Ubuntu 10.10 installation freeze

[Paul Orton]

Upgrading from 10.04 - the packages downloaded OK as far as I know but the installation froze at some point in the 'install' phase. I left it alone for a couple of hours because the Terminal cursor was still flashing but finally gave up and rebooted. Which, not surprisingly, didn't work.

I've tried to reboot in recovery mode (which tells me I am now on 10.10) and have got as far as a terminal prompt. I'm a complete Linux newbie and would like to know how I should now proceed, please.

[nujinini]

Upgrading from 10.04 - the packages downloaded OK as far as I know but the installation froze at some point in the 'install' phase. I left it alone for a couple of hours because the Terminal cursor was still flashing but finally gave up and rebooted. Which, not surprisingly, didn't work.

I've tried to reboot in recovery mode (which tells me I am now on 10.10) and have got as far as a terminal prompt. I'm a complete Linux newbie and would like to know how I should now proceed, please.

Hello Paul!

In my little experience, I have more success in distro upgrades by making a fresh install using a live cd.

If I were to face this issue, I would get hold of an ubuntu 10.10 live cd. Boot from it. Save all my important files (back-up) and make a fresh reinstall using the same.

I encounter lesser headaches with this approach. I hope the other guys here can give you a simpler solution.

Hope everythings goes well!

[Paul Orton]

Thanks for that!

OK, got the live CD, booted from it but I can't install 10.10 because I'm told I don't have enough hard disk space - says I have 900mb (which is ridiculous because I have more like 400gig on my Linux partition (and much the same on my Windows one)). The installation refuses to move forward until I provide more space.

So I'm stuck again....

[nujinini]

Thanks for that!

OK, got the live CD, booted from it but I can't install 10.10 because I'm told I don't have enough hard disk space - says I have 900mb (which is ridiculous because I have more like 400gig on my Linux partition (and much the same on my Windows one)). The installation refuses to move forward until I provide more space.

So I'm stuck again....

Please boot again using live cd and execute in terminal the ff. and post here:

$ sudo fdisk -l
$ sudo df -h

note: l is small L

[Paul Orton]

This time the installer tells me I do have enough space. I ran the installer and it crashed (almost at the end, I think). Tried again and this time it installed OK. After rebooting into 10.10 it immediately informs me that I have only 32mb of disc space left!!!

I'm going to run those commands you left me to see what my hard disc now looks like.

[Paul Orton]

Here's what I get (yuck, what a mess!):

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd3a90676

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 61393 493031696 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 61394 121601 483620729+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 61394 120197 472342167+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 120850 121601 6040408+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 120523 120828 2442240 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 120828 120849 175104 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda9 120197 120501 2435072 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 120501 120522 175104 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order


Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda9 2.3G 2.2G 36M 99% /
none 999M 248K 999M 1% /dev
none 1007M 232K 1007M 1% /dev/shm
none 1007M 80K 1007M 1% /var/run
none 1007M 0 1007M 0% /var/lock
none 2.3G 2.2G 36M 99% /var/lib/ureadahead/debugfs
/home/paul/.Private 2.3G 2.2G 36M 99% /home/paul
/dev/sr0 694M 694M 0 100% /media/Ubuntu 10.10 i386

[nujinini]

Jee...

This is the first time I see so many swap partitions in a HD. Usually, one is sufficient.

So...your system is a multi boot and your running Ubuntu in one of the partitions? /dev/sda9?

Well...if it tells you that you only have 32 mb free space left, you might want to consider deleting some partitions that you don't really need and allocate it for ubuntu partition. Maybe you can do without /dev/sda8 & /dev/sda10 (swap partitions and use the freed space for ubuntu.

By the way, 2.3 GB space for an OS is quite small IMHO. Perhaps 6 GB would be the smallest I would do if I have limited space.

Your present /dev/sda9 will be renumbered to /dev/sda8 should you delete swaps sda8 & sda10 and you can make another try of installing your ubuntu in your new partition. Just make a back-up of all important data just in case.

I hope the other advanced members can also give their thoughts regarding your situation.

Good luck!

[Paul Orton]

Jee...

This is the first time I see so many swap partitions in a HD. Usually, one is sufficient.

So...your system is a multi boot and your running Ubuntu in one of the partitions? /dev/sda9?

Well...if it tells you that you only have 32 mb free space left, you might want to consider deleting some partitions that you don't really need and allocate it for ubuntu partition. Maybe you can do without /dev/sda8 & /dev/sda10 (swap partitions and use the freed space for ubuntu.

By the way, 2.3 GB space for an OS is quite small IMHO. Perhaps 6 GB would be the smallest I would do if I have limited space.

Your present /dev/sda9 will be renumbered to /dev/sda8 should you delete swaps sda8 & sda10 and you can make another try of installing your ubuntu in your new partition. Just make a back-up of all important data just in case.

I hope the other advanced members can also give their thoughts regarding your situation.

Good luck!

Well, those swap partitions were created by the installer, not by me, and I didn't choose the 2.3gb space for the OS either - that would have been crazy.

I think the problem is that the screen which asks you to choose which partition to use for the installation is very confusing - I was presented with 2 partitions to play around with, one labelled "Ubuntu 10.10" and the other simply "Ubuntu", with a slider in the middle. Both were about 240gb in size and I moved the slider to enlarge the "Ubuntu 10.10" side to take over all the space allocated to the "Ubuntu" side. There was no guidance whatsoever at this point to show me what I should do here. Perhaps this screen was suggesting a partition setup that was going to be OK for most users but it didn't advertise itself as such. Anyone completely new to Linux would have had no idea what to do at this point.

Anyway, I'll change those partitions (is there an Ubuntu tool for this?) and try again.

[nujinini]

Anyway, I'll change those partitions (is there an Ubuntu tool for this?) and try again.

I'm not sure if "gparted" is available with the live cd of ubuntu. It's a very user friendly partitioning tool.

If not, you may want to get parted magic where gparted is included.

Try here.

Hope everything works fine. Keeping my fingers crossed

[Paul Orton]

One step forward, two steps back...

I deleted all partitions apart from Windows7, a 100mb partition that you can't delete, and left a 450gb empty one, ready for Linux.

When I got to the screen inviting me to allocate drive space for Ubuntu I chose this time to accept the default that was displayed - half Ubuntu 10.10 and half Ubuntu (what on earth does that mean!?). The installation proceeded fine, almost to the end, when it suddenly announced that it couldn't install a boot loader. It offered me the choice of placing this in every other partition on my hard disk but then rejected each of them in turn (I wasn't impressed by that!). It said that I could abandon the installation or proceed but with no way of actually running Linux. I chose to proceed because it also assured me I would be able to add a boot loader manually.

Bear in mind that I started this episode with a fully-working dual-boot setup of Windows7/Ubuntu 10.04. What has the Ubuntu installer done to this dual-boot facility?

I rebooted and when Ubuntu didn't load, the screen showed the message

 error: no such partition
grub rescue> 
  

What should I do at this point?

Because I didn't know what to type here, I thought I would run the installer once more just to see if all it needed was another chance.
I am now looking at the Allocate Drive Space screen again and it is offering to split the partition as follows:

/dev/sda2 (ntfs) 276.7gb Files (51.8gb) - on the left
/dev/sda3 (ext4) 228.1gb Ubuntu - on the right

I'm accepting this setup and proceeding with the install. I'll let you know how it turns out.