bumblebee-nvidia stuff

[Andreas Beckmann]

On 2015-10-19 22:48, Luca Boccassi wrote:
> On Mon, 2015-10-19 at 16:32 +0200, Andreas Beckmann wrote:

>> Also I don't understand why there is a list of kernel module packages
>> here, don't you need both
>>  * the nvidia.ko kernel module (or however it is named currently) and
>>  * the nvidia lib*GL* libraries (but not in the default searchpath)
>> to run bumblebee stuff with the proprietary nvidia driver backend?
> 
> Maybe for Cuda? You don't need the full driver and the GL libraries for
> that, right?

That should work ... that's what we have the cudaonly variant of the glx
nvidia alternative. Maybe we don't cover the case of having
nvidia-driver installed but wanting to use nvidia only for cuda and xorg
with vesa only ... but we could make this possible, too

> In that case, one could have just bumblebee and the kernel
> module. But I've never tried such a setup.

Did I get this right: in this scenario one uses the nvidia gpu for cuda
and bumblebee only to turn the nvidia gpu off if one doesn't run cuda.
And there is either no X (on a notebook?) or nothing uses acceleration
(otherwise that would need the nvidia GL libs via 'primusrun
glx-hungry-stuff'?)

>> Should /etc/modprobe.d/bumblebee.conf be integrated with the glx
>> alternative (via the nvidia/bumblebee variant)? So switching
>> bumblebee(-nvidia) on and off could also happen via the glx alternative
>> (+ some trigger activation+processing).
>>
>> Maybe the modprobe configuration should be split into
>>   bumblebee-blacklists-nouveau.conf
>>   bumblebee-blacklists-nvidia.conf
>> and be moved to /etc/bumblebee with symlinks being placed in modprobe.d
>> via some alternative :-) (see glx-alternative-nvidia/fglrx if the actual
>> file (and not a dangling symlink) is required to be present in the
>> initrd). That would also solve the leaves-a-conffile in modprobe.d after
>> purge issues. I doubt LP: #1242785 is fixed with the current postinst ...
> 
> That could be done. But what would be the advantage? To use nouveau one
> has to nuke the nvidia-driver anyway, right?

It should work by just switching the glx alternative (+trigproc)
But with udev autoloading nvidia ... it may require some blacklisting as
well.

> Also the package is the same on Ubuntu. I'm not familiar with the
> glx-alternative situation there.

no glx-alternatives :-)


Andreas