[SOLVED] severe installation issues

[xelxel]

I'm close to have a major f***witz moment here with my laptop and the rather pathetic attempt
at installing kubuntu 8.10.

I've used ubuntu for a while and downloaded the kubuntu LiveCD to see what the KDE GUI has to offer
and i loved it. HOWEVER, i have now installed kubuntu five times.

First two times, i got GRUB Error 15, leaving the computer useless during the bootup. No option to use
commandline.

Third and fourth time, i downloaded the same package for different mirror and even checked the hash
of the downloaded file. Perfect match. Even burned at very low speeds to avoid issues there.

I haven't managed to get kubuntu working one single time.

Using the LiveCD works however perfectly each and every time. Just installing it doesnt work.
I can install Ubuntu and Xubuntu without a problem.

Anyone have any suggestions, or should i just consider Kubuntu heap of junk and find something
else?

[Snowhog]

Re: severe installation issues

32- or 64-bit LiveCD? What are you laptop specs, specifically, what video card/controller do you have - that will most likely be the cause of your troubles.

[dibl]

Re: severe installation issues

Prolly a review of this will help.

[xelxel]

Re: severe installation issues

Prolly a review of this will help.

i read the part regarding GRUB, and even ran the sudo grub, root & setup commands
but commandline tells me that the files can't be found

[Snowhog]

Re: severe installation issues

Okay, the one thing you haven't told us is what OS is already installed on your laptop? If it's Windoze Vista, and you haven't made room on the HD for Linux, you will have problems.

[xelxel]

Re: severe installation issues

Okay, the one thing you haven't told us is what OS is already installed on your laptop? If it's Windoze Vista, and you haven't made room on the HD for Linux, you will have problems.

Ubuntu

[toad]

Re: severe installation issues

Let's have a look at your hard drive(s) first. Could you post the output of

blkid -L

and let us know which system is installed where. Also, if you installed kubuntu last, where did you put grub? Could you also post a copy of your (working) /boot/grub/menu.lst please.

[xelxel]

Re: severe installation issues

toad, it doesnt really spit out anything that, to me, seems remotely useful.

erik@erik-laptop:~$ blkid -L
blkid: invalid option -- L
blkid 1.0.0 (12-Feb-2003)
usage: blkid [-c <file>] [-ghl] [-o format] [-s <tag>] [-t <token>]
&#160; &#160; [-v] [-w <file>] [dev ...]
-c cache file (default: /etc/blkid.tab, /dev/null = none)
-h print this usage message and exit
-g garbage collect the blkid cache
-s show specified tag(s) (default show all tags)
-t find device with a specific token (NAME=value pair)
-l lookup the the first device with arguments specified by -t
-v print version and exit
-w write cache to different file (/dev/null = no write)
dev specify device(s) to probe (default: all devices)
erik@erik-laptop:~$

I have however noticed something that may be important. I basically told kubuntu to go do something
rather rude to itself, and installed ubuntu. Watching the installation screen, i noticed that during the
last steps of the installation, in progress bar, there is GRUB setup, update etc. I tried reinstalling kubuntu (32bit)
and behold, the installation never gets to that point. Basically installation stops, the progress load bar of kubuntu 'deloads' and the CD tray pops out, but the installation was never completed 100%.

[toad]

Re: severe installation issues

Hm, that output seems positively venomous. The -L flag works for me, why not for you? Whatever, try it by just typing

blkid

[dibl]

Re: severe installation issues

but commandline tells me that the files can't be found

That, plus this

erik@erik-laptop:~$ blkid -L
blkid: invalid option -- L

says your system is borked -- it didn't all install. I suspect a bad CD burn. Very odd that it even appeared to finish.

[xelxel]

Re: severe installation issues

One DVD-RW, and two CD's later it still hasn't properly installed.

my laptop's a Acer Extensa 5420, so RAM/CPU/HDD isn't failing in
resources. What stumps me is that kubuntu and ubuntu uses the
same installer, and ubuntu manages to complete installation without
borking things up.

[xelxel]

Re: severe installation issues

blkid

didnt produce anything. Just jumped to a new row in commandline.

[toad]

Re: severe installation issues

dibl is right - and why in the world it doesn't install properly I do not know without knowing more about where you want to install it.

Are you wiping the whole hard disk of your laptop? What option do you use for partitioning? How did you partition the disk?

I do not mean to be presumptious - I am aware that your are perfectly capable of doing a proper install, just going back to basics to perhaps find something...

[xelxel]

Re: severe installation issues

toad,

I'm a linux n00b so i try not to fiddle with settings or do much manually unless it is absolutely necessary,
so i use the "guided" option for partition, to use the entire HDD instead of using one partition for distro 1 and another partition for distro 2/windows etc.

[The Liquidator]

Re: severe installation issues

As you are new to this you might not know that kubuntu is fundamentally ubuntu running kde.
I know this is following the line of least resistance (and is a bit of a cop-out). As you can install ubuntu why don't you do that and then download the kubuntu-desktop package from within your working installation? That will give you a kde desktop. You will also have gnome as well which you can remove later if you wish.