So, I’ve been troubleshooting a game on Steam not working, and in that process I discovered that my Intel GPU was running, not my dedicated NVIDIA one. For example, when I run nvidia-smi I get the following: “NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn’t communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.” Based on the atrocious frames I’m getting in-game, and further verification from troubleshooters on Steam/Proton’s Github issue for the game, it seems abundantly clear that my issue has to do with some hybrid graphics deal not letting my NVIDIA gpu do its thing. Please help! I’m not very familiar with what standard information to provide, so I’ll offer what I think it important and am perfectly willing to run commands and provide more info as you think best. Here’s a little info about my system:
OS: EndeavourOS Linux x86_64
Host: GF63 Thin 11UC REV:1.0
Kernel: 6.12.1-arch1-1
DE: Plasma 6.2.4
CPU: 11th Gen Intel i5-11400H (12) @ 4.500GHz
GPU: Intel TigerLake-H GT1 [UHD Graphics]
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile
Edit: also, if there’s a preexisting post about this that literally talks about the solution to my problem, please let me know, I sometimes have trouble finding such things.
First of all, when posting the terminal outputs, please format them with ``` at the start and the end, that will preformat the text and result in a better readability.
And according to your issue.
You don’t have any nvidia driver installed on your system currently. please check the wiki for directions in how to install the required drivers.
As far as the driver not being installed, this is strange. Long story short, I had the most recent ones installed on my system and had to downgrade them because the current ones at the time were breaking my games, and downgrading worked for a least a month or two before suddenly issues surfaced. Let me look into it and provide more info if I can’t just install the drivers without issue. Thx!
It clearly states that the driver for the RTX3050m is not available. Only nouveau is listed as an alternate driver.
The main issue is that the EGL, OpenGL as well as the Vulkan APIs are only listing drivers for your iGPU. Which would explain the poor graphics performance.
The GBM EGL external platform library
local/egl-wayland 4:1.1.16-1
EGLStream-based Wayland external platform
local/envycontrol 3.5.1-1
CLI tool for Nvidia Optimus graphics mode switching on Linux
local/lib32-nvidia-utils 550.90.07-1
NVIDIA drivers utilities (32-bit)
local/lib32-opencl-nvidia 550.90.07-1
OpenCL implemention for NVIDIA (32-bit)
local/libvdpau 1.5-3
Nvidia VDPAU library
local/libxnvctrl 550.90.07-1
NVIDIA NV-CONTROL X extension
local/nvidia-dkms 550.90.07-4
NVIDIA drivers - module sources
local/nvidia-hook 1.5.1-1
pacman hook for nvidia
local/nvidia-inst 24.10.2-2
Script to install/uninstall nvidia driver packages in EndeavourOS
local/nvidia-settings 550.90.07-1
Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
local/nvidia-utils 550.90.07-4
NVIDIA drivers utilities
local/opencl-nvidia 550.90.07-4
OpenCL implemention for NVIDIA
And I tried using envycontrol, and got this output after I tried setting envycontrol to nvidia mode and rebooting (my system wouldn’t even boot properly after I tried this, I had to do Ctrl Alt F4 to get to a terminal).
I think the problem is not having permissions to write the NVIDIA files? Correct me if I’m wrong on that.
Sadly my own experience with the nvidia drivers is non-existent, as I use amd hardware exclusively.
But what seems to be missing is the nvidia-prime package which should be required for the hybrid mode graphics, if I’m not mistaken. You should be able to install it with nvidia-inst --prime or manually via sudo pacman -S nvidia-prime
Had to look up what that persistence daemon is doing, and if I understood it right, it’s only required when running multiple CUDA jobs at once. Which isn’t really a common use-case, you can disable it, I think.
If you want to keep it, check your systems BIOS if secure booting is disabled. As secure boot may interfere with the driver.
Additionally, after you’ve installed everything. Run an update with sudo pacman -Syu or yay -Syu
I had to manually downgrade to 550 after 565 made most of my games unplayable. That worked fine (for reference, I got over 100+ hours of gameplay with Dead by Daylight after the downgrade). Now, for some reason, my system behaves as though I have no NVIDIA gpu, hence it says “driver: N/A” in the inxi output. Nowadays, everytime I try to upgrade to recent NVIDIA drivers I can’t even boot into my computer, and have to go to tty to downgrade again just to boot into my system again. Nvidia-prime didn’t do anything, I think I already had it installed in fact. I’ve tried using envycontrol to switch to nvidia mode, but even that doesn’t work, my computer will begin booting up but stops at the task “Reached target Graphical Interface.” It also fails to start the NVIDIA persistence daemon, so maybe disabling it would help as previously mentioned, so I guess the next step would be to try disabling it?
What do I do with that information? I do apologize if what you’re saying is self-explanatory, I’m still quite new to the troubleshooting side of things, and this issue has been a valuable learning experience.
Edit: wait, so you’re saying I need to remove lib32-nvidia-utils nvidia-prime?
It’s a hybrid laptop and you have to have a way of switching to nvidia. Your output shows that nvidia isn’t showing as loaded but the info suggests that the files are installed. I would try running the following to revert first to nouveau open source.