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I recently purchased a laptop with an Nvidia GeForce 860m, and have installed Ubuntu 14.04. On my old laptop I had 12.04, which automatically filled Additional Drivers with Nvidia drivers. But on this computer, the only thing in Additional Drivers is Qualcomm. So I manually installed Nvidia, but X Server Settings doesn't seem to detect any GPU...

lspci | grep VGA reports only my integrated Intel GPU, but

lspci -v reports many things, including the Nvidia GPU:

01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 860M] (rev a2)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 157d
Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 16
Memory at ec000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at e000 [size=128]
Expansion ROM at ed000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
Capabilities: access denied

Don't know what any of that means. Not sure if it's supposed to say 'access denied'...

I need my GPU to do CUDA and OpenGL programming. What else can I do to figure out why this isn't working?

EDIT: per request, the contents of xorg.conf : 

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 304.117  (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-01)  Tue Nov 26 22:29:40 PST 2013


Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection
lcdavis13
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  • does `gksudo nvidia-settings` show your `GPU`? You mean it's not listed in `xorg.conf`? what is the version of nvidia driver installed in the system? you can see this also from `nvidia-settings`. – JoKeR Jun 06 '14 at 21:28
  • add also info from `sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf` for Section "Device" – JoKeR Jun 06 '14 at 21:35
  • gksudo nvidia-settings and nvidia-settings both take me to Nvidia X-Server Settings, which does not recognize that I have a GPU. Most of the tabs that are supposed to be there when you have a GPU are not present. xorg.conf is completely empty. – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 00:53
  • you should run `sudo nvidia-xconfig` to create a valid `xorg.conf` for your video card. – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 01:01
  • read this http://askubuntu.com/questions/66328/how-do-i-install-the-latest-nvidia-drivers-from-the-run-file/423619#423619 – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 01:03
  • nvidia-xconfig is not recognized as a command. And yes, I installed nvidia-current. I also tried nvidia-current-update. Also nvidia-va-current, among various others that people suggested would fix this problem... – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 03:45
  • It may be useful to note that the GPU is not recognized when I'm running Ubuntu LIVE either. – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 03:46
  • this cannot be `sudo nvidia-xconfig` should work, you ran it with `sudo` right? – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 05:21
  • +f.y.i one more thing you got the new video card from Nvidia I should've mentioned it earlier, current driver version for your video card is `331.79` I don't consider driver from Ubuntu repos the best result for you yet. I'd say you need to manually install and use Nvidia driver downloaded from [here](http://www.geforce.com/drivers) you can use my workaround on how to install the driver from [here](http://askubuntu.com/questions/66328/how-do-i-install-the-latest-nvidia-drivers-from-the-run-file/423619#423619) – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 05:31
  • if you got two video cards GPUs take a look at comments here http://askubuntu.com/questions/477897/what-could-be-causing-frequent-display-freezes?noredirect=1#comment636171_477897 – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 05:36
  • Ok, on Ubuntu LIVE I was able to use nvidia-xconfig after installing nvidia-current. I will post the output via an edit. – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 20:26
  • If I just have an Nvidia and the built-in Intel graphics, does that count as two GPUs? – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 20:41
  • Yes it does count, to tell you frankly using two GPUs on Ubuntu it's possible but there's always a **but** in my previous comment link explains why. And if you have Nvidia 860m as you mentioned and you're using 304.117 from `xorg.conf` what I can see it's not even suitable for your video card! I guess there's not yet available graphic driver for your video card in Ubuntu repos yet and you should consider to manually install a driver for your video card as the driver version for your video card is 331.79 – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 23:55
  • please read my manual of what you can do the best http://askubuntu.com/questions/66328/how-do-i-install-the-latest-nvidia-drivers-from-the-run-file/423619#423619 – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 23:57

1 Answers1

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It was fixed by installing nVidia driver version 331:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get install nvidia-331-updates-dev

Then installing bumblebee per the instructions here:

sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus

After a reboot, I was able to use my nVidia gpu for specific programs by using the 'optirun' command. :)

lcdavis13
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  • But now my OpenGL version seems to be acting like pre-2.0, even though glxinfo says I have version 3. I will be posting another question about this. – lcdavis13 Jun 29 '14 at 02:28
  • Question posted at http://askubuntu.com/questions/489434/after-nvidia-331-and-bumblebee-install-opengl-reverts-to-old-version – lcdavis13 Jun 29 '14 at 02:46
  • Didn't worked for me. I tried multiple divers and non seems to work. – tikend Sep 06 '14 at 13:27