Arch Linux

iokiae

Member

Registered: 2018-03-11

Posts: 6

NVIDIA Driver without OpenGL dependencies

Hi. This is my first post so I apologize in advance if I posted in the wrong subsection.

I have NVIDIA Optimus enabled notebook which I want to use for OpenCL (maybe CUDA) learning/development. The plan is following:
Since NVIDIA GPU (in following text dGPU) uses way more battery I want to use Intel GPU (in following text iGPU) for Xorg and NVIDIA purely for computation.
Currently I have working X on iGPU. Problem arises when I install nvidia driver. nvidia driver pulls nvidia-utils automatically and thus installs nvidia OpenGL.
That somehow breaks my mesa libraries and I can't run glxinfo. I will post output of glxinfo later. Official recommendation of nvidia is to install their driver from the website and during compilation give it parameter --no-opengl-files. According to NVIDIA  Arch-Wiki page that is not recommended. How can I install nvidia without its dependancy nvidia-utils?

[EDIT]:
glxinfo output:

name of display: :0
Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig

Last edited by iokiae (2018-03-11 15:16:44)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,246

Re: NVIDIA Driver without OpenGL dependencies

For all intents and purposes, follow the setup in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee and afterwards on an as needed basis https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bu … _Bumblebee

iokiae

Member

Registered: 2018-03-11

Posts: 6

Re: NVIDIA Driver without OpenGL dependencies

I see what you mean, but I am trying to avoid that. Question specifically is: "How can I install nvidia driver without it's OpenGL implementation through pacman?"
It should be made possible, since it is an option when installing from nvidia binary.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,246

Re: NVIDIA Driver without OpenGL dependencies

Use the NoExtract= pacman.conf directive on the filepaths you don't want, or rebuild your own package which specifically uses that option.

Also if for some reason you intend to do that, you cannot simply not install nvidia-utils as a whole, as that also contains the cuda libraries.

And even in that case it's still useful to install at least bbswitch, as otherwise your nvidia card will remain active even without actively doing something.

Last edited by V1del (2018-03-11 16:15:22)

iokiae

Member

Registered: 2018-03-11

Posts: 6

Re: NVIDIA Driver without OpenGL dependencies

I am not that capable, but I guess I will have to get my hands dirty. Thank you for your time.