Arch Linux

KablamoBoom

Member

Registered: 2014-12-16

Posts: 6

Bumblebee fails to find NVidia drivers with custom kernel

Model: Asus 1215n Eee PC
CPU: Intel Atom D525
GPU: NVidia ION2 GT218
Laptop is factory except a RAM and SSD upgrade and an Intel wifi adapter. Shouldn't relate to this problem though.

After finishing off the Beginner's Guide I got to installing a custom kernel patch, repo-ck-atom. There's a couple options.

 # pacman -S ck-atom
:: There are 8 members in group ck-atom:
:: Repository repo-ck
   1) broadcom-wl-ck-atom  2) linux-ck-atom  3) linux-ck-atom-headers  4) nvidia-304xx-ck-atom  5) nvidia-340xx-ck-atom  6) nvidia-ck-atom  7) virtualbox-ck-guest-modules-atom  8) virtualbox-ck-host-modules-atom
 # 2 3 5
Packages (3) linux-ck-atom-4.0.7-1  linux-ck-atom-headers-4.0.7-1  nvidia-340xx-ck-atom-340.76-11

Build went smoothly, changed syslinux.cfg (link), reboots fine. I assume it to be working and not inherently the cause of the problem.
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Now, going through General Recommendations, I got around to the video drivers. The wiki page on Bumblebee tells me to install these packages:

 # pacman -S bumblebee mesa xf86-video-intel lib32-nvidia-utils lib32-mesa-libgl
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (5) bumblebee-3.2.1-10  lib32-mesa-libgl-10.6.1-1  lib32-nvidia-utils-352.21-1  mesa-10.6.1-1  xf86-video-intel-1:2.99.917+364+gb24e758-1
Don't forget to add yourself to the 'bumblebee' group to use Bumblebee
 # gpasswd -a user bumblebee
 # groups *username*
wheel uucp rfkill games users bumblebee *username*

Download goes smoothly and I was added successfully to the group. Enable bumblebeed.service, reboot, then test:

 # optirun glxgears -info
[ 110.167833] [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG] (EE) systemd-logind: failed to get session: PID 851 does not belong to any known session

[ 110.168354] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled.

# optirun glxspheres64 returns the same error. On to the wiki troubleshooting section! Per instructions I edit mkinitcpio.conf Modules section to include i915 and bbswitch. The mkinitcpio -p linux-ck goes smoothly except for two warnings about firmware which I've never had before (but which are apparently benign?) A little browsing also recommends I pick up bbswitch-ck, which also looks like it's working.

 # pacman -Qs bbswitch-ck
local/bbswitch-ck 0.8-11
    Kernel module allowing to switch dedicated graphics card on Optimus laptops for linux-ck
 # modprobe bbswitch
 #

Reboot again, optirun glxgears and glxspheres64 both return the same error. Restart and run a status check on bumblebeed.service.

 # systemctl status bumblebeed.service
● bumblebeed.service - Bumblebee C Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/bumblebeed.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2015-07-10 12:56:31 UTC; 1h 38min ago
 Main PID: 346 (bumblebeed)
   CGroup: /system.slice/bumblebeed.service
           └─346 /usr/bin/bumblebeed

systemd[1]: Started Bumblebee C Daemon.
systemd[1]: Starting Bumblebee C Daemon...
bumblebee[346]: [ XXXX.XXXXXX] [INFO]/usr/bin/bumblebeed 3.2.1 started

The wiki says you may also need to edit some lines into your bootloader config file.

LABEL arch-ck
        MENU LABEL Arch Linux
        LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux-ck
        APPEND root=/dev/mapper/Crucial-root rw elevator=deadline rcutree.rcu_idle_gp_delay=1
        INITRD ../intel-ucode.img,../initramfs-linux-ck.img

Done. Reboot. Re-test. Still fails. Somewhere in my gut I know it's a conflict between the proprietary kernel compiled drivers and Bumblebee, but I can't seem to pin down what's missing. Nvidia is there, bbswitch is there, bumblebee and modprobe say it's all working. But the one GPU just isn't getting recognized. I am not advanced enough to compile my own kernel but I know my way around the AUR and ABS...I think. Really, totally, at a loss with this one.