I can't get the nvidia drivers to work

[lynna751]

There isn't much to say, I've tried many linux distros and the same happened on all of them, I decided to post this on CentOS because it's the most attractive one. I have an MSI GE70 2PE with a GTX860M using the ''great'' optimus technology with the iGPU, I've read lots of guides and followed them but I just can't get this too work, other guides were too complicated since I'm a linux beginner. If someone could, please, do an easy-to-understand guide on how to get this working, I'd be really, really grateful as I can't work on linux untill this is solved

[toracat]

Try ELRepo's bumblebee. If you need assistance, the maintainer of that package is around and should be able to help you.

[lynna751]

I will try that and post what I get here, the problem is that after installing the nvidia drivers the x-server crashes whatever I do, so I guess I should install bumblebee and configure it before the nvidia drivers?

EDIT: Nevermind, I can just run the system without the x-server, completely forgot about it

[toracat]

I suggest you follow the instructions exactly as they are written. If you already have the Nvidia driver installed, try uninstalling it first and start from scratch.

[lynna751]

I am going to do a clean install of CentOS 7, and in the instructions it doesn't tell you when to install the drivers but it assumes you've already installed them (or that's what I think so)

[toracat]

After the fresh install of the OS, you need to set up the ELRepo repository [1]. Then the first step of the procedures [2] says,

1) Install bumblebee from ELRrepo.
kmod-bbswitch, kmod-nvidia, VirtualGL and libbsd are installed as dependencies.

[1] http://elrepo.org/
[2] http://elrepo.org/tiki/bumblebee

[lynna751]

I followed the instructions and then again, system crashes on startup :/ what info can I provide?

[Hellboy]

The bumblebee package installs all the needed packages, for Centos 7.1 that is:

bumblebee-selinux ==> is required for Centos 7.1, otherwise bumblebee can't use bbswitch to turn of the nvidia card, see /proc/acpi/bbswitch
VirtualGL
kmod-nvidia
kmod-bbswitch


Check if your /etc/modprobe.d/bbswitch.conf contains the following line:

Code: Select all

options bbswitch load_state=0 unload_state=1

That line will tell bbswitch to turn the nvidia card off when booting, but do not disable when rebooting

Check if /etc/modprobe.d/bumblebee.conf contains these lines, it comes default with the bumblebee package

Code: Select all

blacklist nvidia
blacklist nouveau

During the %post scriptlet of the bumblebee package it does the following actions:

mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/bumblebee-xorg.backup
comment out all lines in the following config files:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-nvidia.conf
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/glamor.conf
/etc/ld.so.conf.d/nvidia.conf

And it creates a local group bumblebee, make sure your useraccount is member of the is group.

Did you check the logs?

dmesg
journalctl -b
/var/log/messages
/var/log/Xorg*.logs

I need some more information, otherwise i can't help you debug the problem.

[lynna751]

Thanks for the response, I am going to do that next weekend, since I'm going to be very busy untill then, I will post my results here this weekend

EDIT: never mind

[lynna751]

Okay so I checked the bbswitch.conf file line and the bumblebee.conf file lines and they were correct, my user account is in the bumblebee group but I can't even get to the login screen, system crashes right before that, saying ''Oh no, an error has ocured''. And about the logs, they all are very long, I've no idea on what to look for also.

EDIT: Should I try upgrading linux kernel to 3.19? I've read there's some sort of bug with 3.10-3.16 related to this