Fedora21 (optimus nvidia) fails at first logon in KDE

[rapiddescent]

long time fedora and RH user and this is the first fresh install in over a decade that has gone horribly wrong.

I have a laptop with the Optimus NVidia technology (wish I hadn't bought it now) that has a high power graphics card for when you need it; but only uses a lower powered graphics card for the majority of the time. I had been successfully been using fedora20 and bumblee together.

I tried using the KDE workstation spin

problem:
1: after installation, the KDM user/pass screen comes up
2: log in as either root or first user with "KDE Workspace" set and the screen freezes before the 5 little icons appear at the bottom of the screen.
3: Try to alt-F2 to a console screen and logging in and it only works once in about 10 tries (just hangs)
4: I've not been able to log in successfully and look through the logs at all.
5: browsing through the console screens, it looked like nouveau errors which led me to think that because the new crappy live spin install process doesn't allow you to custom choose rpms that I can't actually get anywhere until bumblee is installed, which i can't do because I can't get logged in on console or through KDM.

anyone seen something similar?

(currently reinstalling fedora 20).

[rapiddescent]

so thought I'd have a try again:

• pressed 'e' during the boot sequence to edit the boot option
• added a "3" to the line starting with 'linux' so it would boot into cmdline mode
• it booted fine.
• yum updated and installed bumblebee via cmdline
• checked out the logs

definitely something gone wrong with nouveau. had a look at /var/log/messages and these nouveau errors occurred:

• PGRAPH grctx template channel unload timeout
• PGRAPH failed to construct context
• PGRAPH init failed, -16

this time I tried logging in KDE as root, it brought up the first icon and a minute later the remaining 4 icons on the splash screen but never actually getting into a KDE workspace.

[rapiddescent]

SOLUTION

So if you have a laptop that has the Optimus graphics setup where there is an INTEL graphics system with a secondary NVidia card (GT760M in my case) then you should do the following:

1. Run the KDE (etc) spin for fedora 21

2. select install to disk

3. boot into text mode (you won't get anywhere with a graphical login)

• when the system starts, press 'e' at the grub menu
• scroll down with the arrow keys until you find the line starting with 'linux'
• add a space and the number '3' tpo the line
• this instructs the system to load to cmdline mode

4. login as root and now you will need to do some installation in cmdline mode

• yum update
• follow the instructions on how to install bumblebee from yum, see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bumblebee

5. That's not all. Now you need to instruct bbswitch (part of bumblee project) not to switch on the nvidia card.

create a new file in /etc/modprobe.d/ called "bbswitch.conf"

options bbswitch load_state=0

6. now restart and hopefully you'll be able to log into KDE. Note: that the first login takes a few minutes on some systems.

[rapiddescent]

note that the kernel update to 3.17.8-300.fc21.x86_64
seems to have broken it all again...

[rapiddescent]

fixed it (again).

1. Followed the instructions at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bumblebee and used the bumblebee-nvidia proprietary drivers rather than nouveau
2. install bbswitch. bbswitch is the utility that can switch the high powered nvidia card on and off
3. created a bbswitch.conf as per instructions above. this instructs the system to leave the nvidia card switched off until it's required (with optirun command)
4. set selinux to permissive, edit /etc/selinux/config


how to tell which card is being used:

firstly, start with normal usage (low power, better for everyday usage)

$ glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Mobile

and then when optirun is being used (good for games, high powered graphics):

$ optirun glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GTX 760M/PCIe/SSE2

also, on my laptop, the normal temperature from glsensors is 45' and with the nvidia card 77' and it uses the batter a lot more quickly.