Installing Bumblebee + Nvidia drivers + Nvidia CUDA Toolkit in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

bumblebee-install.md

Installing and setting up Bumblebee + Nvidia drivers + Nvidia Cuda Toolkit in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

1. Install bumblebee and nvidia-drivers using this command

   sudo apt install nvidia-driver-390 bumblebee-nvidia
   

2. Select Intel as your primary display driver

   sudo prime-select intel
   

3. Make these changes to the Library paths in /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf (because of the changes for GLVND in nvidia driver) and ensure that nvidia driver is selected

   # The Driver used by Bumblebee server. If this value is not set (or empty),
   # auto-detection is performed. The available drivers are nvidia and nouveau
   # (See also the driver-specific sections below)
   Driver=nvidia
   

   [driver-nvidia]
   LibraryPath=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
   XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules,/usr/lib/xorg/modules/input
   

4. Ensure that the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf has the following contents or else create it with this contents

   This is required to stop system from loading nvidia drivers automatically before calling optirun and for optirun to unload nvidia drivers after exiting

   blacklist nvidia
   blacklist nvidia-drm
   blacklist nvidia-modeset
   alias nvidia-drm off
   alias nvidia-modeset off
   

   also ensure that the line alias nvidia off is not present. If you haven't changed anything after the installation, this should be set directly by the prime-select command.

5. Ensure that the file /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-graphics=drivers.conf has the following contents or else create it with this contents.

   This is required to stop system from loading nouveau drivers automatically.

   blacklist nouveau
   blacklist lbm-nouveau
   alias nouveau off
   alias lbm-nouveau off
   

   If you haven't changed anything after the installation, this should be set directly during installation of nvidia-driver-390 package.

6. Ensure that the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT variable in grub config /etc/defualt/grub has these kernel parameters (and ensure that nvidia-drm.modeset=1 kernel parameter isn't there in it)

   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nouveau.runpm=0"
   

   If you haven't changed anything after the installation, this should be set directly by the prime-select command.

7. Disable nvidia-fallback.service using this command or else this service loads the nouveau driver when nvidia fails.

   systemctl disable nvidia-fallback.service
   

8. Add this line to /etc/environment for applications with 3D rendering to work

   __GLVND_DISALLOW_PATCHING=1
   

9. Update initramfs and grub using these command to update the blacklist driver details

   sudo update-initramfs -u -k all
   sudo update-grub
   

10. Now reboot and ensure that everything is working fine by running (you need to install mesa-utils to run glxheads)

    optirun glxheads
    optirun nvidia-smi
    

11. Install Nvidia CUDA Toolkit now with this command.

    sudo apt install nvidia-cuda-toolkit