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xeroxw00p
April 27th, 2021, 01:05 AM
I have a laptop that has no display. I use an external display via the VGA port. Therfore I cannot select boot device. I have to dd the partion table and then it will boot from USB, and when I want to reinstall. I created a USB boot disk for 21.04 and upon boot the mouse lights flash a few times and no external monitor or USB activity after that. I have verified the USB boots another laptop. The laptop in question boots a USB 20.04 just fine. Anyone have any ideas? Or is it possible to boot the 20.04 USB into live mode and then start the instalation of 21.04 on another USB? Thanks in advance for any ideas, and other than buy a working laptop. :)

guiverc
April 27th, 2021, 01:33 AM
The way you formatted the post (as HTML code) makes it hard to read, but I'll provide what I can.

I QA-tested with a dead laptop display in the 18.10/cosmic & 19.04/disco cycles and it was possible (on many laptops anyway) to use the built in Fn-display key to alternate between using
- internal (only)
- external (only)
- mirror (internal + external showing the same)
- both used (one besides the other)
- some makes/models had other options here too

Thus I'd suggest using your laptops key for that function, it worked on hp, dell, lenovo anyway (I may have tested others, I forget). It was easy to see what it was doing when both displays worked, but as I had a dead-internal-display laptop during those cycles I used that machine to test & ensure it worked.

Note: most of my testing is with Lubuntu, but I also tested Xubuntu then equally as much (which uses the same `ubiquity` installer as Ubuntu does). The boot cycle changed during recent cycles (GRUB now boots all systems) so I didn't test with the current boot, but it's still what I'd try.