Working with display drivers
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- Warning
- Checking your currently loaded driver
- Vendor-specific utilities
- Where drivers are sourced from
- Changing the targeted display driver
- GPU Passthrough
Most of the topics below are for experience users that should not be attempted by those not prepared to restore / re-install SteamOS, should something go wrong. You are expected to take a proper backup before attempting these steps.
It is not advised to go about manually updating or replacing known drivers listed in the drivers section below.
You can check this information from within Steam > Settings, or the below. The current supported driver versions and what cards are supported, can be ascertained from this wiki entry on the "Getting Started" page.
Find driver in use:
lspci -v | grep -A 15 VGA
Check driver information:
cat /proc/driver/<YOUR_DRIVER>/version
Example:
cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version
NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 355.00.28 Mon Feb 22 22:32:46 PST 2016
You can also use vendor utilities to provide information about the closed-source / proprietary drivers. You must have these utilities installed. They are available in the standard Valve repository. Note: aticonfig requires sudo when no X server is active (such as checking this over SSH).
nvidia-smi
aticonfig
Driver libraries are sourced from /usr/lib/, such as:
- amdgpu-pro
- fglrx
- mesa-diverted
- nvidia
If you do not see your driver installed here, chances are it is not installed, properly installed, or otherwise available.
When a hardware change is detected, this script is then fired off as part of the process:
/etc/init.d/update-graphics
Check this file on your system to get an idea of how the drivers are loaded.
With SteamOS beta release 115, you can drop a script into /etc/update-graphics.d and override the default graphics selection. See /etc/update-graphics.d/00-update.
#! /bin/sh
#
# update-graphics hook script
#
# You can add an executable file to this directory and it will have the ability to override the default
# graphics device chosen by /etc/init.d/update-graphics. The currently selected graphics device
# is passed as the first argument. See 'man run-parts' for the rules around the naming of the file and
# the order in which they run
#
# e.g. to force fglrx as the graphics driver, your script should do
#
# update-alternatives --set glx /usr/lib/fglrx
#
See: issues/591
It is more than likely you will have to reboot twice.
The following sections detail some helpful tips for working with GPU passthrough. Once verified, feel free to amend or add notes.
In order to make use of ESXi passthrough, you'll need to to disable graphics auto-switching in/etc/init.d/update-graphics, by renaming or altering what graphics driver is picked up (depending on what card you have/want to use). There is an ESXi variable for disabling built-in VMware SVGA adapter:
- vSphere Client select VM with gpu passthrough enabled
- Edit Settings --> Options Tab --> Drop down to 'General' under Advanced' --> select 'Configuration Parameters' --> Set 'svga.present' to 'FALSE'
NOTE: Most of this information was derived from this Reddit post.
