[Wolves] OTT: switching to external vga monitor

[Kevanf1]

On 27 January 2016 at 11:36, Mark Croft Redditch Linux Mint
<mark.croft.lug at gmail.com> wrote:
> thanks for pointing me right direction , i have tried the manual route
> and it was not clear whether the bios appears on external screen.i had
> forgotten that i had put this problem on hp forum and there was an
> answer there to my problem with viewing the bios at boot up on
> external monitor.

I'm happy to have inadvertently pointed you in the right direction :)

> here link to hp forum question
> http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Video-Display-and-Touch/switching-to-external-monitor-ASAP-so-i-get-into-BIOS-screen/m-p/5467874/highlight/false#M125443
>

> I wonder if i can grub to boot up from the hard drive maybe? can grub
> be forced to display on external screen? i guess grub would have to
> some sort of vga driver loaded to get it too display its wares.
>
> mark

I'm going out of my depth here as I have never had to mess about with
GRUB.  I should learn more about it but for me, if it ain't broke then
I am not going to try fixing it.....  Anyway, I had thought that GRUB
accessed stuff like the Linux kernel which itself then accessed
various files such as the X.org configuration file.  So I doubt GRUB
itself would be able to do anything.  Maybe there is a way of adding a
few lines into the X.org config file (it's been years since I had to
dabble in it so forgive me if I have the wrong term/name here) that
would enable directly using an external monitor?

I could be talking utter twaddle here so if I am I apologise.  It's a
testament to how far Linux has come that people like me can just use
it and get on with it. In the meantime forgetting a lot of knowledge
previously learned.

Kevan
Linux user #373362
Staffordshire