Tag Archives: bbswitch

Opensuse Leap 15.4 – Problems with Optimus and prime-select after updates of SW packages

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Presently, I work a lot on an old laptop which has a so called Optimus combination of a dedicated Nvidia GPU and an Intel GPU coming with the main CPU-processor. “prime-select” is a tool which Opensuse includes with Leap 15.4 to provide an efficient way of controlling which GPU shall be used. As good as prime-select has worked for me on Leap 15.3 and also some time with Leap 15.4 recent updates of a variety of SW packages lead into trouble.

I had the Nvidia card active before the SW updates. After a cold restart of the system it did no longer start the SDDM display manager on the default systemd target. This happened even when the updates did not directly affect the kernel or the Nvidia kernel modules.

The problem always had to do with bbswitch turning off the Nvidia device when the system switched to the default graphical target. And with a turned off Nvidia graphics device the Nvidia drivers can not be loaded.

So some SW updates lead to a change of the configuration prime-select had set up before the updates. The stupid thing is that it is not quite so simple to get things back to work. To try to us “init 3” to go to a console interface on a non-graphical target and then use “prime-select nvidia” plus a subsequent “init 5” on the command line does not work. You do not change the wrong bbswitch actions that way. You can also turn bbswitch off by “tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<< OFF". And then load the Nvidia driver successfully. But trying to afterward switch to the standard graphical target invokes bbswitch again in the wrong way. It is a bit of a mess. The following steps seem to work to get back to normal operation again:

  • Step 1: Use “init 3” on a console terminal.
  • Step 2: Use the command “prime-select intel”.
  • Step 3: Restart your system. It should boot now into the graphical target based on the i915 intel GPU driver.
  • Step 4: Ignore any information from a prime-select icon. It shows you a plainly wrong info that you are using Nvidia.
  • Step 5: Log in as root on a root terminal window. Switch bbswitch off (e.g. by the command given above). Load the Nvidia module by “modprobe nvidia”. Check via lsmod that it is successfully loaded.
  • Step 6: Type in “prime-select nvidia”.
  • Step 7: Log out from your graphical interface.
  • Step 8: Check that SDDM or whatever display manager is started with bbswitch not shutting down the Nvidia card. Log inn with the Nvidia card active.
  • Step 9: Check that the Nvidia driver is still loaded on a root terminal window. Then issue “mkinitrd” and restart your Leap 15.4 system.

Afterward using the “prime-select intel” or “prime-select nvidia” commands at the command line of a root terminal window, a logout from the graphical desktop and a login again via the restarted graphical display manager switches correctly between the cards.

However, the prime-select applet gives you wrong information when the intel card is active. And it does not give you the chance to switch back to the Nvidia card again. Its stupid, but no major problem as long as the basic prime-select command does its job on the command line.

Hope this helps people having to work with Opensuse on an Optimus system.

 

Switching between Intel and Nvidia graphics cards on an Optimus laptop with Leap 15.3

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At my present location an old laptop with an Optimus system still provides me with good services. Recently, I installed Opensuse Leap 15.3 on it. Since then I have tried almost all I can think of to get Bumblebee running smoothly on it. In the end I gave up – sometimes “primusrun” worked, sometimes not – especially with more complex applications like Blender. And even if “primusrun” worked – “optirun” most often did not.

So, I had a look at “prime-select” installed by the packet “suse-prime” of Opensuse. Again I had mixed experiences: This worked sometimes from the command line and sometimes not. There were multiple things which were somehow interwoven:

  • bbswitch intervened or was used by prime-select when switching to Intel – and when it did and turned the nvidia card off, you could activate it again, but afterward the Nvidia device it was not recognized by the native Nvida driver or by prime-select. Most often I had to reboot.<
  • When I was lucky and after reboots got a configuration where the Nvidia driver was loaded in parallel to the i915 for Intel and used “prime-select” together with an init 3 / init 5 sequence the display manager sddm did not come up. Others had this problem, too.
  • To switch between the graphics cards it was absolutely necessary to login into my graphical KDE desktop, use a root terminal and switch to the Nvidia card with prime-select from there. Then I had to log out and if I was lucky the display manager came up and the Nvidia card was really active.

But do not ask me, what I had to do in which order to get the aspired result. All in all the behavior of “prime-select” was a bit unpredictable. Then after updating a lot of packets yesterday I could no longer get prime-select to do the right things any more. Most often I got the message:

ERROR: Unable to query GPU information

Or : No such device found.

Solution Part 1: Deinstallation of unrequired RPMs and reinstallation of required RPMs

In the end I deinstalled Bumblebee (as recommended by posts in Suse forums) and also bbswitch. Afterward I reinstalled the packets “suse-prime” and “plasma5-applet-suse-prime” from the Leap 15.3 Update-repository (i.e. the Update repo for the Enterprise system) and the Nvidia-drivers from Opensuse’s Nvidia repository. I rebooted and my “sddm” display-manager came up – with the Intel driver active – but the Nvidia driver was loaded already nevertheless. Checked with lsmod.

Later, I found that all files in “/etc/prime” had been rewritten. I suspect that I had something in there which was no longer compatible with the latest drivers and prime-versions. In addition the file “90-nvidia.conf” has been replaced in “/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d“.

Solution Part 2: Use the “Suse Prime Selector” applet!

Then I used the applet in the KDE Plasma desktop to switch to Nvidia. This seemed to work and led to no errors. I just had to log out of my KDE Plasma session and in again to work with KDE on a running Nvidia card. (Ignore the message that you have to reboot).
Afterward I also tested switching by using the command “prime-select” as root in a terminal window of the KDE desktop. Worked perfectly, too.

Conclusion

I am not sure what the ultimate reason was to get prime-select running. The deinstallation of Bumblebee and bbswitch? The new Prime and Nvidia configuration files? Or a new udev during other updates?

Anyway – using the Suse Prime Selector applet or just using the command “prime-select” as root in a terminal window inside KDE Plasma has become a very stable way on my Leap 15.3 laptop with KDE to switch between graphics cards reliably. I still have to log in and log out again of the KDE session – but so far I have never experienced any problems with the display-manager again.

Just for information: I am using the following Nvidia drivers packages:

The prime-select packet version is:

Links

https://www.reddit.com/ r/ openSUSE/ comments/ ib9buv/ opensuse_kde_suse_ prime_selector_ applet_for/
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/ t/ kubuntu-18-04-gives-black-screen-when-sddm-starts-no-login/ 61034/11
https://wiki.archlinux.org/ title/ PRIME# Configure_applications_%20 to_render_using_GPU
https://www.opensuse-forum.de/ thread/ 63871-suse-prime-error-unable-to-query-gpu-information/
https://opensuse.github.io/ openSUSE-docs-revamped-temp/hybrid_graphics/

Ceterum censeo: The worst living fascist and war criminal, who must be isolated, denazified and imprisoned, is the Putler.

 

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.