Arch Linux

Noki

Member

Registered: 2018-06-08

Posts: 98

[SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

Hi, newbie to Arch but been using Ubuntu for a few years now.

Bit stuck on installing and running NVIDIA Drivers on my Dell XPS 9550. I ran through everything on the 2 relevant wiki pages for NVIDIA and Bumblebee but this doesn't seem to have worked. I am familiar with the process under Ubuntu through the Terminal and it usually takes a lot longer to run where DKMS does it's thing. But it seems that Arch doesn't even have DKMS by default and doesn't mention it on those pages anyway.

So this is what I have installed a run (from my bash history)

sudo pacman -S bumblebee mesa nvidia mesa-demos
sudo gpasswd -a noki bumblebee
sudo systemctl enable bumblebeed.service
sudo systemctl start bumblebeed.service
sudo depmod --all
sudo dkms autoinstall

(you see I even tried using DKMS to no avail)

This is what "lspci -v | grep VGA" says after a reboot

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 530 (rev 06) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

So it's still stuck on Intel, and this is what shows for "lspci -k" shows this under the NVIDIA device:

01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M] (rev a2)
        Subsystem: Dell GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M]
        Kernel driver in use: nouveau
        Kernel modules: nouveau

Are there steps missing from what I have done? Guides I've seen are similarly short and as I said this takes several minutes to run on Ubuntu, whereas Arch is done in seconds.

I can run any commands need to debug. Not sure where to start with the troubleshooting sections not covering this particular problem as far as I can tell.

After booting to test it says to run "optirun glxspheres64" as a test which outputs:

[ 1315.012770] [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG] (EE) Failed to load module "nouveau" (module does not exist, 0)

[ 1315.012835] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled.

Should nouveau have been blacklisted automatically?
I have a copy of the blacklist-nvidia.conf that Ubuntu generated but I'm not confident adding it where it doesn't feel like the NVIDIA driver is actually working.

Last edited by Noki (2018-06-11 15:36:49)

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,369

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

The nvidia package supplies a blacklist but its will not work if the nouveau module is already loaded.  This is one of the rare situations where it is easier to reboot.
Then check dmesg for the loaded driver and check the journal for the status of bumblebeed.
Edit:
spelling package not page.

Last edited by loqs (2018-06-11 00:23:57)

Noki

Member

Registered: 2018-06-08

Posts: 98

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

I've run through "dmesg" and can't see anything too wonky. I grep a few things to show a shorter output:

[noki@ARCH-XPS ~]$ dmesg | grep nouveau
[noki@ARCH-XPS ~]$ dmesg | grep intel
[    0.622550] intel_idle: MWAIT substates: 0x11142120
[    0.622551] intel_idle: v0.4.1 model 0x5E
[    0.622861] intel_idle: lapic_timer_reliable_states 0xffffffff
[    0.624665] intel_pstate: Intel P-state driver initializing
[    0.625386] intel_pstate: HWP enabled
[    2.436845] intel-lpss 0000:00:15.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    2.481452] intel-lpss 0000:00:15.1: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    2.510876] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    2.625223] acpi INT33D5:00: intel-hid: created platform device
[    2.819385] fb: switching to inteldrmfb from EFI VGA
[    3.151001] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_audio_component_bind_ops [i915])
[    3.158193] intel_rapl: Found RAPL domain package
[    3.158195] intel_rapl: Found RAPL domain core
[    3.158196] intel_rapl: Found RAPL domain uncore
[    3.158196] intel_rapl: Found RAPL domain dram
[    3.174948] fbcon: inteldrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[    4.342070] i915 0000:00:02.0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
[noki@ARCH-XPS ~]$ dmesg | grep VGA
[    0.453254] pci 0000:00:02.0: vgaarb: setting as boot VGA device
[    0.453254] pci 0000:00:02.0: vgaarb: VGA device added: decodes=io+mem,owns=io+mem,locks=none
[    0.622544] fb0: EFI VGA frame buffer device
[    2.819385] fb: switching to inteldrmfb from EFI VGA
[    2.819452] [drm] Replacing VGA console driver
[    2.830412] i915 0000:00:02.0: vgaarb: changed VGA decodes: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=io+mem:owns=io+mem
[noki@ARCH-XPS ~]$ dmesg | grep nvidia

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,728

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

You will also want to install nvidia-utils . Now that nouveau isn't loaded anymore it should work, does it not?

