Ubuntu 17.04 Gnome 3.24 Wayland Session - Can't get Hybrid Graphics to work

Question

I've been struggling with gnome 3.24 over many distros for the past week.

I have a dell XPS 9560 that uses NVIDIA Optimus technology, which is basically having a dual GPU (CPU integrated + discrete). In my case it is a Kaby Lake graphics from my i7 and an NVIDIA GTX 1050.

I tried to install Ubuntu 17.04 Gnome as it is the most recent distro and I imagined it would be better out of the box than my many failed attempts (arch, tumbleweed, fedora 26).

The thing is I can start a Wayland session (after fresh install) but I can't use the secondary GPU (nvidia) for opening apps, games etc. it doesn't show up anywhere in the settings either.

I then ran a Xorg session to get the additional drivers and installed the nvidia one, rebooted and my default GPU was now NVIDIA, in the Xorg session, however I can't start my Wayland session.

So I opened Nvidia-settings and in Prime Profiles switched my GPU to the Intel one, rebooted and now I could start the Wayland session but now the Xorg one, I'd just get a gray screen. And even in Wayland with the nvidia driver and my prime profile set on my Intel Graphics I can't open using the secondary GPU. So as of now I reverted to default xorg nouveau driver and am using my Wayland session with my Intel Graphics.

I haven't tried installing the latest beta drivers on this distro yet, but when I attempted it on my precedent tries I couldn't even get the prime profiles to show up in the nvidia-settings.

I have no clue if my problem comes from out of date drivers, hardware support, a glitch in the matrix whatsoever so any help of any kind would be appreciated.

EDIT: The nvidia version I tried to install was the current 375, I also tried the 381 beta in other distros but not in Ubuntu 17.04 yet. Also :

$ lspci | grep -E "VGA|3D"
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 591b (rev 04)
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile] (rev a1)

Answer 1

Try this:

1.- Make a folder to store the SSDT files. Then extract it from the ACPI tables (run this part as root):

# mkdir dsdt
# cd dsdt
# SSDT_FILES=`ls /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/ | grep SSDT`
# for file in $SSDT_FILES ; do cat "/sys/firmware/acpi/tables/$file" > "$file.dat"; done
# cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > DSDT.dat

2.- Make sure you have IASL installed. On ubuntu, sudo apt install iasl should suffice. I downloaded the source and compiled it myself to get the latest version, but I don't think thats necessary.

3.- There's a duplicate definition in one SSDT file which won't let us dissassemble it. Find out which one it is and delete it:

# grep PRT0 *.dat
Binary file DSDT.dat matches
Binary file SSDT1.dat matches
# mv SSDT1.dat SSDT1.bak

So in my case it is SSDT1. Replace it with whatever you get. Do not touch DSDT.dat

4.- Next, we find the SSDT file with the code we need to change. We look for the file with both "NVID" and "OSYS" are present: (There's probably a better way to do this in grep)

# grep NVID *.dat
Binary file SSDT10.dat matches
Binary file SSDT3.dat matches
# grep OSYS SSDT10.dat
# grep OSYS SSDT3.dat
Binary file SSDT3.dat matches

So in my case it was SSDT3, if its different you replace all further instances of SSDT3 with whatever you get.

5.- Disassemble!

# iasl -e *.dat -d SSDT3.dat

6.- Hopefully you don't see any errors at this point. Replace all instances of OSYS except the declaration with the constant for Windows 7, and bump the definition block number by one:

# sed -i '/^ *External/! s/OSYS/0x07D9/g' SSDT3.dsl
# sed -i '/^ *DefinitionBlock/ s/0x00001000/0x00001001/g' SSDT3.dsl

If you have a different BIOS, the Definition Block number might not be 1000. Just open SSDT3.dsl in a text editor and look for DefinitionBlock. Whatever number you see on that line, increment it by one.

7.- Compile everything and hope there are no errors.

# iasl -ve -tc -p SSDT3 SSDT3.dsl

8.- Make an image:

# mkdir -p kernel/firmware/acpi
# cp SSDT3.aml kernel/firmware/acpi/ssdt3.aml
# find kernel | cpio -H newc --create > acpi_gpufix

8.- All the following instructions corresponding to Ubuntu and GRUB2. Copy it to the boot folder. the initrd.img it's your default img from boot folder:

# cp acpi_gpufix /boot/

you can permanently add it to your GRUB by editing /etc/grub.d/10_linux. I had to change the line initrd ${rel_dirname}/${initrd} to initrd ${rel_dirname}/acpi_gpufix ${rel_dirname}/${initrd}. Then run update-grub2.

9.- To check if it works:

$ dmesg | grep ACPI | grep override
[    0.000000] ACPI: Table Upgrade: override [SSDT-PegSsd- PegSsdt]
[    0.000000] ACPI: SSDT 0x000000007A715080 Physical table override, new table: 0x0000000079493000

Now you can change the GPU wihtout freezes

source:

https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/issues/764#issuecomment-306543064 https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1012369/linux/laptop-freezes-changing-video-cards https://askubuntu.com/a/923216/680254