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I've upgraded to 12.04 and I had to switch from Ironhide to the latest version of Bumblebee.

Now, when I try to run bumblebeed, I get this error:

FATAL: Module bbswitch not found.
[ERROR]Module bbswitch could not be loaded (timeout?)
[WARN]No switching method available. The dedicated card will always be on.

I don't really need to use the secondary VGA on Kubuntu, so I would like to find a way to definitely shut the discrete GPU down and avoid wasting battery. I can't disable it from the BIOS because I use it on Windows. My card is an nvidia 540M.

Lekensteyn
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StepTNT
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1 Answers1

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bbswitch is the kernel module that is used for disabling the nvidia GPU. Be sure to install the Bumblebee PPA as described in Is a NVIDIA GeForce with Optimus Technology supported by Ubuntu?. Installing Bumblebee from that PPA also retrieved the bbswitch-dkms package. If you do have this package installed, the likely reason of failure that the kernel headers for the installed kernel are missing.

In that case, update your kernel including headers:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-headers
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Reboot. If the problem still persists, try explicitly installing the headers for the loaded kernel:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

If the module is still not loaded, try removing bbswitch completely and reinstall it:

sudo apt-get purge bbswitch-dkms
sudo apt-get install bbswitch-dkms
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Lekensteyn
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  • I've followed the official Bumblebee guide to install it, and I've got the bbswitch-dkms package.

    I've tried sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) and it says that I've got the latest version of linux-headers-3.2.0-24-generic.

    Is there any way to blacklist nVidia drivers and have it shut down when I boot Kubuntu?

     – StepTNT May 04 '12 at 12:51
  • @StepTNT Try reinstalling bbswitch as described in the updated answer. If you are only interested in power saving, you could create a new question for that. – Lekensteyn May 04 '12 at 21:14
  • Confirming that this also worked for me today on Debian, my laptop fan isn't releasing warm air anymore and battery life is longer. – Patrick.SE Nov 24 '13 at 01:38
  • Excuse me what is the difference between bbswitch and bbswitch-dkms? – Alireza Mohamadi Jun 16 '18 at 18:22
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    @AlirezaMohamadi "bbswitch" is the name of the kernel module. DKMS is a framework that will automatically rebuild kernel modules to match installed kernel versions. The "-dkms" packages include the necessary kernel module source code and configuration to enable DKMS to do its work. – Lekensteyn Jun 17 '18 at 10:58
  • Tried this today, actually had Module bbswitch not found, but was getting good battery life. I tried the Answer and now I get module not found, but terrible battery life... – Gloat Mar 08 '21 at 01:06