Unable to install UNR on A0A 110

My Aspire One has an 8GB SSD and 1GB ram. It came with Windows XP - that's gone now. I downloaded UNR 9.10 and used UNetbootin to put it on a 1GB flash drive. I've booted the Acer with that 1GB and everything seems to run really well.

I've tried to install UNR onto the Acer at least two dozen times, if not actually more than forty, trying different methods and taking notes along the way.

First I boot off of the usb drive and go to GParted and manually delete the large unknown partition, usually about 7.1gb. Originally there was one extended partition with one linux-swap file. As the retry's continued, a second linux-swap file appeared, and then a third. Now the free space is only 6.43GB.

Once GParted is finished and closed I start Install USR 9.10. One by one I pass the Welcome, Where Are You?, and Keyboard Layout steps. After clicking Forward on the Keyboard Layout page, the "Starting up the partitioner" popup appears and almost immediately goes to 47% and sits there for about thirty seconds then it jumps to 70% (Detecting file systems...) for another ninety seconds or so. The window vanishes and the cursor just spins for another two minutes in front of the greyed out Keyboard Layout screen.

The screen changed to step 4, Prepare disk space. "Erase and use the entire disk" is preselected so I have tried that repeatedly. Then it occurred to me that if there are extended partitions then the install program cannot actually have all 8.1GB so this selection doesn't make sense to me. I choose "Use the largest contiguous free space" and click forward. A few seconds later I'm at the Who are you? step, fill everything out and am finally taken to the Ready to Install screen where I then click the install button.

The window "Starting up the partitioner" appears and almost immediately goes to 15%, and then goes to 5%, for about a eighty seconds. Under the progress bar it reads "creating ext4 filing system for / in partition #1 of SCSI2 (0,0,0) (sda)..." After about two and a half minutes a window appears:
Do you want to resume partitioning?
The attempt to mount a file system with type ext4 in SCSI2 (0,0,0), partition #1 (sda) at / failed.
You may resume partitioning from the partitioning menu.
buttons: go back and continue

If I click continue, I am returned to step 6, Prepare disk space and "Starting up the partitioner" opens and almost immediately jumps to 47% and sits there for about thirty seconds then it jumps to 70% (Detecting file systems...) and just sits there. Then I notice the red crash icon, and the error is
Sorry, the program "devkit-disks-daemon" closed unexpectedly

After I close on that, I get the error
Sorry the program "parted_server" closed unexpectedly

It is usually at this point, after waiting a half hour or more and the progress bar still at 70%, I shut the Acer down and start over.

In the Prepare disk space step I have tried some options with "Specify partitions manually" but honestly I don't know enough with the system because I keep getting an error message about not having a root partition.

Can anyone advise me with getting UNR installed onto my netbook?

Thanks!!!!!

PS I should add that I've been working on Windows machines since 1993, but have ZERO experience with Linux...

 

Sorry, I'm not sure how to help you (and I didn't read the entire post, I just skimmed it).

I can only say that it seems like you're doing everything correctly, and it *should* work. You shouldn't have any problems with the "Erase and use the entire disk" option... I think.

Maybe there was a download error when you were downloading the image for UNR, so you should make sure it has the correct MD5 hashcode. Or try downloading it again. Sorry, that's all I can suggest atm.

 

This was one of the very first things I did.

I installed Windows 7 on it just to ensure that the SSD works - which it does...

Now if only I could install UNR on it...

 

I know this will sound like lame advice, but maybe you should try UNR 9.1 or whatever the previous one was...

 

You might want to see if you can partition and format the drive while running from the USB key. If that works, then when you go to install, tell it to use the existing partition.

 

Sometimes the partition table just gets corrupted and you need to use a different tool. From the live CD you might try fdisk or cfdisk (text-based partitioning tools). You can Google or see here for a basic how-to: http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/IBM ... fdisk.html. Or you might try using Windows install media to repartition the SSD.

 

In my third paragraph I wrote: "...I boot off of the usb and go to GParted and manually delete the large unknown partition..."

Is this what you mean by

?

