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I recently purchased a laptop with an Nvidia GeForce 860m, and have installed Ubuntu 14.04. On my old laptop I had 12.04, which automatically filled Additional Drivers with Nvidia drivers. But on this computer, the only thing in Additional Drivers is Qualcomm. So I manually installed Nvidia, but X Server Settings doesn't seem to detect any GPU...

lspci | grep VGA reports only my integrated Intel GPU, but

lspci -v reports many things, including the Nvidia GPU:

01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 860M] (rev a2)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 157d
Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 16
Memory at ec000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at e000 [size=128]
Expansion ROM at ed000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
Capabilities: access denied

Don't know what any of that means. Not sure if it's supposed to say 'access denied'...

I need my GPU to do CUDA and OpenGL programming. What else can I do to figure out why this isn't working?

EDIT: per request, the contents of xorg.conf : 

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 304.117  (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-01)  Tue Nov 26 22:29:40 PST 2013


Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection
lcdavis13
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  • does gksudo nvidia-settings show your GPU? You mean it's not listed in xorg.conf? what is the version of nvidia driver installed in the system? you can see this also from nvidia-settings. – JoKeR Jun 06 '14 at 21:28
  • add also info from sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf for Section "Device" – JoKeR Jun 06 '14 at 21:35
  • gksudo nvidia-settings and nvidia-settings both take me to Nvidia X-Server Settings, which does not recognize that I have a GPU. Most of the tabs that are supposed to be there when you have a GPU are not present. xorg.conf is completely empty. – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 00:53
  • you should run sudo nvidia-xconfig to create a valid xorg.conf for your video card. – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 01:01
  • read this http://askubuntu.com/questions/66328/how-do-i-install-the-latest-nvidia-drivers-from-the-run-file/423619#423619 – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 01:03
  • nvidia-xconfig is not recognized as a command. And yes, I installed nvidia-current. I also tried nvidia-current-update. Also nvidia-va-current, among various others that people suggested would fix this problem... – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 03:45
  • It may be useful to note that the GPU is not recognized when I'm running Ubuntu LIVE either. – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 03:46
  • this cannot be sudo nvidia-xconfig should work, you ran it with sudo right? – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 05:21
  • +f.y.i one more thing you got the new video card from Nvidia I should've mentioned it earlier, current driver version for your video card is 331.79 I don't consider driver from Ubuntu repos the best result for you yet. I'd say you need to manually install and use Nvidia driver downloaded from here you can use my workaround on how to install the driver from here – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 05:31
  • if you got two video cards GPUs take a look at comments here http://askubuntu.com/questions/477897/what-could-be-causing-frequent-display-freezes?noredirect=1#comment636171_477897 – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 05:36
  • Ok, on Ubuntu LIVE I was able to use nvidia-xconfig after installing nvidia-current. I will post the output via an edit. – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 20:26
  • If I just have an Nvidia and the built-in Intel graphics, does that count as two GPUs? – lcdavis13 Jun 07 '14 at 20:41
  • Yes it does count, to tell you frankly using two GPUs on Ubuntu it's possible but there's always a but in my previous comment link explains why. And if you have Nvidia 860m as you mentioned and you're using 304.117 from xorg.conf what I can see it's not even suitable for your video card! I guess there's not yet available graphic driver for your video card in Ubuntu repos yet and you should consider to manually install a driver for your video card as the driver version for your video card is 331.79 – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 23:55
  • please read my manual of what you can do the best http://askubuntu.com/questions/66328/how-do-i-install-the-latest-nvidia-drivers-from-the-run-file/423619#423619 – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 23:57

1 Answers1

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It was fixed by installing nVidia driver version 331:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get install nvidia-331-updates-dev

Then installing bumblebee per the instructions here:

sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus

After a reboot, I was able to use my nVidia gpu for specific programs by using the 'optirun' command. :)

lcdavis13
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  • But now my OpenGL version seems to be acting like pre-2.0, even though glxinfo says I have version 3. I will be posting another question about this. – lcdavis13 Jun 29 '14 at 02:28
  • Question posted at http://askubuntu.com/questions/489434/after-nvidia-331-and-bumblebee-install-opengl-reverts-to-old-version – lcdavis13 Jun 29 '14 at 02:46
  • Didn't worked for me. I tried multiple divers and non seems to work. – tikend Sep 06 '14 at 13:27