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Re: Optimus Solution found!!!! Using my Nvidia card in my Alienware M11X R2!!!

 

Thanks Martin,

I can confirm using the virtualgl with Alienware M11X R2 running in Arch Linux.

This is great, my expensive terminal now does what it was advertiesed to.
Maybe a few questions for the list for discussion...

If I understand correctly looking at the virtualgl documentation and backstory... Nvidia card renders to a buffer, cpu encodes, intel (or cpu?) card decodes.

When running gl with virtualgl, one of my cpu cores is getting maxed out.

Question 1:  is the cpu encoding the rendered buffer a bottleneck?

Question 2:  is it possible to do encoding on the GPU?

Question 3:  Is the intel card decoding using hardware?

Cheers
Todd







On 05/03/2011 04:42 PM, Martin Juhl wrote:
Hi all..

I have found a way to use the nvidia card in machines WITHOUT the optimus mux...

There are still a few flaws... but in my regard they are few...

First of all I have this running on my Alienware M11X R2, on Ubuntu Natty 11.04 64-bit.. And haven't tried it on any other configurations.. so I hope you can report back, if it works on other laptops (it should) and other distributions....

Here it goes:

First of all download the following:

General:

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/xorg.conf


32-bit deb-based:

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/turbojpeg_1.11.1_i386.deb

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/VirtualGL_2.2.1_i386.deb


64-bit deb-based:

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/turbojpeg_1.11.1_amd64.deb

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/VirtualGL_2.2.1_amd64.deb


32-bit rpm-based:

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/turbojpeg-1.11.i386.rpm

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/VirtualGL-2.2.1.i386.rpm


64-bit rpm-based:

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/turbojpeg-1.11.x86_64.rpm

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/VirtualGL-2.2.1.x86_64.rpm


Source:

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/turbojpeg-ipp-1.11.1.tar.gz

http://www.martin-juhl.dk/optimus/VirtualGL-2.2.1.tar.gz


Files can also be found here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualgl/files/


Ok... Installation:

Start by installing the nvidia driver:

sudo aptitude install nvidia-current     (ubuntu)

then put the xorg.conf in /etc/X11/

after that, install the two files you downloaded above:

sudo dpkg -i turbojpeg*  VirtualGL*        (deb)

or

sudo rpm -ihv turbojpeg*  VirtualGL*     (rpm)


Now run:

sudo vglserver_config

answer as below:

1) Configure server for use with VirtualGL in GLX mode
2) Unconfigure server for use with VirtualGL in GLX mode
X) Exit

Choose:
1

Restrict 3D X server access to vglusers group (recommended)?
[Y/n]
n

Restrict framebuffer device access to vglusers group (recommended)?
[Y/n]
n

Disable XTEST extension (recommended)?
[Y/n]
y
... Creating /etc/modprobe.d/virtualgl.conf to set requested permissions for
    /dev/nvidia* ...
... Attempting to remove nvidia module from memory so device permissions
    will be reloaded ...
ERROR: Module nvidia is in use
... Granting write permission to /dev/nvidia0 /dev/nvidiactl for all users ...
... Modifying /etc/X11/xorg.conf to enable DRI permissions for
    all users ...
... Adding xhost +LOCAL: to /etc/kde4/kdm/Xsetup script ...
... Disabling XTEST extension in /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc ...

Done. You must restart the display manager for the changes to take effect.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Your system uses modprobe.d to set device permissions. You
must execute rmmod nvidia with the display manager stopped in order for the
new device permission settings to become effective.


1) Configure server for use with VirtualGL in GLX mode
2) Unconfigure server for use with VirtualGL in GLX mode
X) Exit

Choose:
x


Then:

append the following two lines to /etc/profile

VGL_DISPLAY=:0.1
export VGL_DISPLAY


and reboot...

Hopefully your computer comes back up..

now you should be able to start applications with:

vglrun <application>

and the nvidia card will be used for acceleration..

btw. <application> needs to contain the full path to the application if not in the path...

It is still the Intel card running the rest.. and for now I haven't found a way to activate acceleration for both cards.. so no fancy compiz effects.. but thats no problem for me, as long as I can use my nvidia card for gaming :D...

Hope this will help someone..


/MrMEEE aka Martin Juhl...


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