Daily Archives: 10. November 2019

Bumblebee for Optimus systems on Opensuse 15.1

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Recently, I upgraded a laptop from Opensuse Leap 15.0 to Leap 15.1. I successfully followed the upgrade procedure described by the Linux Kamarada in

kamarada: how-to-upgrade-from-opensuse-leap-150-to-151/ .

The only problems I got had to do with the Optimus-design of my old laptop. When I followed my own description how to install and use Bumblebee as described in

Installation Opensuse Leap 15 auf Laptop – Grafik Probleme, Optimus

I always got an error message when trying to load the nvidia kernel module: 

mytux:~ # sudo modprobe nvidia

modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'nvidia': No such device

The reason was given by the command “dmesg”; the Nvidia device was no longer available on the PCI bus: 

NVRM: The NVIDIA GPU 0000:01:00.0
               NVRM: (PCI ID: 10de:134d) installed in this system has
               NVRM: fallen off the bus and is not responding to commands.
[    3.312435] nvidia: probe of 0000:01:00.0 failed with error -1

The bbswitch-module could, however, be loaded without any problems.

Workaround

A workaround is described in here :

After having started KDE or Gnome issue the following commands as root in a terminal:

mytux:~ # echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/remove
mytux:~ # echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:00:02.0/rescan

Afterwards my Nvidia card (640M) was available on the bus again – and e.g. “primusrun glxgears” worked.

So, something with starting the dkms.service and the bumblebeed.service, switching off the Nvidia card by the bbswitch module during system startup and later on loading of the nvidia-module was failing. I suspected the bbswitch-module to be the cause …

Solution

In my case I could solve the problem by installing the RPM packets

bumblebee, dkms, bbswitch, bbswitch-kmp-default

from the standard Update repository of Opensuse Leap 15.1

https://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/15.1/oss/

instead of installing them from the Bumblebee-repository

https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/Bumblebee/openSUSE_Leap_15.1

Otherwise I followed the instructions in
Installation Opensuse Leap 15 auf Laptop – Grafik Probleme, Optimus .

I.e.: I installed only the packets

nvidia-bumblebee, nvidia-bumblebee-32bit

from the Bumblebee repository.

Do not forget to issue a “mkinitrd” after you have successfully tested e.g. “optirun glxgears” and “tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<< OFF". Then reboot and use Optimus as you were used to. I do not know what is wrong with the packets in the Bumblebee repository - but I hope this bug is fixed soon. It is a bit annoying when one has to play around with packets of different repositories.

Addendum, 03.08.2020: A problem with VirtualGL

The present Bumblebee repository of Opensuse contains a new version of the VirtualGL library (version 2.6.4). Do NOT install this RPM-file. It will break your optirun/primusrun with an error:

Error: undefined symbol: glXGetProcAddressARB

Although this type of error is discussed in various forums on the Internet I have no clue how to mend it.

Workaround: Use the original VirtualGL RPM of the Opensuse Leap 15.1 Update repository! Works on my system.