At end of install process, installer said "fatal error"

[Ken T]

...and yet another dialogue box said "Installation complete. You need to restart the computer..."

This happened while installing Ubuntu Mate 20.10 onto a partition alongside other existing partitions with Ubuntu & Linux Mint installed on them. I nominated the new partition with Ubuntu Mate (sda5) mountpoint as root, as the installer wouldn't let me continue without doing so, even though I had done this previously with other installs alongside this one on the same laptop, and Grub 2.x is already on this computer & has worked fine at bootup.

Thanks,
Ken.
***

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.10
Package: ubiquity 20.10.13
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.8.0-25.26-generic 5.8.14
Uname: Linux 5.8.0-25-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu50
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CasperVersion: 1.455
Date: Sat Jan 16 11:11:46 2021
InstallCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu-mate.seed maybe-ubiquity quiet splash ---
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu-MATE 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla" - Release amd64 (20201022)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_AU.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 LC_NUMERIC=C.UTF-8
RebootRequiredPkgs:
 linux-image-5.8.0-25-generic
 linux-base
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Ken T (professorsnapper)]

So, after the above, another dialogue box appeared which said "an unrecoverable error occurred", and said that a desktop session would be started so that I could investigate the error, which then booted me into a MATE live session. As I didn't know how to investigate the issue, I simply attempted to reboot into the MATE partition.

At this point, I got a black screen with white text saying:
"You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type 'journalctl -xb' to view system logs, 'systemctl reboot' to reboot, ..." - none of the options presented got me to a workable desktop.

Thanks,
K.
***

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

I see in the logs

Jan 16 01:41:14 ubuntu-mate grub-installer: Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Jan 16 01:41:19 ubuntu-mate grub-installer: grub-install: error: cannot copy `/usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi-signed/grubx64.efi.signed' to `/boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi': No space left on device.
Jan 16 01:41:19 ubuntu-mate grub-installer: error: Running 'grub-install --force --target x86_64-efi "/dev/sda"' failed.

Check you have room in your EFI/ESP partition for the many OSes you have installed. I've had to create a slightly larger EFI/ESP partition for some boxes I do multiple QA-test installs.

[Ken T (professorsnapper)]

Hi Chris, thanks for your reply. Can you point me to a link for some "how-to" instructions on creating / resizing that partition, and any necessary configuration of it? I haven't created a dedicated EFI/ESP partition thus far, only what appears in the attached screenshot of GParted.

Many thanks,
Ken.
***

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Launchpad bugs can be converted into questions (geared at support), or you can ask a question directly at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu.

You can also find help with your problem in the support forum of your local Ubuntu community http://loco.ubuntu.com/ or asking at https://askubuntu.com or https://ubuntuforums.org, or for more support options please look at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/community-support/709 (what I've provided thus far is for Ubuntu and all official flavors of Ubuntu).

Ubuntu-MATE also has it's own resources too, eg. https://ubuntu-mate.community/

Bug reporting is mostly about finding & fixing problems thus preventing future users from hitting the same bug (not support).

[Ken T (professorsnapper)]

Thanks, Chris. I guess we can chalk this one up as an edge case, as I imagine that most folks just install one (or maybe 2) OS's, and maybe people who are doing multi-boot installs could be assumed to know enough to easily sort that out without further prompting/guidance from the installer itself.

I suspect that in my case, the easier option might simply be to back up my data to an external drive, then obliterate the existing partition table and just install Mate freshly over the top of it. A crude method perhaps, but it should work easily enough.

Thanks again for your help - unless you want to comment further, I am happy to close this ticket now.

Cheers,
Ken.
***