HP Envy Laptop Ubuntu Day 2

/

Well, every time I reboot Ubuntu it starts with the video screen brightness at zero.  This was getting annoying so I found a post that suggested adding nomodeset to the grub config.

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

 

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

then

sudo update-grub

well that was stupid.  After rebooting no I couldn't get any video.  Pressing Ctl+Alt+F1 didn't bring up terminal.  Because I hadn't changed the GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT I couldn't bring up grub by pressing Shift. 

I ultimaltely had to boot using an Ubuntu image on a USB stick, mount the drive, and fix the file.  Note "sda1" is where it was for me... you may be on sda2,3,4... whatever.

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Then mount a few more directories that are needed:

sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc

Also, if you have a separate Ubuntu boot partition (pretty uncommon these days, but it may be the case):

sudo mount /dev/sdaX /mnt/boot

How can you tell if you have a boot partition?

Once you have your Ubuntu partition mounted, open /mnt/etc/fstab. If you see an entry for /boot, note which device it is pointing to (/dev/sda4 maybe?). This is the one you have to mount.

Once these are mounted, do chroot to start using the mounted directory as the root partition:

sudo chroot /mnt

You'll get a #/ prompt. First thing to do is confirm that you're using the correct /boot directory. Go to /boot/grub and look at the files there. There should be a bunch of .mod files and a grub.cfg file. If the directory is empty, don't continue, because it means this is NOT your actual boot directory. Look above to see how to determine if you need to mount an additional boot directory.

Once you've confirmed that /boot/ contains the correct files, meaning that it is the correct location, type:

sudo update-grub

Another 40 minutes pissed away.

Enough poking with the brightness - I guess its not that important to me, back to the HDMI issues.  Yesterday I was noticing It was saying the ATI driver was activated but not in use... I checked the X11 config and even though that's what it says, it appears that it is using it so I don't think that's the problem.

 

2 more hours wasted with installing/uninstalling fglrx, catalyst drivers, intel drivers, rebooting... nothing seems to want allow those ATI drivers to load