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First: I have been struggling with my stupid optimus laptop on ubuntu 15.10 for a week. So, don't "possible duplicate" me just by simply googling some keywords and without reading the whole thing plus the hyperlinks.

My laptop has a nvidia geforce 740M (optimus) and I have ubuntu 15.10 installed. I installed bumblebee with nvidia-355 driver using the instructions in this link. Now it's possible for me to switch between the graphic cards flawlessly, just with using the optirun:

$ optirun glxgears
6763 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1352.335 FPS
7156 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1431.125 FPS
7152 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1430.255 FPS

and it can be checked if the nvidia graphic card is being used:

cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch
0000:07:00.0 ON

which after closing the glxgears will be changed to :

cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch
0000:07:00.0 OFF

HOWEVER, I really need using the CUDA in ubuntu which seems impossible. I should "theoretically" be able to use optirun to run cuda examples after "make". but the result is (and no difference with using the sudo):

~/NVIDIA_CUDA-7.5_Samples/1_Utilities/deviceQuery$  optirun ./deviceQuery
./deviceQuery Starting...

 CUDA Device Query (Runtime API) version (CUDART static linking)

cudaGetDeviceCount returned 30
-> unknown error
Result = FAIL

So I searched again and got to post #4 in this page which is for Ubuntu 12.04. In which it's suggested to use:

$ sudo update-alternatives --config x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf
There are 3 choices for the alternative x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf (providing /etc/ld.so.conf.d/x86_64-linux-gnu_GL.conf).

  Selection    Path                                       Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/lib/nvidia-355/ld.so.conf              8604      auto mode
  1            /usr/lib/nvidia-355-prime/ld.so.conf        8603      manual mode
  2            /usr/lib/nvidia-355/ld.so.conf              8604      manual mode
* 3            /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mesa/ld.so.conf   500       manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 

And vadammt has suggested to select the nvidia-355-prime (option number 1). I selected and I will be able to use

optirun ./deviceQuery

with no problem. HOWEVER, after running the deviceQuery, the bbswitch will not turn off the nvidia OFF automatically anymore:

$ cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch
0000:07:00.0 ON

I checked the bumblebee documentation and seems like that "nvidia-355-prime", is actually the nvidia-prime and that command is used to switch from bumblebee to nvidia-prime. So the main questions now are:

1) Is this true that selecting the "nvidia-355-prime" switches to nvidia-prime ?

2) If yes, is there anyway to actually have CUDA and Bumblebee together (without relying on nvidia-prime)? by just using the "optirun" directly, and not getting the unknown error "cudaGetDeviceCount returned 30" that I mentioned?

3) If no, is it possible to create a script to automatize the process of switching between bumblebee and nvidia prime and assign a command to it?

4) Any other comment/suggestion/recommendation/advice/proposal?

5) Thank you?

EDIT: changing to nvidia-355-prime won't also work anymore :(

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  • Have the same issue, have you solved it? Jun 11, 2016 at 1:01
  • 1
    I made things work with the help of this page. Though, I had a particular cuda code generator which still couldn't work under bumblebee so I ended up using nvidia prime. Hope that page helps you. Jun 11, 2016 at 20:44

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