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aki-ks

Member

Registered: 2019-02-08

Posts: 4

ThinkPad P50 Dock - Monitors not detected (Bumblebee)

I've just got a "Lenovo Pro Dock 40A1" for my "ThinkPad P50" and would like to connect through the dock to a Monitor via VGA/DVI but it is not working.

One Option is to use the proprietary nvidia drivers. The Monitor connected to the Dock does work but the driver has just too many downsites.
I must disable hybrid graphics, sound is completely broken, the dpi seems to be detected wrong which results in a totally messed up UI, ...

My preferred alternative would be to use hybrid graphics as provided by bumblebee.
This worked fine so far, but does not detect the display connected to the dock.
I've noticed that as soon as I run an application via `primusrun` the display backlight will turn on and shows a black screen.

I would really appreciate if someone may help me get this thing running?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,650

Re: ThinkPad P50 Dock - Monitors not detected (Bumblebee)

Have you seen https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bu … VIDIA_chip already?

aki-ks

Member

Registered: 2019-02-08

Posts: 4

Re: ThinkPad P50 Dock - Monitors not detected (Bumblebee)

Wow... "optirun intel-virtual-output" did indeed put some output on the screen,
but I am only able to set resolutions up to 1600x900 while my screen is a 1920x1080 screen.

aki-ks

Member

Registered: 2019-02-08

Posts: 4

Re: ThinkPad P50 Dock - Monitors not detected (Bumblebee)

I've now installed "optimus-manager" (I've not even enabled the systemd task) and I can now use my Display at 1080p!
The only downsite - I can no longer use "primusrun" is there a way to fix that?

$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics P530 driver: i915 v: kernel 
           Device-2: NVIDIA GM107GLM [Quadro M2000M] driver: nouveau v: kernel 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.3 driver: modesetting unloaded: intel resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz, 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics P530 (Skylake GT2) v: 4.5 Mesa 18.3.2

$ optirun --debug supertuxkart
[  997.473585] [DEBUG]Reading file: /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf
[  997.473722] [INFO]Configured driver: nvidia
[  997.473831] [DEBUG]optirun version 3.2.1-2017-02-27-Format:%h$ starting...
[  997.473838] [DEBUG]Active configuration:
[  997.473841] [DEBUG] bumblebeed config file: /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf
[  997.473844] [DEBUG] X display: :8
[  997.473847] [DEBUG] LD_LIBRARY_PATH: /usr/lib/nvidia:/usr/lib32/nvidia:/usr/lib:/usr/lib32
[  997.473850] [DEBUG] Socket path: /var/run/bumblebee.socket
[  997.473853] [DEBUG] Accel/display bridge: auto
[  997.473856] [DEBUG] VGL Compression: proxy
[  997.473858] [DEBUG] VGLrun extra options: 
[  997.473861] [DEBUG] Primus LD Path: /usr/lib/primus:/usr/lib32/primus
[  997.473924] [DEBUG]Using auto-detected bridge primus
[  997.474050] [INFO]Response: No, secondary X is not active.

[  997.474057] [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU, secondary X is not active.

[  997.474061] [DEBUG]Socket closed.
[  997.474071] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled.
[  997.474076] [DEBUG]Killing all remaining processes.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,650

Re: ThinkPad P50 Dock - Monitors not detected (Bumblebee)

No, the entire point of optimus-manager is to  switch over the configuration to exclusively use the nvidia card, or exclusively use the intel card. this is inherently incompatible with the use of bumblebee. However it allows you to relatively easily specify which mode of operation you want to have between the two, but you'd simply have to remember to switch to the relevant mode whenever you decide to use the dock or not.

That said, unless I've misunderstood something, if you are intending to use nouveau instead of the nvidia driver anyway, all of this should work, without any of these packages. You should be able to make full use (to the extent that nouveau is capable) of all capabilites without explicitly having any of these packages (remove bumblebee, optimus-manager, xf86-video-intel) and at most following: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PR … erse_PRIME

aki-ks

Member

Registered: 2019-02-08

Posts: 4

Re: ThinkPad P50 Dock - Monitors not detected (Bumblebee)

you'd simply have to remember to switch to the relevant mode whenever you decide to use the dock or not.

With optimus-manager, the dock works in both modes.
If I switch to "intel" mode then according to inxi, the intel card is using the i915 driver and the nvidia cards is also running using "nouveau".
If I switch to "nvidia" mode then only the buggy, proprietary nvidia driver is used.

Bumblebee worked actually really great, I've used the intel card for the desktop environment and all my applications and I could explicitly run single applications on the nvidia card over the proprietary driver.
My desktop environment was rendered flawless by the energy efficient intel card.
And I could use the full performance of the nvidia card for single applications on demand.
I did not get a messed up UI and random freezes and crashed like if I would only use only the proprietary nvidia driver.
The downside was that it could not use the outputs wired to the nvidia card (the dock).

I hoped that I could get something like the "intel" mode of optimus-manager (desktop environment rendered by the intel card while having all outputs of the nvidia card available) while being able to run single applications explicitly on the nvidia card over the proprietary nvidia driver like bumblebee does.
Is something like that possible through "Reverse PRIME" that you just linked?

Last edited by aki-ks (2019-02-10 14:59:34)