Public bug reported: The package that I have been trying to install since early December is Ubuntu 14.04.1.
First, I used the Universal USB Installer to create a "Try Ubuntu ..." installation on an 8GB DataStickPro USB flash drive. This pendrive works great when plugged in to my Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop computer running WinXP SP3. In fact, I'm using it right now to communicate with launchPad.net. However, I am actually trying to install Ubuntu on a Compaq (a.k.a. HP) 6430NX desktop with 2GB of RAM installed. Except for several Ethernet cards (used for the desktop's late applcation as a SmoothWall hardware firewall) the 6430NX has not been modified other than upgrading the RAM from 500MB to 2GB (which tests OK with MemTest86). The graphics card is an S3 Graphics Ltd. VT8375 (a.k.a. ProSavage in the Ubuntu drivers nomenclature, I think). The whole process of trying to install Ubuntu on the 6430NX has gone badly from the beginning; I started the 6430NX with the "Try Ubuntu ..." pendrive in a USB port, whereupon nothing at all happened ... or so I thought. I also tried it with the Live Ubuntu CD's for the full 64-bit and i386 installs (DVD and CDROM, respectively) after making appropriate BIOS settings. What I ended up with, which I discovered while the 6430NX's hard drive was USB-connected to this laptop, was a broken Ubuntu installation that had installed itself without any progress indication and without prompting me or asking me for any actions at all. I managed to get that installation patched to the extent of a messy Unity GUI which was slower than anthing you could possibly imagine (at the time the 6430NX had only the original 500MB of RAM) ... so I upgraded the RAM to 2GB. The GUI worked a little better but the display resolution and aspect ratio were not right for the Samsung SyncMaster 2253BW monitor. I switched to a Philips 107S monitor and to the lightdm display manager ... and then back to the 2253BW monitor, where I am stuck with a system whose GUI will not permit me to enter anything via the installed physical keyboard. The resolution is OK (jpg images look great with Image Viewer) but the aspect ratio is still wrong and the GUI really has no idea how big the screen is - "full screen" upsizes a given window to about 40% of the monitor area - and there is no Displays application or display file ... never has been. I made a couple of other bug reports (https://bugs.launchpad.net/glade2script/+bug/1406783 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm/+bug/1406970) and asked Question #2599889, but now I am ready to throw in the towel and start over. Here's the rub: I can set up a mount point and mount the "Try Ubuntu ..." pendrive, and I can even access it via File Manager, but even when I ask wubi.exe to install Ubuntu via Wine, when I see the GUI popup asking me to take that critical step, upon rebooting, the "Try Ubuntu ..." discourse opens up and executes its three little beeps, I can do more than run MemTest86 (which runs OK and tests the RAM OK), but if I select the uppermost option, "Try Ubuntu ..." the LED on the pendrive flashes for about six minutes, then glows steady until I give up at ten minutes ... with no other indication from the system - no new window, no progress bar, no further popups ... nothing. The original 250GB hard drive was in the as-received, refurbished-by- MicroCenter condition when I started this whole process, because I had expected the pendrive installation to handle the reformatting process with appropriate interaction with me. The entire 250GB hard drive ended up with a primary partition formatted ext4 and the two "imaginary" partitions that linux normally creates without any intervention from me. I later rearranged this setup by resizing the original primary partition with gparted (running while the 250GB hard drive was USB-connected to the Dell laptop) to ca. 50GB, adding another 50GB primary partition, also formatted ext4, and a third primary partition formatted FAT32 for data. Those changes had no effect at all on the performance of the iffy Ubuntu installation. That's where things stand right now. I plug the "pendrive into a USB port on the 6430NX, whereupon it automatically mounts into my selected USB flash mount point, allows me to open wubi.exe with wine (previously installed in the iffy Ubuntu setup), pops up (a little while after wine is activated) a GUI window wherein I select "Install Ubuntu ..." (not the text-based window that the pendrive usually boots up with when I restart the laptop with the pendrive in place) and the pendrive starts blinking ... What do I do to get that pendrive to continue the intended process ? What I would really like to do is execute a working Ubuntu installation in that second primary ext4 partition (50GB in size) on the 6430NX desktop PC and then delete everything in the original 50GB ext4 partition, reformat that as FAT32, and use it also for data. ** Affects: ubuntu Importance: Undecided Status: New -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1407125 Title: USBflashdrive install stalls/creates stealth Ubuntu install To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1407125/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
