modprobe bbswitch fails

[Johann Spies]

Trying to get my nvidia-card to work properly following tutorials like https://www.pcsuggest.com/install-and-configure-nvidia-optimus-with-bumblebee-in-debian/ and https://www.pcsuggest.com/nvidia-optimus-troubleshooting-in-debain-kali-linux-ubuntu/ I fail to get pass the step where I have to do

"sudo modprobe bbswitch load_state=0"

It ends in

bbswitch: No suitable _DSM call found

modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'bbswitch': no such device

This is on a HP Zbook 15 laptop which I recently bought with a NVIDIA GK107GLM [ Quadro K1100M] VGA compatable controller.

I have searched the internet for a solution but nothing so far worked for me.

Inter alia: This 2015 bug and this 2013 discussion

 and https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers/Optimus#Identification.

Most of the information I found, was old and referred to bugs in older kernels.

I have 4.18.0-2-amd64 #1 SMP on my system.

Any idea about the way forward?

Regards

Johann

--
Because experiencing your loyal love is better than life itself,
my lips will praise you.  (Psalm 63:3)

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

I suggest to check if your laptop has latest Firmware\BIOS update installed. That is first thing I would check if I got similar error message.
Update it to the latest one provided by HP support website.
Also check if there are some settings in BIOS, saying Optimus or Hybrid Graphics that could be tweaked.

Check out similar bug report on GitHub [1]. Some people reported they fixed it by installing 4.19 kernel, which probably contain more compatibility fixes for exotic hardware.

[1] https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch/issues/160

-- 
With kindest regards, Alexander.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ 

[Johann Spies]

On Tue, 27 Nov 2018 at 12:49, Alexander V. Makartsev <avb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I suggest to check if your laptop has latest Firmware\BIOS update installed. That is first thing I would check if I got similar error message.
> Update it to the latest one provided by HP support website.
> Also check if there are some settings in BIOS, saying Optimus or Hybrid Graphics that could be tweaked.

I already did upgrade the bios, thanks.

>
> Check out similar bug report on GitHub [1]. Some people reported they fixed it by installing 4.19 kernel, which probably contain more compatibility fixes for exotic hardware.
>
> [1] https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch/issues/160

I checked again on the description of bbswitch and bumblebee and
realized that those packages were written for situations where one can
choose between display cards and that my laptop only has one: NVIDIA
Quadro K1100M.

So I do not need them.

My display is working well and I can glxgears.

Thanks for you help.

Regards
Johann

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

I could be wrong, but specifications for this laptop suggest there should be two graphics adapters inside. One is integrated inside CPU and one is discrete. You can run 'glxgears' on any of them just fine, so double check if you run it on nvidia adapter.
You can do it with this command:
    $ glxinfo | egrep 'glx|OpenGL'

Don't mind me if I'm being too paranoid.

[Johann Spies]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2018 at 23:16, Alexander V. Makartsev <avb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I could be wrong, but specifications for this laptop suggest there should be two graphics adapters inside. One is integrated inside CPU and one is discrete. You can run 'glxgears' on any of them just fine, so double check if you run it on nvidia adapter.
> You can do it with this command:
> $ glxinfo | egrep 'glx|OpenGL'

The output confirms that the NVIDIA card is used. Both lshw and lspci
shows only the NVIDIA-card.

Thanks for reminding me to check again.

No wonder that I could not get bumblebee to run.