Something you should also be weary of due to some recent problems, make sure you don't have unnecessary xf86-input modules installed (i.e. xf86-input-libinput should be the only package) and there might be some issues when attempting to do this on wayland, so make sure you are booted into a Xorg session.

Last edited by V1del (2018-06-11 00:58:43)

Noki

Member

Registered: 2018-06-08

Posts: 98

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

Thanks for the tip, will play around with it shortly!

Noki

Member

Registered: 2018-06-08

Posts: 98

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

Everything looks right, though it states I am currently running the nouveau drivers. I will blacklist them an see what happens. Posting this output as a note since I might break Plasma for a while

[noki@ARCH-XPS ~]$ sudo pacman -Qs xf86
local/libxxf86vm 1.1.4-2
    X11 XFree86 video mode extension library
local/xf86-input-libinput 0.27.1-1 (xorg-drivers)
    Generic input driver for the X.Org server based on libinput
local/xf86-video-intel 1:2.99.917+831+ge7bfc906-1 (xorg-drivers)
    X.org Intel i810/i830/i915/945G/G965+ video drivers
local/xorgproto 2018.4-1
    combined X.Org X11 Protocol headers
[noki@ARCH-XPS ~]$ sudo pacman -Qs nvidia
local/bumblebee 3.2.1-17
    NVIDIA Optimus support for Linux through VirtualGL
local/libvdpau 1.1.1+3+ga21bf7a-1
    Nvidia VDPAU library
local/nvidia 396.24-7
    NVIDIA drivers for linux
local/nvidia-utils 396.24-2
    NVIDIA drivers utilities

Noki

Member

Registered: 2018-06-08

Posts: 98

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

Qapla' !!!!1

Not sure what fixed it exactly, but I added some blacklisting which apparently didn't help as I am not using it now. I did do this previously in Wayland so may have been the culprit but I also had the LTS kernel installed so perhaps I hadn't installed nvidia into the right kernel somehow. I got a blackscreen for a bit then managed to get it to boot into plasma. I would have included my bash history for posterity (though that's the gist of it) but now copy and paste isn't working?

To the next issue!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,728

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

The nvidia package already includes such a blacklist, what are you doing that overrides this? Have you added it to your mkinitcpio for some reason?

Edit: Ah glad to hear, still strange

Last edited by V1del (2018-06-11 15:39:10)

Noki

Member

Registered: 2018-06-08

Posts: 98

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

Not that I know of. I attempted to blacklist it manually since "lspci -k" showed only nouveau but this didn't work anyway as it still loaded nouveau after a reboot. I did nothing but follow the install instructions for NVIDIA and Bumblebee on the wiki. Nothing fancy.

My guess is that I didn't install the LTS kernel correctly, or I did it in the wrong order. Not sure but seems to working OK now.

[edit] spelling and grammar

Last edited by Noki (2018-06-11 15:43:40)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,728

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

If lspci just shows the module nouveau that's normal, if there's a line 'kernel module in use: nouveau' that would be problematic. It will still list the nouveau module as a possible provider, even if it isn't actively loaded due to a blacklist.

RoundCube

Member

Registered: 2016-05-14

Posts: 42

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

Qapla' !!!!1
I also had the LTS kernel installed so perhaps I hadn't installed nvidia into the right kernel somehow.

For the lts kernel you need the nvidia-lts package.
Similarly, the bbswitch package does not work for the lts kernel, however, there exists no bbswitch-lts package. Though you can use bbswitch-dkms instead.

Btw, check if /proc/acpi/bbswitch reports the card to be turned off correctly after use.

Noki

Member

Registered: 2018-06-08

Posts: 98

Re: [SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver Install (and Bumblebee) Am I missing something?

Good to know. Now that I have it working on some level I can play around until I get everything the way I want. For now it works well enough for me to setup more GPU hungry apps.

My Clipboard issue is strange too, seems to be limited to Wayland and not X. Most peculiar.

Thanks everyone for you help!