPU which contradicts what /proc/acpi/bbswitch tells. I'm also pretty sure that the area to the left of ny trackpad is warmer and there's a fan constantly spinning, it's not loud but hearable, compared to running Windows without using the Nvidia GPU. So I think the Nvidia GPU is really not getting disabled.

Anyone having some ideas on what might be wrong or what can be further checked?
If you need any further input I'll be glad to provde it.

Thanks,

Morv

Last edited by Morv (2016-10-24 13:26:40)

semedi · 2017-07-09 22:08:19

Hi,

Im having now the same problem with my laptop so i was wondering if u finally found a solution or anybody knows something about it.

Thanks!

jasonwryan · 2017-07-10 19:04:32

semedi, please don't necrobump: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … bumping.22

Open your own thread with details about your setup, what you have tried and relevant logs/error messages.

Closing

Arch Linux

#1 2016-10-17 22:25:59

bumblebee-git (AUR) bbswitch always ON

#2 2017-07-09 22:08:19

Re: bumblebee-git (AUR) bbswitch always ON

#3 2017-07-10 19:04:32

Re: bumblebee-git (AUR) bbswitch always ON

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