Bumblebee boot option

English Hardware
#1

I got Bumblebee working on my Levono W520 and it was great for battery life. I later found out that it doesn’t really support external displays which is how I use the machine most of the time. This led me to think, might it be possible to add a boot option to grub that allows me to pick between an initrd that just uses the nouveau driver and another that is setup to use bumblebee. This way I would be able to pick the right option for a docked (external monitor) and undocked (battery saving) option.

Anyone know how to get this working or know where I should be looking for such information?

Thanks

#2

Lenovo laptops are among the best Optimus systems, many of them have a three state MUX, switchable in the BIOS between Integrated(Intel)-Discrete(Nvidia)-Optimus. So look into your BIOS setup, if your laptop has it then use it to switch between Intel and Nvidia, uninstall Bumblebee and avoid Optimus mode.

#3

Thank you for the response. Your suggestions is a good one, however, in order to switch the BIOS settings I would have to boot my laptop outside of the port replicator, switch the setting, shut down, then dock the laptop and boot again. When using the Integrated chip I am not able to get a signal on the external displays and since the port replicator sits below a monitor stand I am not able to access the laptop’s display.

Any other suggestions would be most appreciated.

Thanks,
Jason

#4

Of course it could be done. Easiest way I can think of, is to have 2 installs. Comes at the cost of ~20GB but … Both of course would use the same /home.

#5

I have a working bumblebee setup with openSUSE 12.3 on another hard disk. Is there a process someone could outline for picking up the correct files and/or directories from it and copying them to the hard disk I want to be able switch between configs on, or is it more difficult than that?

#6

Please don’t, unless you have a lot of experience and knowledge in this area. We’d see you back with booting-, video driver- and networking issues. A lot of work.

Here’s what you need:
SCPM
available through the softwaremanager. I haven’t used it for years, suddenly remembered it’s name and got back here, but it can do what you need, i.e. use various profiles on one and the same install. What I don’ know is whether it still works, now that systemd has taken over the booting.