USBflashdrive install stalls/creates stealth Ubuntu install

[George Langford]

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.

[George Langford (amenex)]

As the 250GB hard drive from the 6430NX destop PC works OK when connected via USB to the Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop, I ought to be able to execute an install from the "Try Ubuntu ..." pendrive in the 1545 laptop, but I want that to go into the second 50GB, ext4 primary partition on the USB-connected 250GB hard drive, not into my 1545 laptop.

The impression I get from poking around is that the "Try Ubuntu ..." pendrive wants to take over the entire 250GB hard drive, which is definitely something that I do not want to happen.

What sort of dialog will open if I attempt to initiate this process during the bootup of the laptop with the "Try Ubuntu ..." pendrive plugged in ? Can I simply wait, plug in the USB-connected 250GB hard drive, and see what happens, which would hopefully be an appropriate addition to the list of prospective target drives ?

Do I select the "Install Ubuntu" item in that opening dialog, and then plug in the USB-connected 250GB hard drive (with its destination 50GB, ext4 primary partition) ?

Do I have to adjust the BIOS of the laptop (it is presently ordered this way: First, USB-HDD, then CDROM, then Floppy (though none exists unless I use USB_floppy) then Hard Drive) ?

Which USB would the BIOS select if I restart the laptop with both USB devices attached ?

As you can see, there are too many alternatives for using just guesswork to accomplish this installation.

I do know that if I start the "Try Ubuntu. .." function of that pendrive in the 1545 laptop and then plug in the USB-connected 250GB hard drive, that the live Ubuntu OS will automount any one or all of the primary partitions on the 250GB, USB-connected hard drive, and even the poartitions on the main disk drive of the 1545 laptop ... and I can also unmount any one or all of those three paritions on the 250GB hard drive and the partitions on the laptop's 500GB hard drive. So I do have some control.

It would seem that I can get the 250GB hard drive plugged in to the USB port after starting the "Try Ubuntu ..." dialog, mount the intended target 50GB, ext4 partition, make sure that the laptop's partitions and the other two 250GB hard drive's partitions are _not_ mounted, select wubi.exe and open that with wine, select the "Install Ubuntu" choice on the GUI popup that should appear, and then reboot the 1545 laptop, whose BIOS is currently set to boot first from USB-HDD. Can I set the BIOS so both the first and second bootup devices are USB's ? It all depends on how much control I will have of the target partition after I initiate that process ...

I cannot do a network install with that 250GB hard drive installed in the 6430NX, because I cannot enter any text in Firefox except after I get connected to a previously bookmarked website, and the present iffy Ubuntu installation cannot cope with the external USB pendrive or with a DVD or CDROM drive, even though it can read any one of them with File Manager.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1407125/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. We are sorry that we do not always have always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner.

Ubuntu 14.04 (trusty) reached end-of-standard-support on April 25, 2019.

With no comments from you for over nine years in response to comment #2 I'm closing this as 'Invalid'.