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I was going back and forth between where to post this, because technically my machine is a laptop, but the only part I'm using from my laptop is the mainboard, as the mainboard has a standalone operation mode (it's a framework 1280p mainboard) meant for taking the mainboard out of the laptop chassis and use it as a desktop PC, so in a case.
I'm using an eGPU enclosure with a GTX 1080 Ti inside.
I did a fresh Arch install and have installed the following packages.
I followed the usual steps from the Nvidia section on the Arch wiki. I added nvidia_drm.modeset=1to the kernel parameters (I'm using systemd-boot), I added nvidia, nvidia_modeset, nvidia_uvm and nvidia_drm to the initramfs (and ran mkinitcpio -P).
After rebooting, the system got hung up on "Reached target Graphical Interface", so I switched to TTY2 and disabled SDDM.
After rebooting again, I tried running KDE x11 with the startx command from the Arch wiki KDE section, but it failed. Looking through that log, the main thing I see that I haven't seen before is "This device is an external GPU, but external GPUs have not been enabled with AllowExternalGpus. Disabling this device to prevent crashes from accidental removal.", which is surprising to me as I've used eGPUs plenty in the past and never had this issue, I guess that it's because of my more unique use-case with having the mainboard outside of the chassis in standalone mode, although according to framework, that should make no difference.
Running KDE with Wayland did work, but it was completely unusable as it was such a lag fest that even clicking a button was a challenge. So working, but also not really working.
This led me to search around on how to force Arch to use the Nvidia card/eGPU as the main renderer, and potentially disable the intel iGPU (something I can't do in the bios), as I figured that the main issue could be that Arch is not rendering on the Nvidia eGPU.
I first tried following the Arch wiki "External GPU" section, first the "Xorg rendered on eGPU, PRIME display offload to iGPU" section, which is what I figured I wanted, and when that didn't make a difference, I tried the "Xorg rendered on iGPU, PRIME render offload to eGPU". I know that the second option is probably not what I want (from my limited understanding), and people here might find that stupid and ignorant, but please keep in mind that I'm completely new to this eGPU type of issue and I'm trying my best to understand what to do.
I kept searching around, a lot, and ended up on the Arch wiki section "nvidia-xrun", and I saw that there was an "External GPU setup" section, with information that is weirdly not on the "External GPU" section of the Arch wiki, with some information I hadn't seen before. I figured I might as well try, so I created the "30-nvidia.conf" (and changed the BusID ofc), and rebooted. First thing I noticed was that during boot, verbose was running completely smooth (something that had been extremely choppy/laggy before doing this), the same as it was on my desktop PC.
When launching KDE Wayland, it's running completely smooth, the main issue is that several things aren't rendering properly (steam, discord), and some games are also acting very weird with certain elements not rendering properly.
SDDM is also working now.
I figured that whatever that 30-nvidia.conf file did (again, I'm not very knowledgeable in this area, just trying to find my way around in the dark), it didn't fully solve the issue, and it's kind of a band-aid solution. KDE x11 can also run now, but it is quite laggy.
I've tried to do other things (by reading through the Arch wiki), like creating the /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf file with the line "options nvidia-drm modeset=1" inside, I've tried creating the file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-nvidia-discrete.conf with whatever line the wiki mentioned (sorry, I can't find this part of the wiki again, I just looked through my terminal history and see it there).
So, I'm stuck at this point, I don't know where to go next, my searching and reading on the wiki is sending me in circles, and since my use-case is a bit different, with it being a laptop, but also not really (as in no internal laptop monitor, etc.), I'm not really sure what I can try next.
Any help is much appreciated as I hit a wall and don't know where to go next. I would prefer to have x11 working, as there are certain functions I use a lot that aren't supported on Wayland (yet).
I hope I remembered to mention everything, I tried my best by retracing my steps through my terminal history, but I've been sitting with this issue for 3 full days, so I might have lost my overview. Any apologies for any confusion that might result in, please ask for any logs, etc., if needed, I'll gladly provide them!
EDIT: Forgot to mention, I also tried putting the following in /etc/environment, as recommended in a thread I found here on the forums:
QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="wayland;xcb"
GBM_BACKEND=nvidia-drm
__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia
ENABLE_VKBASALT=1
LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia
WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1
But alas, it didn't really help anything either.
Last edited by donkeykong (2024-03-15 18:18:48)
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