nvidia-xrun

Init independent fork of awesome https://github.com/Witko/nvidia-xrun. Uses bbswitch to turn GPU on and off.

These utility scripts aim to make the life easier for nvidia cards users. It started with a revelation that bumblebee in current state offers very poor performance. This solution offers a bit more complicated procedure but offers a full GPU utilization(in terms of linux drivers)

Usage:

switch to free tty
login
run nvidia-xrun [app]
enjoy

Currently sudo is required as the script needs to wake up GPU, modprobe the nvidia driver and perform cleanup afterwards. For this we use bbswitch.

Structure

• nvidia-xrun - uses following dir structure:
• /usr/bin/nvidia-xrun - the executable script
• /etc/X11/nvidia-xorg.conf - the main X confing file
• /etc/X11/xinit/nvidia-xinitrc - xinitrc config file. Contains the setting of provider output source
• /etc/X11/xinit/nvidia-xinitrc.d - custom xinitrc scripts directory
• /etc/X11/nvidia-xorg.conf.d - custom X config directory
• /etc/default/nvidia-xrun - nvidia-xrun config files (contains values for variables used in /usr/bin/nvidia-xrun)
• /etc/modules-load.d/bbswitch.conf - loads bbswitch module on boot
• /etc/modprobe.d/bbswitch.conf - disables the nvidia module on boot
• /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-xrun-blacklist.conf - prevents any nvidia* and nouveau modules to load on boot
• [OPTIONAL] ~/.config/X11/nvidia-xinitrc user-level custom xinit script file. You can put here your favourite window manager for example

Dependencies

• mesa
• bbswitch
• xinit
• xorg-server
• nvidia (proprietary drivers)
• xrandr

Installation

Manual

1. Make sure you have above dependencies installed on your system
2. Clone this repository
3. Place files from:

• bin to /usr/bin on your system
• X11 to /etc/X11 on your system
• default to /etc/default on your system
• modules-load.d to /etc/modules-load.d on your system
• modprobe.d to /etc/modprobe.d on your system

4. Set the right bus id (see Setting the right bus id section below)
5. Reboot

Setting the right bus id

Usually the 1:0:0 bus is correct. If this is not your case(you can find out through lspci or bbswitch output mesages) you can create a conf script for example nano /etc/X11/nvidia-xorg.conf.d/30-nvidia.conf to set the proper bus id:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Driver "nvidia"
    BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

You can use this command to get the bus id:

lspci | grep -i nvidia | awk '{print $1}'

Automatically run window manager

For convenience you can create nano ~/.config/X11/nvidia-xinitrc and put there your favourite window manager:

if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
    $*
else
    openbox-session
fi

With this you do not need to specify the app and you can simply run:

nvidia-xrun

Troubleshooting

Steam issues

Yes unfortunately running Steam directly with nvidia-xrun does not work well - I recommend to use some window manager like openbox.

HiDPI issue

When using openbox on a HiDPI (i.e. 4k) display, everything could be so small that is difficult to read. To fix, you can change the DPI settings in ~/.Xresources (~/.Xdefaults) file by adding/changing Xft.dpi setting. For example :

Xft.dpi: 192

Vulkan does not work

Check https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Vulkan

• remove package vulkan-intel
• set VK_ICD_FILENAMES=/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/nvidia_icd.json