Add forcing intel to gpu-manager

[vmarkovtsev]

My problem

I've got an eGPU with an NVIDIA card. I am using it for CUDA, no monitors attached, nor ever one will be. My laptop is XPS 9380, that is, integrated i915. gpu-manager detects the NVIDIA card and writes /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-nvidia-prime.conf, which sets the NVIDIA GPU for X.org. I don't use any Ubuntu-provided nvidia packages, and install everything with the official NVIDIA installer.

When I boot, I fail to login. /var/log/Xorg.0.log shows a server crash. That's expected: NVIDIA userland cannot work with my laptop's display. X.org tries to load nvidia stuff and fails, as it should.

What I want

Be able to boot with intel disregarding any NVIDIA cards attached.

My proposal

Force the intel gpu inside gpu-manager.conf. I studied gpu-manager.c and have not found such a command line argument, which is suggested by how gpu-manager.conf works.

So let's add gpu-manager --force-intel for folks like myself who run eGPU for CUDA. I would be happy to contribute this feature.

[tseliot]

If you use the official NVIDIA installer, then there is very little gpu-manager can do for you. I can only recommend booting with the "nogpumanager" parameter, so that your computer is unaffected, and removing /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-nvidia-prime.conf.

You might also have another nvidia related file in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ (installed by the NVIDIA installer) which will cause X11 to try to use the nvidia driver, and which you might want to delete.

[vmarkovtsev]

My current workaround is systemctl disable gpu-manager.service