Nvidia X Driver Fails to Install

**Yellow Pasque** · February 23rd, 2013

The problem is that you keep trying to install the nvidia driver and bork the intel driver when you do that... (Don't do that).

**fowlslegs** · February 24th, 2013

Originally Posted by Temüjin

The problem is that you keep trying to install the nvidia driver and bork the intel driver when you do that... (Don't do that).

I

Code:

--purge removed

all nvidia and bumbleebee packages then reinstalled nouveau-firmware then reinstalled bumblebee using

Code:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends bumblebee bbswritch-dkms linux-headers-generic

. I then edited bumbleebee.conf and xorg.conf to reflect that I wanted to use the nouveau driver as instructed by these developers. Still my resolution is horrible and I am unable to change it under my system settings. Not sure how my battery is doing. Optirun firefox does something, but not anything good--just a mostly black screen and an extremely distorted part of a firefox window up top. I had to ctrl alt f1 and then ctrl alt f7 and everything was back to normal.

**Yellow Pasque** · February 24th, 2013

Still my resolution is horrible

Then you didn't completely uninstall the nvidia driver and the intel driver is borked.
Maybe you should try a fresh install and follow the Bumblebee instructions...

**fowlslegs** · February 24th, 2013

Deleted xorg.conf and was able to adjust resolution. Tried

Code:

optirun firefox

and I had a similar error. Ctrl-alt-1 then ctrl-alt-7 and I was back to a normal looking screen. I saw that the terminal hadn't closed so I wondered if firefox was now being run with my dedicated gpu. I tried

Code:

sudo tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<OFF

and firefox stayed open. Does this mean firefox wasn't running through my gpu or that it stopped at that instant or that an exception was made and it continued to run with my dedicated gpu? When I closed the terminal tab running firefox I had to do a quick Ctrl-alt-1 then ctrl-alt-7 and things were again normalized.

Also is there no way to get NVidia working? My gpu is listed as compatible. I don't get it. Also is nouveau considered outdated and will take full advantage of my card/ it's 3D capabilities? If I want to use CUDA can I do that without an NVidia driver?

Thanks for all your help Temüjin.

**Jedcurtis** · February 24th, 2013

Hello Fowlslegs,
(YES, Nouveau is VERY OUTDATED!!!)

After fighting with nvidia's ominous Optimus graphics for laptops (now installed in 90% of newly sold laptops) for over a year, I wrote my own How To here. This was written with my distribution in mind (VSIDO) but as it is a Debian based distro just like Ubuntu is, it should work for you. A couple of points for you to be aware of with Bumblebee.
1. It is mainly designed with the idea of 'Powersavings' related to battery life.
2. The Hybrid/Optimus Graphics "share" a GPU. Bumblebee doesn't turn one off, then activate the other... (confusing I know!)
The x-swat repositories don't work for me and is the reason for me writing the How To which points to the (I think) official Debian supported repositories at http://suwako.nomanga.net.
Like I said, try to follow the How To at the above link. I'd appreciate any feedback you may have. This just resulted in me getting my second newly purchased laptop (Feb. 21st 2013) up and fully functional. It is an MSI GT60 with Nvidia's GTX 675M with 2Gb of GDDR5 ram. The first laptop was a Dell XPS 15z with the GeForce 540M. Both were able to be put in working order using the How To.
If you don't want to use the Suwako repo's, then feel free to continue with the Ubuntu xswat repo's but following the How To at the above link.
I have made this work with 2 separate Linux distributions now. Ubuntu, and VSIDO my current Linux distro.
Again, the How To is here; http://vsido.org/index.php/topic,32.msg109.html#msg109

You should "once again" uninstall all Bumblebee related software before trying this. Hopefully this will end your Optimus nightmare!

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! I just wish someone had done this before me, so I wouldn't have had to go through this nightmare myself.

**fowlslegs** · February 24th, 2013

Originally Posted by Jedcurtis

Hello Fowlslegs,
(YES, Nouveau is VERY OUTDATED!!!)

