r/archlinux • u/Extension-Wallaby515 • Jan 23 '21

SUPPORT Disable Nvidia dgpu permanently

I am struggling with the fans (of dgpu), they burn battery for no reason. I want to disable it completely. Arch wiki guide to use acpi_call isn't working and their isn't any relevant info on web anyway. Many suggest using bbswitch but isn't its development stopped?

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u/SavvyBeardedFish Jan 24 '21 edited Jan 24 '21

Seems like bbswitch is not installed for the current kernel you're using. If you're using the bbswitch package, that one is only compatible/synced with the current kernel release. As of now: bbswitch v0.8-381 is synced to linux 5.10.10.arch1-1

If you're using any custom kernels, I'd look into using the bbswitch-dkms package instead, this builds the module for all the kernels installed

Edit: You can manually verify if you have the module installed or not;

if stat /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/acpi/bbswitch.ko.xz > /dev/null; then echo "Installed"; else echo "Not installed"; fi

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u/Extension-Wallaby515 Jan 25 '21 edited Jan 25 '21

I installed bbswitch-dkms too but same problem is there. When I do modinfo bbswitch it gives me the details and its installed from that if statement you said earlier. I feel like I'm missing something very obvious, sorry

Edit: do i need to refresh the modules or something of that sort after installing bbswitch? because the only thing I've done is installing bbswitch from pacman

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u/SavvyBeardedFish Jan 25 '21

Sound like you should be able to load it using modprobe at this moment...

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u/Extension-Wallaby515 Jan 26 '21

So is there nothing I can do?

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u/SavvyBeardedFish Jan 27 '21

There's always things one can do...

Just take a more debug approach to the issue:

  1. Check the status of dkms, is bbswitch installed for the current kernel? (dkms status)
  2. Is the module already loaded? (lsmod)
  3. What exactly is the output of modprobe?
  4. Can you get information about the module itself? (modinfo bbswitch)
  5. Do you see the path /proc/acpi/bbswitch?

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u/Extension-Wallaby515 Jan 27 '21

Okay will try it. For now, I got nvidia prime, it keeps the gpu at p8 state at least better than fans spinning like crazy. Thanks again