bumblebee for Debian/Ubuntu
---------------------------

Post-installation instructions:
-------------------------------

You must add your user to the bumblebee group in order to use optirun or
primusrun, i.e.

 $ sudo adduser $USER bumblebee

where $USER corresponds to your username. Don't forget to log out and log back
in for this to take effect.

If you have sudo configured for your current user, i.e. your user is a member
of the sudo group, this step is not needed (the bumblebee package postinst
script takes care of adding sudo users to the bumblebee group automatically).
To clarify, sudo is not needed to use bumblebee; it simply makes adding your
user to the bumblebee group unnecessary.

This step is unnecessary for Ubuntu users since sudo comes pre-configured and
ready to be used by default (for user accounts created during install).

To test whether bumblebee has been configured correctly, try running the
glxgears demo (you must first install mesa-utils):

 $ optirun glxgears -info


Primus vs. VirtualGL:
---------------------

Bumblebee in Debian and Ubuntu defaults to using the primus backend, because
virtualgl has not yet been packaged for Debian/Ubuntu proper. For Ubuntu users,
it is however easy to switch to using virtualgl by using upstream's PPAs.
Follow the instructions at:
https://launchpad.net/~bumblebee/+archive/stable


Common issues:
--------------

- If optirun returns the following error:
[ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: Could not load GPU driver

You must edit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf using your preferred editor as
root, and change "KernelDriver=nvidia" to "KernelDriver=nvidia-current",
then restart the bumblebee daemon, i.e.

 $ sudo service bumblebeed restart 

(Refer to https://bugs.debian.org/717687 for a brief explanation.)

- If optirun returns the following error:
[ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG] (EE) No devices detected

You may have to set the BusID manually, in /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia.
To get the BusID, run lspci | egrep 'VGA|3D' in a terminal. Refer to the
comments in that file for further instructions.

- If optirun returns the following error:
[ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG] (EE) /dev/dri/card0:
failed to set DRM interface version 1.4: Permission denied

You have to append the following section to /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Default Screen"
    Device "DiscreteNvidia"
EndSection

Also refer to https://bugs.debian.org/756522 for a brief explanation.

- If optirun errors out and dmesg reports that the GPU has "fallen off the bus"
or "nvidia_frontend_open: minor 0, module->open() failed, error -5" on Linux
>= 3.10 and < 3.19, either stick with an older kernel version (<= 3.9) or
upgrade to > 3.19, or add rcutree.rcu_idle_gp_delay=1 to your grub command line
(in /etc/default/grub, then run update-grub and reboot) as a workaround.

This is a known problem upstream and suspected to be an issue with the
proprietary nvidia driver. Refer to Bumblebee github issue #455 and #615,
https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/issues/455 and
https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/issues/615.

A more up-to-date list of common issues can be found on the Debian/Ubuntu wiki
pages relating to bumblebee, i.e.:

https://wiki.debian.org/Bumblebee
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee

A more comprehensive list is available upstream:

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


 -- Vincent Cheng <vcheng@debian.org>  Sat, 25 Oct 2014 10:13:42 -0700