A few early questions - HDMI and more

[beattiepedia]

A bit of background: my HP DV7 Entertainment Laptop crashed and took out some key files. When re-installing Windows 7, it got about 90% and stalled - twice. All files etc were gone, I couldn't go back to the partial windows I had had.

So I installed Ubuntu - the latest and have gotten the basics up and running. Firefox, folders, files etc. but some problems have cropped up.

First hdmi. When I try to run my videos on the tv, Ubuntu doesn't recognize that it is there. It simply gives "unknown display". It says that even with no hdmi connected. ???? What can I do? My video chipset is apparently Nvidia Geforce with 'cuda.

Secondaly, since I have a backup of my documents on an external, I want to point the document folder to my external - how can I do that. And I want to do that for photos and videos etc.

Appreciate any pointers or help you can give. Thanks

Larry

[jmadero]

Hi Larry,

Sorry about the crash, that's too bad, I know the frustration.

With the nvidia issue, I'll try to see if I can track it down. To start with try this in a terminal and see if you get output to the HDMI output

xrandr --output HDMI1 --auto

that will turn on HDMI hopefully

then this will turn off display on laptop (probably, if not I'll have to ask a few more questions

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off

with Documents, terminal

ln -s PATH_TO_DOCUMENTS

delete the empty documents folder that automatically shows up with Ubuntu install. Do the same with your pictures, videos, etc...

Lastly, just a recommendation. If you're new to Linux you may want to try with Mint. Ubuntu (in my opinion) used to be the go to for new users but with their switch to Unity a bunch of crappy bugs came up that has pushed many away from Canonical and into other distros. Mint is based on Ubuntu but uses Gnome instead of Unity -- what Ubuntu had a year or so ago.

[elija]

I'm afraid I don't know about the hdmi but to access the external drive via the documents folder you mount it.

Assuming that the external disk is sdb1, run the command

sudo blkid /dev/sdb1

which will return something like /dev/sda2: UUID="edfe3e6b-4136-4092-aab1-94b5baba080b" TYPE="ext4"

Edit the file /etc/fstab for which you will need root or sudo access and add the following to the end

UUID=edfe3e6b-4136-4092-aab1-94b5baba080b /home/YOUR_USER/Documents	ext4	defaults,rw,relatime

where the uuid is is returned by the previous command and ext4 is what is returned by the TYPE in the previous command.

Once you have saved the file run the command

sudo mount -a

which will mount the partition.

The usual disclaimer applies. Messing with the fstab can bork your system. Although a live CD can be used to fix it.

[beattiepedia]

I am sorry but I don't know where/how to enter the code or go to terminal or any of that stuff. I am just using Ubuntu has it installed. How do I use Mint.

thanks

[elija]

Fire up dash and search from terminal. Then you either type or copy and and paste the commands as shown. As for Mint, you download and install it in place of Ubuntu. It's not that scary.

[AlmarPhudd]

To get terminal: press ctrl+alt+T..... should open the terminal, when the blinking starts, copy and paste this link
xrandr --output HDMI1 --auto

also, go to top of screen, open SYSTEM,>> PREFERENCES,>>MONITORS, now uncheck "same image in all monitors" and
should show you both screens, including the TV if HDMI is connected correctly...if all is ok, go back to MONITORS, and recheck
"same image in all monitors".

[jmadero]

Sorry about that beattiepedia, I forget sometimes that I need to be step by step with newer users. Follow Elija's comment and yuo should be good. As for replacing, put Mint on a USB drive using unetbootin (if you need instructions ask away), boot up from the USB drive and it's pretty much point and click. Be careful about your stuff and formatting, ALWAYS back up if possible. If not possible, make sure you know what you're messing with before proceeding.


Edit: "Fire up dash" means click on the icon in Ubuntu top left corner, the panel that comes up is called your dash board. It's a Unity thing (Unity is the interface you see in newer releases of Ubuntu, it's been a headache for a lot of people but others really enjoy it).


Also I think Elija misinterpreted your question for your documents question. From my understanding you just want a link to your documents on your external, not make your entire external drive your documents folder. The method that he used would make your Documents folder just a link to your hard drive, not to a folder on your hard drive. If that's what you want then Elija's method works, otherwise use the one I posted. Otherwise you could also do it via file browser but it's easier to just use terminal

[elija]

Say rather it would make the contents of the external drive appear as if they were directly in the Documents folder. This is the method I used to share data between distros back when I dual booted.

Thanks for backstop on the Dash explanation.

@AlmarPhudd: Welcome to the forums. Ctrl + Alt + T must be Ubuntu specific as it doesn't work in Xubuntu. Nice quick shortcut though.

[edit]And so logical, I have set it up [/edit]