Arch Linux

SmallAndSimple

Member

Registered: 2015-11-25

Posts: 58

Bumblebee: switch card off after use

I am using a setup with Bumblebee, BBswitch, nvidia package and the default linux package (default kernel). Everything is running fine, except the graphics card is not turned off after use

When I boot my machine, the discrete graphics is turned off per default:

# cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch
0000:01:00.0 OFF

Then, when I use optirun or primusrun to run something, it gets turned on and nvidia and nvidia_modeset are loaded, as expected.
And from then on, the card is active. Which is weird to me, if I close the application using my nvidia card, I expected it to be turned off again. The difference is visible in power usage and costs me some battery.

I cannot manually disable the card again:

# rmmod nvidia_modeset
rmmod: ERROR: Module nvidia_modeset is in use
# rmmod nvidia
rmmod: ERROR: Module nvidia is in use by: nvidia_modeset

BBswitch will not turn off the card unless the nvidia module is unloaded.

Are my expectations wrong? Or should the card be disabled again by bumblebee?