[nvidia] Lack of clear instructions

[AlanGriffiths]

We ought to have clear instructions for installing and configuring on Nvidia.

I got this far:

1. install nvidia-driver

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-515

2. From the Mir PPA install mir's nvidia driver and libnvidia-egl-wayland

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mir-team/dev
sudo apt install mir-graphics-driver-nvidia libnvidia-egl-wayland1

3. Enable nvidia-kms

sudo echo options nvidia-drm modeset=1 > /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-kms.conf

4. With this I can select nvidia (or intel) with

sudo prime-select nvidia

On my prox5 using 18.04 this seems almost to work (mir seems to start but nothing appears on the output). Using 20.04 graphics fail to come up as there appears to be nothing attached to the nvidia card.

[AlanGriffiths]

Update:

Here's the console output from trying to start using mir-shell (from ppa:mir-team/dev) on a VT:

mir-shell.log

@RAOF does this hold any clues for you? (GNOME is happily using Xorg/Nvidia)

[AlanGriffiths]

After discussion with @RAOF we concluded that my proX5 only has outputs connected to the Intel card, so Mir would need hybrid graphics to support using Nvidia.

[Saviq]

3. Enable nvidia-kms

This is unnecessary with newer kernels/drivers.

I'll document this better soon.

[RudraSwat]

@Saviq I was messing with this on a laptop with the iGPU disabled (so not hybrid, just an RTX 5000) and tried everything listed here, but still can't get mir-shell to use the NVIDIA GPU instead of llvmpipe.

For reference, this is on a system running Ubuntu Unity 23.10.

[Saviq]

@RudraSwat for Frame, make sure you use --channel 22 (it's only default since yesterday).

What's your snap list; echo ubuntu-frame mesa-core22 | xargs -n1 snap connections look like?

[Saviq]

@RudraSwat sorry I somehow misread "mir-shell" as Frame 🤦

Can you please provide the log output from mir-shell?