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Upgrading on Ubuntu

Lekensteyn edited this page Jan 20, 2012 · 6 revisions

Upgrading Bumblebee on Ubuntu

The difficulty on upgrading to Bumblebee 3.0 depends on how you have installed Bumblebee or Ironhide before.

First, if you are using 11.04 Natty or older, add an extra PPA for newer NVIDIA drivers in preparation for the next steps:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates

I have previously used a Bumblebee or Ironhide PPA

ppa:bumblebee/stable

Upgrading is easy, simply refresh your packages list and install Bumblebee:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia

Continue reading at Post-installation.

ppa:bumblebee/testing

Upgrading is still easy, but you are recommended to use the ppa:bumblebee/stable PPA. Remove the testing PPA first:

sudo apt-get purge bumblebee acpi-call-dkms
sudo ppa-purge ppa:bumblebee/testing

Continue reading at Installation.

ppa:mj-casalogic/ironhide

The packages in this PPA do not fully clean up their mess. Start with uninstalling the PPA:

sudo apt-get purge ironhide acpi-call-dkms
sudo ppa-purge ppa:mj-casalogic/ironhide

Clean any remaining mess:

sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/ironhide* /usr/bin/ironhide*
sudo rm -f /etc/default/ironhide
sudo rm -rf /usr/share/ironhide
sudo rm -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf.nvidia

If lspci -d10de: contains (rev ff), reboot once or twice to enable the video card. Then proceed with Installation.

ppa:mj-casalogic/bumblebee

This is a very old version and a lot settings have already been broken. A reinstallation of the OS is recommended.

From source (git)

There are a lot ways to install from source, whether it is easy to upgrade depends on the chosen options.

MrMEEE/bumblebee

This is an very old version. Reinstallation of the OS may be the easiest option.

Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee (bash version)

Run sudo bumblebee-uninstall and proceed with Installation.

Bumblebee-Project/bumblebeed or Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee (C version)

From the source directory, run sudo make uninstall. If you copied an init script manually, remove it too:

sudo rm -f /etc/init/bumblebee.conf

Continue with Installation.

Installation

The recommended method to install Bumblebee on Ubuntu is by using its Stable Releases PPA, so install that one, refresh the packages list and install Bumblebee using the nvidia driver:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia

Now proceed with Post-installation.

Post-installation

If you are using 11.10 Oneiric and later and intend to use 32-bit applications on a 64-bit installation, install additional compatibility libraries:

sudo apt-get install virtualgl-libs:i386

Allow yourself to use Bumblebee (replace $USER by your username):

sudo usermod -a -G bumblebee $USER

For blacklisting to take effect, you may also have to update your initial ramdisk:

sudo update-initramfs -u

Re-login or reboot for the changes take effect.

Cleaning up

Bumblebee 3.0 does not use cardon or cardoff scripts anymore. You can safely remove the /etc/bumblebee/cardoff and /etc/bumblebee/cardoff files. All files ending with .dpkg-backup or similar can also be removed.

Configuration

There is often no configuration needed to get everything to work. The configuration files are located at /etc/bumblebee. The optirun program can also give you suggestions to correct settings in case something is wrong. Messages are printed to /var/log/syslog. To get all error messages related to bumblebeed (the Bumblebee Daemon), run:

grep bumblebeed /var/log/syslog

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