After fighting with nvidia's ominous Optimus graphics for laptops (now installed in 90% of newly sold laptops) for over a year, I wrote my own How To here. This was written with my distribution in mind (VSIDO) but as it is a Debian based distro just like Ubuntu is, it should work for you. A couple of points for you to be aware of with Bumblebee.
1. It is mainly designed with the idea of 'Powersavings' related to battery life.
2. The Hybrid/Optimus Graphics "share" a GPU. Bumblebee doesn't turn one off, then activate the other... (confusing I know!)
The x-swat repositories don't work for me and is the reason for me writing the How To which points to the (I think) official Debian supported repositories at http://suwako.nomanga.net.
Like I said, try to follow the How To at the above link. I'd appreciate any feedback you may have. This just resulted in me getting my second newly purchased laptop (Feb. 21st 2013) up and fully functional. It is an MSI GT60 with Nvidia's GTX 675M with 2Gb of GDDR5 ram. The first laptop was a Dell XPS 15z with the GeForce 540M. Both were able to be put in working order using the How To.
If you don't want to use the Suwako repo's, then feel free to continue with the Ubuntu xswat repo's but following the How To at the above link.
I have made this work with 2 separate Linux distributions now. Ubuntu, and VSIDO my current Linux distro.
Again, the How To is here; http://vsido.org/index.php/topic,32.msg109.html#msg109

You should "once again" uninstall all Bumblebee related software before trying this. Hopefully this will end your Optimus nightmare!

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! I just wish someone had done this before me, so I wouldn't have had to go through this nightmare myself.

Thanks for the tutorial Jedcurtis, however, I ran into a couple difficulties which resulted in this error:

Code:

noah@noah-Aspire-M5-481TG:~$ optirun glxspheres
[  295.899476] [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the

[  295.899520] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled.

.

To tell you how I got here. First I used

Code:

apt-get --purge remove bumblebee bbswitch-dkms

and

Code:

-apt-get --purge autoremove

. I removed the xswat and bumblebee repositories and bumblebee authentication from synaptic. I tried to add a new authentication as suggest, but

HTML Code:

http://suwako.nomanga.net/

is down, so I just ran

Code:

add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable

again. I also tried to add these repositories to my /etc/apt/sources.list, but

Code:

apt-get update

told me they failed to load. I decided to add the xorg-edgers ppa instead. At this time I have the nouveau-firmware and not the nvidia-current package installed. I ran

Code:

apt-get install bbswitch-dkms bumblebee-nvidia

and it installed nvidia-current and nvidia-settings, among other packages, as dependencies. I was already added to the group then did the username add. Rebooted and what you see above is what happened.

Code:

glxspheres

worked fine at 60.721748 frames/sec - 53.986492 Mpixels/sec
but

Code:

optirun glxspheres

gave me the error above.

**fowlslegs** · February 24th, 2013

Aaaaaand theeeeeen.... I followed the instructions at

Code:

https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/Configuration

to set up my bumblebee.conf. Then I also went over to my xorg.conf.nvidia files (in both /etc/X11 and /etc/bumblebee) and filled out them both out like so

Code:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 304.64  (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-12)  Tue Oct 30 12:04:46 PDT 2012


Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "GeForce GT 640M LE"
    Driver         "nvidia-current"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

taking my cues from

HTML Code:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/solaris/1.0-9629/README/chapter-02.html

.

I rebooted and now have a different error when I

Code:

optirun glxspheres

:

Code:

gnoah@noah-Aspire-M5-481TG:~$ optirun glxspheres
[   66.369908] [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia-current" (module does not exist, 0)

[   66.369947] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled.

