Introduction

Cardwire is GPU manager for linux that uses eBPF LSM hooks to block GPUs

It was made to be a successor to the deprecated supergfxctl

Caution

Cardwire is in an early development stage, expect breaking changes and unstability.

Getting Started

Before proceeding, take a look at the requirements to make sure your system is supported.

Requirements

Requirements to be able to run Cardwire:

Kernel

Version 5.7 or later

uname -r

Built with CONFIG_BPF_LSM enabled

zcat /proc/config.gz | grep CONFIG_BPF_LSM

returns CONFIG_BPF_LSM=y if it’s enabled

Enabled in the boot cmdline

cat /proc/cmdline

Must contains lsm=bpf

Installation

Arch

using AUR:

yay -S cardwire

then enable the service and reboot

sudo systemctl enable cardwired.service
reboot

Note

i also maintain the cardwire-git package in case someone tries to take it.

Note

both gets updated, in a near future, cardwire will provide a built package from github while cardwire-git will build from source.

Important

i’m also looking for an official maintainer for both AUR, since i do not use Arch.

Nix

Using the repo’s flake:

flake.nix:

cardwire = {
    url = "github:luytan/cardwire";
    inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
};

configuration.nix:

imports = [ inputs.cardwire.nixosModules.default ];

services.cardwire.enable = true;

Other distros

For now, other distros must clone the repo and use make to build and install Cardwire.

Build dependencies:

cargo
clang
libbpf

git clone https://github.com/luytan/cardwire.git

make build
sudo make install

Caution

Makefile was AI-generated, use with caution.

Important

For mainstream distros, i will be making an official install methods, like a copr for Fedora and a .deb for Debian based.

Non-systemd distros

Warning

Cardwire only supports systemd-based distros. If you want to use it on a non-systemd distro, either open a PR with patches for non-systemd or get it working on your setup.

Troubleshooting

Name is not activable

Is the daemon running?

systemctl status cardwired.service

If it’s not running, enable the daemon with systemctl enable cardwired.service and reboot your device.

dGPU is detected as the default gpu

On ROG laptop

is the asus MUX enabled?

asusctl armoury list

then find

gpu_mux_mode:
  current: [(0),1]

0 means that the MUX is enabled, the dGPU IS the default GPU in this case

Non ROG Laptop

This shouldn’t happen, please create an issue with the output of

ls /sys/class/drm

and

cat /sys/class/drm/*/status

“game name” won’t launch

force

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