Complete failure of any NVIDIA drivers to work on Sager NP9150 / Clevo P150EM with GTX 670MX on 12.10

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How well do laptops with Nvidia Optimus work?

I have tried every possible solution in my knowledge to install NVIDIA drivers that are functional on Ubuntu 12.10.

I define functional as the following:

1) working user interface

2) ability hibernate / suspend.

Currently I can only get the first of the two to work with the free drivers that are installed with the system. I had to switch the bios to UEFI to even be able to install 12.10 Everything then seemed to be working fine until I tried to hibernate which resulted in a blackscreen of death on the awakening. I this link and a few others that basically all conveyed the same information: that I needed to intall some type of proprietary Nvidia driver from a specified PPA. However every single attempt gave me the following message:

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  nvidia-current-updates
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/67.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 204 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously unselected package nvidia-current-updates.
(Reading database ... 195988 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking nvidia-current-updates (from .../nvidia-current-updates_304.51-    0ubuntu1_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up nvidia-current-updates (304.51-0ubuntu1) ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/nvidia-current-updates/ld.so.conf to provide   /etc/ld.so.conf.d/x86_64-linux-gnu_GL.conf (x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf) in auto mode
update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/nvidia-current-updates/alt_ld.so.conf to provide   /etc/ld.so.conf.d/i386-linux-gnu_GL.conf (i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) in auto mode
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
INFO:Enable nvidia-current-updates
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/quirks/lenovo_thinkpad
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/quirks/put_your_quirks_here
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/quirks/dell_latitude
DEBUG:Processing quirk ThinkPad T420s
DEBUG:Failure to match CLEVO with LENOVO
DEBUG:Quirk doesn't match
DEBUG:Processing quirk Latitude E6530
DEBUG:Failure to match CLEVO with Dell Inc.
DEBUG:Quirk doesn't match
Loading new nvidia-current-updates-304.51 DKMS files...
First Installation: checking all kernels...
Building only for 3.5.0-24-generic
Building for architecture x86_64
Building initial module for 3.5.0-24-generic
Done.

nvidia_current_updates:
Running module version sanity check.
 - Original module
   - No original module exists within this kernel
 - Installation
   - Installing to /lib/modules/3.5.0-24-generic/updates/dkms/

depmod....

DKMS: install completed.
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-24-generic

when I reboot, I am able to get to my desktop but the interface fails to show up and I am left with a wallpaper.

My specs are the following (from invoice)

1x Sager NP9150 / Clevo P150EM

• Display: 15.6" FHD 16:9 "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Anti-Glare Sager Screen w/ 95% NTSC Color Gamut (1920x1080) (SKU - S1X301)
• Processor: Sager - 3rd Generation Intel® Ivy Bridge Core™ i7-3840QM (2.8GHz - 3.8GHz, 8MB Intel® Smart Cache, 45W Max TDP) (SKU - S2R203)
• Thermal Compound: -Stock OEM Thermal Compound
• Graphics Video Card: nVidia GeForce GTX 670MX 3,072MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11 with Optimus™ Technology [User Upgradeable] (SKU – S3R517)
• Copper Cooling Upgrade: No Copper Cooling Upgrade
• External Display Video Adapters: No Video Adapter
• External Mobile Display: No External Mobile Display
• Ram: 32GB - DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (4 SODIMMS) (Windows 7 Pro OS Required) (SKU - S4T844P)
• mSATA SSD Drive ( Slot 1 ): No mSATA SSD
• Primary Hard Drive: 512GB Crucial M4 Series Solid State Drive [SSD2 Serial-ATA III] (SKU – S5R063)
• Optical Drive Bay: Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDRW/CDRW Drive w/ Software (When selecting a Hard Drive in the Optical Bay, No Optical Drive is Included) (SKU - S7R455)
• Optical Drive Bay Hard Drive Caddy: Sager - Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy (Caddy Only) Used For Installing Your Own Hard Drive (Optical Drive Bay remains as selected)
• Memory Card Reader: Internal 9-in-1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD/Mini SD/SDHC/SDXC/MS/MS Pro/MS Duo)
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth Included With select wireless cards only (See “Wireless Network” Section Below)
• Wireless Network: Sager - Intel® Advanced-N 6235 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module + Bluetooth™ 4.0 (SKU - S8R111)
• Wireless Network Accessories: No Network Accessory
• Camera: Built in 2.0 Megapixel Camera
• Sound Card: Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio - Included
• Battery: Smart Li-ion Battery (8-Cell)
• Fingerprint Reader: Integrated Fingerprint Reader
• Keyboard (Internal - Laptop): Standard Sager/Clevo Non Chiclet Backlit Keyboard
• Operating System: No Operating System Standard - Drivers & Utility Software Only

I bought this computer because it had similar spec to the Bonobo Extreme from System 76 but in a 15 inch form that I can actually fit into my backpack. If you take a look at their offering you will notice, for example, that the processor and graphics card on my computer are options for the Extreme.

Obviously the Bonobo Extreme must work out of the box with Ubuntu or System 76 would be probably be dead by now so I assumed that since I have a very similar computer, that mine would work out of the box as well --which, I will admit was probably horrible logic.

I am going to have several virtual machines running on this computer (hence the 32 GB of RAM) including several sql servers and one Windows 8 VM in order to be able to use Microsoft Office (as Libre Office is simply unusable for many basic tasks that I perform). I travel often and will need to place this computer in my backpack fairly often which necessitates having hibernate/suspend functionality work.

I am not very familiar with system graphics and am at a complete loss as to how to proceed. I am assuming Cannonical will probably fix this in the near future as the failure of graphics cards to function properly pretty much negates the use of ubuntu desktop for most users that have a graphics card. However, I am about to embark upon a major project so I need all the help I can get right now.

I realize my system is pretty obscure, but then again ubuntu desktop is pretty obscure in the grand scheme of things and I feel like many other linux users probably have purchased similar computers as they allow for customization and don't make you pay for a Windows version that you will immediately uninstall. So, please let me know if you have a similar system and got this working and what exact steps you took,

Thanks,

THX1138

Answer 1

After reading WEB-Es comment, I did some research and realized that I had a few misconceptions about what I was trying to do. NVIDIA doesn't support Optimus on Ubuntu directly yet, but neither do the stock drivers for Ubuntu. I had assumed bumblebee was included in the stock drivers but that is not the case. You actually have to add the Bumblebee ppa which installs itself and then the proprietary NVIDIA drivers.

See Bumblebee's Website for help installing. it was actually quite easy to set this up: You don't need to do anything except the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia linux-headers-generic sudo reboot

then everything will will work!