**fowlslegs** · February 24th, 2013

Code:

# Configuration file for Bumblebee. Values should **not** be put between quotes

## Server options. Any change made in this section will need a server restart
# to take effect.
[bumblebeed]
# The secondary Xorg server DISPLAY number
VirtualDisplay=:8
# Should the unused Xorg server be kept running? Set this to true if waiting
# for X to be ready is too long and don't need power management at all.
KeepUnusedXServer=false
# The name of the Bumbleblee server group name (GID name)
ServerGroup=bumblebee
# Card power state at exit. Set to false if the card shoud be ON when Bumblebee
# server exits.
TurnCardOffAtExit=false
# The default behavior of '-f' option on optirun. If set to "true", '-f' will
# be ignored.
NoEcoModeOverride=false
# The Driver used by Bumblebee server. If this value is not set (or empty),
# auto-detection is performed. The available drivers are nvidia and nouveau
# (See also the driver-specific sections below)
Driver=

## Client options. Will take effect on the next optirun executed.
[optirun]
# The method used for VirtualGL to transport frames between X servers.
# Possible values are proxy, jpeg, rgb, xv and yuv.
VGLTransport=proxy
# Should the program run under optirun even if Bumblebee server or nvidia card
# is not available?
AllowFallbackToIGC=false


# Driver-specific settings are grouped under [driver-NAME]. The sections are
# parsed if the Driver setting in [bumblebeed] is set to NAME (or if auto-
# detection resolves to NAME).
# PMMethod: method to use for saving power by disabling the nvidia card, valid
# values are: auto - automatically detect which PM method to use
#         bbswitch - new in BB 3, recommended if available
#       switcheroo - vga_switcheroo method, use at your own risk
#             none - disable PM completely
# https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/Comparison-of-PM-methods

## Section with nvidia driver specific options, only parsed if Driver=nvidia
[driver-nvidia]
# Module name to load, defaults to Driver if empty or unset
KernelDriver=nvidia-current
Module=nvidia
PMMethod=bbswitch
# colon-separated path to the nvidia libraries
LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-current:/usr/lib32/nvidia-current
# comma-separated path of the directory containing nvidia_drv.so and the
# default Xorg modules path
XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-current/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules
XorgConfFile=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia

I have now tried the module and kerneldriver as both nvidia and nvidia current, but I am still getting the failed to load module error. It's now saying failed to load nvidia-current, even though I have it set to just nvidia. This shouldn't matter as "On Ubuntu and Mandriva, the value for KernelDriver is nvidia-current by default, not nvidia. However, on Ubuntu you can also find nvidia-current-updates and nvidia, so we added a patch that should auto-detect the correct one in case it's not set" (

HTML Code:

https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/Configuration

).

**fowlslegs** · February 24th, 2013

I'm continuing to work on this and giving updates, hoping some of this info may help someone help me as I can't interpret it one tenth as efficiently as most of you. Thanks for the comments this far everyone and for being part of an awesome community--some people pay for this kind of service! I'm sure we will figure this out soon!

Anyway

Code:

noah@noah-Aspire-M5-481TG:/etc/default$ modprobe nvidia-current
FATAL: Module nvidia_current not found.

Code:

gedit /var/log/kern.log

=

Code:

Feb 24 13:30:24 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [  477.433886] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
Feb 24 13:30:24 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [  477.439691] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:01:00.0,olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=none
Feb 24 13:30:24 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [  477.439783] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  310.32  Mon Jan 14 14:41:13 PST 2013
Feb 24 13:30:25 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [  478.111154] NVRM: API mismatch: the client has the version 304.43, but
Feb 24 13:30:25 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [  478.111154] NVRM: this kernel module has the version 310.32.  Please
Feb 24 13:30:25 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [  478.111154] NVRM: make sure that this kernel module and all NVIDIA driver
Feb 24 13:30:25 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [  478.111154] NVRM: components have the same version.
Feb 24 13:39:33 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [ 1025.719296] NVRM: API mismatch: the client has the version 304.43, but
Feb 24 13:39:33 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [ 1025.719296] NVRM: this kernel module has the version 310.32.  Please
Feb 24 13:39:33 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [ 1025.719296] NVRM: make sure that this kernel module and all NVIDIA driver
Feb 24 13:39:33 noah-Aspire-M5-481TG kernel: [ 1025.719296] NVRM: components have the same version.

**Yellow Pasque** · February 24th, 2013

My vote is still for a clean install. It looks like you never fully removed a previous install of the nvidia driver (the one you installed directly without using a .deb).

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