Arch Linux

beyondLIFE

Member

Registered: 2018-08-28

Posts: 11

[SOLVED] Nvidia; Optimus; Xorg

Hey everyone,

i have installed Arch on my old laptop, which turns out to be optimus. It has two graphic cards: https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/c1 … d71d5e175e
So i began my reading on  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NV … e_graphics , and i have decieded that  i don't want to use integrated GPU, which is probably here for power saving, which i don't care about at the moment.
So what have i done: 1.) Generated the xorg.conf.new moved it to xorg.conf and checked that GPU adress is to the correct, nvidia one. Here: https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/45 … 25e2bf0b5b
                                   2.) Made .xinitrc in my users directory, added those lines: ( you will notice that i  want to use xfce) https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/4d … c27439bb3c
                                   3.) Rebooted and started the X (startx) which left me with this:  https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/75 … 7bad4fda44

I am not sure if i understood good, but i do not want to use bumblebee if not necessery, i just want my nvidia GPU to be used. But as i was able to see from .log, xorg automaticlly searches for GPUs, which probably detects integrated one which i don't even have drivers for.
From drivers i have installed nvidia-390xx , as I mentioned i want to use XFCE, without desktop manager, for now.

Best regards and thanks in advance!

Last edited by beyondLIFE (2018-08-30 14:38:29)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia; Optimus; Xorg

Remove that xorg.conf in any case. As for the failing kernel module post

dmesg
pacman -Qs nvidia
pacman -Qs libgl
lsmod | grep -E 'nvidia|nouveau'

Last edited by V1del (2018-08-30 13:16:36)

beyondLIFE

Member

Registered: 2018-08-28

Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia; Optimus; Xorg

Hey, thanks for answering!
Here:
https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/d0 … f06649fa88
https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/e0 … d6dad131bd
https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/59 … edb8604724
https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/e1 … 1f0ea4108d

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia; Optimus; Xorg

Looks good, updated xorg.log without the config file? Or does it work now? Note that the xorg.log can be located either at the traditional /var/log position or ~/.local/share/xorg , depending on a few factors, check which one is newer and post that.

Some other things to check, that is not your entire .xinitrc is it? You will have to add a few necessary includes beforehand see the second blue note at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xinit#xinitrc

I also faintly remember that the xfce display manager might interfere and override the setup you do in .xinitrc, if it still doesn't work can you try a simpler environment to verify that everything is loaded correctly?

Edit: Oh what I'm also seeing now, you have 2 VGA devices, if you are actually able to change the active card to nvidia within your BIOS that is likely a preferable solution to doing the optimus offload.

Last edited by V1del (2018-08-30 14:33:04)

beyondLIFE

Member

Registered: 2018-08-28

Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia; Optimus; Xorg

It works now, without xorg.conf.
Here is the .log from /var/log:
https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/19 … 4495dcec62

And from the .local/share/xorg here are .logs:
https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/17 … 45111d5180
https://gist.github.com/beyondLIFE01/63 … e771986b7b

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia; Optimus; Xorg

Ah, ok then that's fine as well If you consider this solved please edit the initial title in your first post and prepend [SOLVED] or similar: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … ow_to_post

beyondLIFE

Member

Registered: 2018-08-28

Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia; Optimus; Xorg

Sure, thanks.
But how is the problem solved? Just by deleting xorg.conf? I mean I am glad it is but can you please consider explaining me.
Thanks again for answering me very fast!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia; Optimus; Xorg

xorg -configure is only recommended if you know what you are doing and just want a baseline configuration skeleton. On it's own it usually sets up certain configuration that breaks the xorg internal autodetection resp. the several small configuration snippets that are installed by relevant packages and ensure a proper setup have their working directives overwritten. The reason you can get away with just having the xrandr lines in your .xinitrc to set this up is a snippet installed by the nvidia390xx-utils package under usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia-drm-outputclass.conf that sets up the minimum necessary to allow the xrandr call to succeed. One of the directives in the generated xorg.conf likely overwrote that and thus broke the setup.

beyondLIFE

Member

Registered: 2018-08-28

Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia; Optimus; Xorg

Thanks, very well explained!