 

When you run the partition manager, select the advanced option.
Delete all available partitions, and create a new primary partition using the whole disk space. No swap is necessary with 1gb RAM.
Use the ext4 fs type, check 'format', and select the mount point '/'.

 

Do you mean the partition manager during the UNR install?

When I can get to Step 4, Prepare disk space, I choose "specify partitions manually (advanced)" then click forward. The next step/screen is Step 5, Prepare partitions. I double click /dev/sda and a window pops up "Create new empty partition table on this device" so I click continue.

I click on the newly created free space and select Add, then the Create partition window opens. I choose Primary partition, the whole amount of space (8068) and location beginning, ext4 journaling file system, mount point /. Then I click ok. The listing changes to
/dev/sda
/dev/sd1 ext4 / 8068mb unknown

Then I click forward and get the message about not having a swap space to which I click continue and am taken to the next step Who are you? I fill in all the fields, click forward and the next screen is Ready to install and click Install.

The installing system window appears and immediately jumps to
15%, Detecting file system...
then
5% Creating ext4 file system for / in partition #1 on SCSI2 (0,0,0) (sda)...

That's when I get the crash "Sorry, the program "devkit-disks-daemon" closed unexpectedly"

Now while I was typing that last crash name, somehow behind the error window the install continued and it showed the text "Copying files..." which was at 23%. Now as I said previously, I've tried installing UNR literally dozens of times. I've also tried debian, fedora, mandriva, opensuse, simplymepis, ubuntu, and pclinuxos. Up to now, since removing windows xp, the only operating system I could successfully install on the netbook was windows 7.

So now, in the end, I finally installed UNR on the acer but this time I didn't do anything that I hadn't already done. This means I didn't learn anything. That's not good, not at all. I really wanted to learn what the problem was (and surpass it) so I can know for next time. There's always a next time...

 

It seems to be a hardware error.
I would check the installation USB flash drive first. This new media is very unreliable and written files can be corrupted. If you have Windows, check the drive for errors by right-clicking on the drive sign.
Then, the SSD disk may have errors.

The problem with the swap disk is that it can wear out the SSD disk.

 

I'm not sure why a flash drive would be the source of the problem.

I have four flash drives, ranging from 1gb to 4gb. Some are brand name, others not. I've been repeatedly able to boot into UNR with all four of them.

Since this all started, whenever I reuse a flash drive I format it. Some of the distro's have thousands of files and it's faster to format than delete...

 

I feel your pain Paul, exactly the same story here.

I've managed to get Jolicloud installed, but Grub failed to install.
UNR will not install.
9.10 will not install.

3 different USB Keys tried. 6 or 7 different ISO's, Unetbootin, and two other USB creators.

Put this up in the Ubuntu forum, no help there at all. That's been a week.

Really pissed that I pulled XP off now. Using 9.10 on the desktop and loving it. If I find something I'll be sure to put it up.

 

Bump.

 

same problem here and no answers yet to my post. i think ssd may be dead.

 

Hey all. I've had my AOA110 for about a year now and have tried multiple OS's but am getting the same problem when trying to install 9.10 UNR, also I'm new to linux even though I've tried multiple versions...

So the SSD can wear out from being written and read from too many times??

 

I bought an new SSD 32 gig model from supertalent and all is now ok. I'ts not too difficult to fit either.

 

Gotta tag along on this thread first instead of starting a new one. I'm have major issues with my aao110. First windows got super slow. I installed UNR9.10 with no issues. Three days later, it wouldn't boot. I tried reinstalling from the same stick I'd used before and got this error:

.:1 can't open /etc/default/rcs
init:moutall main pricess (2707) terminated with status 2
Filesystem check failed.
a maintenance shell will now be started.
Control-D will terminate this shell and re-try.
froups: cannot find the name for group ID 0
root@ubuntu:~#

I got a 32GB supertalent drive and put that in----SAME THING!
what's wrong with me and my machine?!?!?!?! I just want it to work the way it was working.

Can't run live or install from usb. it hangs up with the same error both ways. Oh, and I'm a linux noob, so be nice if this is totally obvious.