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How to prevent Bumblebee on a Dell E6530 disable Optimus on the next boot?

rated 0 times [ 3] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 1431 / 3 Years ago, sun, november 14, 2021, 10:27:15

I've got a Dell Latitude E6530 here which is Nvidia Optimus enabled. In Ubuntu 12.04 I installed:

nvidia-319

Bumblebee stable PPA version 3.2.1-1~preciseppa4 installed with the instruction from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee

Raring hardware enablement kernel+Xorg (by default on 12.04.3 new install)

Works perfectly fine for one boot after installation. Each boot following the first will result in a black screen. I've nailed it down to a resetting option in the BIOS of the Dell machine: after installing Bumblebee and booting for the first time with it, it will disable it in the BIOS. The option "Enable Optimus" is unticked, magically.

This means I have to re-enable Optimus in the BIOS before I boot Ubuntu every single time. Running an OS without Bumblebee does not reset the Optimus setting in the BIOS. How can I prevent Bumblebee from touching the settings in the BIOS?

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asketbridiculou

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answered 3 Years ago asketbridiculou · Accepted Answer

Using Ubuntu 13.04 and Nvidia 325.x driver from the Xorg-edgers PPA, I don't see any issue anymore.

Also make sure not to use any brightness fixing methods which seem to be needed with Nvidia proprietary driver < 325. So, remove any of the acpi_osi=Linux and acpi_backlight=vendor kernel parameters, otherwise bbswitch will complain about a missing ACPI handle for the discrete graphics card and won't be able to actually switch graphics.

With acpi_backlight=vendor (idle power consumption 22W+):

Sep  2 01:17:59 gert kernel: [   12.999284] bbswitch: Found integrated VGA device 0000:00:02.0: _SB_.PCI0.GFX0

Sep  2 01:17:59 gert kernel: [   12.999292] bbswitch: Found discrete VGA device 0000:01:00.0: _SB_.PCI0.PEG0.VID_

Sep  2 01:17:59 gert kernel: [   12.999782] bbswitch: failed to evaluate _SB_.PCI0.GFX0._DSM {0xA0,0xA0,0x95,0x9D,0x60,0x00,0x48,0x4D,0xB3,0x4D,0x7E,0x5F,0xEA,0x12,0x9F,0xD4} 0x102 0x0 {0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00}: AE_NOT_FOUND

Sep  2 01:17:59 gert kernel: [   12.999785] bbswitch: No suitable _DSM call found.

Sep  2 01:17:59 gert bumblebeed[1953]: Module bbswitch could not be loaded (timeout?)

Without acpi_backlight=vendor (idle power consumption 10-11W):

Sep  2 08:23:53 gert kernel: [    9.609896] bbswitch: Found integrated VGA device 0000:00:02.0: _SB_.PCI0.GFX0

Sep  2 08:23:53 gert kernel: [    9.609901] bbswitch: Found discrete VGA device 0000:01:00.0: _SB_.PCI0.PEG0.VID_

Sep  2 08:23:53 gert kernel: [    9.610153] bbswitch: detected an Optimus _DSM function

Sep  2 08:23:53 gert kernel: [    9.610168] bbswitch: Succesfully loaded. Discrete card 0000:01:00.0 is on

Sep  2 08:23:53 gert kernel: [    9.611411] bbswitch: disabling discrete graphics

The upgrade to 13.04 also fixed other minor issues and it seems the machine is running a lot better now in terms of power management.