Install and usage

Work in progress... soon will be ready.

Here you will find instructions in many ways to install, test and use Bumblebee.

Install

The best an recommended way to install Bumblebee is through your distribution repositories. If not such packages exist, then you can still install Bumblebee from git.

Install from packages

ArchLinux

AUR Package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=52210

ArchWiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee

Ubuntu

PPA:

Ubuntu Wiki:

Install from Git

Here are some instructions on how to build the Bumblebee daemon (bumblebeed) and client (optirun). Whenever you see a command preceded by # means it must be run as root (i.e. with sudo).

Prerequisites

Build Requirements

• Your card's drivers with 3D acceleration enabled (either nvidia or nouveau)
• VirtualGL software (www.virtualgl.org)
• pkg-config
• autotools (2.68+ recommended)
• libX11 and developer headers
• libbsd and developer headers
• git
• bbswitch (optional for Power Management)

Runtime Requirements

• VirtualGL software (www.virtualgl.org)
• bbswitch (optional for Power Management)

Build and install

Now go to a directory of our liking, clone the repository and configure.

$ git clone git://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bumblebeed.git
$ cd bumblebeed
$ autoreconf -fi
$ ./configure

To set your default driver to nvidia you need to pass some configuration flags to ./configure step:

$ ./configure CONF_DRIVER=nvidia CONF_DRIVER_MODULE_NVIDIA=nvidia-current \
  CONF_LDPATH_NVIDIA=/usr/lib/nvidia-current:/usr/lib32/nvidia-current \
  CONF_MODPATH_NVIDIA=/usr/lib/nvidia-current/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules

Note: Those settings are intended for Ubuntu users, your paths may differ. (See the Warning under Using Nvidia header in Supported Drivers and Configuration for more information)

Note: for system-wide installations, additional arguments must be passed to ./configure script. Most times $ ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc is enough. Run $ ./configure --help for more information

Once configuration is ready make the binaries:

$ make

To install just run

# make install

Post-installation

Then you must create group bumblebee on your system and add yourself to it

# groupadd bumblebee
# usermod -a -G bumblebee $USER

Log out and in again to apply changes.

Optionally you can use an init script to start the daemon at boot time.

WIP: Add init options

Usage

First you would like to take a look at Configuration to tweak Bumblebee to your liking. Then you must run the Bumblebee daemon

# bumblebeed -vv

Run $ bumblebeed --help for more options.

To run a program you just run

$ optirun <program-name>

Example

$ optirun glxgears

will run glxgears on your dedicated GPU.

WIP

#Deprecated below

Setting up bash completion (optional)

There is a file for bash completion on the data folder, that must be installed manually on the appropriate directory. Under Archlinux is /etc/bash_completion.d/optirun

Configuring the BusID of the nvidia card

Then you will need to edit the files CONFDIR/xorg.conf.{nvidia,nouveau} to set the PCI BusID of your nvidia card. To get the BusID of your card:

$ lspci -d 10de: -n | grep '030[02]:' | cut -d' ' -f1 | tr . :

Then copy the output in this manner:

...
Section "Device"
    ...
    BusID "PCI:<BUISID>"
EndSection
...