ubuntu-8.10-desktop-amd64 installer crash on VMWare Workstation 6.5.0 build-118166

[bitspace]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

Installation behavior is erratic. During different attempts to install (none have been successful) I received an error that grub could not install on hd0, and on another occasion some setup files could not be copied due to a damaged CD (I am mounting an ISO for install). Every time it seems that ubiquity crashes, even if neither of the above errors are reported.

Attached is the VMX setup for the machine, default options with the floppy device removed. I can install previous releases of Ubuntu x86, but have not tried earlier releases of amd64. The host system is windows xp sp2 x86. VMWare does not warn me about installing a x64 guest on an x86 host, and I receive no warnings from ubunutu (if this is an x64/x86 problem).

ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.5
Package: ubiquity 1.10.10
ProcAttrCurrent: unconfined
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity --only
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
PythonArgs: ['/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity', '--only']
SourcePackage: ubiquity
Title: ubiquity crashed with InstallStepError in configure_user()
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-7-generic x86_64
UserGroups:

[bitspace (bitspace)]

I see this was (automatically?) flagged as a duplicate of #258603. But I am not sure if it is. I am not upgrading from a previous release. I tried a different user name anyway, and it still crashed; but this time to the text boot screen. Three significant errors were shown:

Starting GNOME Display Manager [fail]
Starting System Tools Backends system-tools-backends
/usr/bin/system-tools/backends: error while loading shared libraries: libpolkit-dbus.so.2: cannot open shared object file: Error 27

...(other insignificant text)...

/etc/rc2.d/s98usplash: 62: Syntax error: end of file unexpected (expecting "fi")

Finally the VM locked up.

So there seems to be some real instability running this as I am, since I am receiving a wide range of errors. I checked the ISO MD5 that I am mounting to install and it is valid.

[Monkey (monkey-libre)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test a current, supported, Ubuntu version. If you can test it, and it is still an issue, we would appreciate if you could upload updated logs by running apport-collect 297416, and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Monkey (monkey-libre)]

We'd like to figure out what's causing this bug for you, but we haven't heard back from you in a while. Could you please provide the requested information? Thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]