(SOLVED) Install falls over at bootloader time

[besonian]

I've had this happen now three times (2 using LXDE, one using Xfce) - on two different motherboards and with two different burns - one two days ago and burned at lowest speed - of Xfce4. All goes perfectly until it comes to the time of writing the bootloader - you know, the bit where it says' this may take a few minutes'! At that point on all three occasions, the system has simply hung - for ever. The only way I've found of un-freezing this is the skinny elephant ploy. That reboots it. But then of course, there being no bootloader, it won't boot. So then I'm back to square one. Or does someone know a way forward from there? Has anyone else hit this problem? And if so, what was your way out of it?

[AS]

Hello besonian,

this issue has been already reported several times, on some hardware, for unknown reason, the process is slow at time of grub installation (which really imply a rebuild of the initrd image, this process is the one taking a lot of time).

However, although the process is very slow (half an hour up to one hour in extreme cases) later will complete. The one hour report was related to a very old/low ram computer.

Additionally, because we are looking at this issue trying to identify the root cause, it could be helpful to exactly know which PCLinuxOS versions do you used,
and which hardware you are trying to install.

If you don't have already done, retry the installation an wait at least half an hour. Additionally, instead to start the installation process from menu/icon,
start a root console, and type in "draklive-install", this will provide some additional info about what is going on.

AS

[besonian]

as - my apologies - I didn't find anything relating to this in the forum. I was obviously looking in the wrong place. In all cases this was with older mobos and older processors. I'll look soon again at the one I was writing about and post here the details you ask for. I'll then go on and attempt to install Xfce once again and wait patiently when the moment arrives! 

[besonian]

as - OK - here's details of the latest system I've had this problem on.

Motherboard - ASUS A7N8X-X
CPU - Athlon 2400+ Thoroughbred
RAM - 1gb DDR
Hard drive - IDE Maxtor 80gb

The version of PCLOS is the latest Xfce, downloaded and burned (at the slowest speed) two days ago. I'll try another install very soon using the root terminal and will report back. Many thanks for your help on this.

[besonian]

as - as you said, leave it alone - in my case for about forty minutes - and it does what it has to do with the bootloader. It's all installed, updated (not upgraded), up and running and seems stable. But it's late here now in the UK and I'm away to my bed. I'll give it a good testing tomorrow. Thank you  again for your help.

[AS]

as - as you said, leave it alone - in my case for about forty minutes - and it does what it has to do with the bootloader. It's all installed, updated (not upgraded), up and running and seems stable. But it's late here now in the UK and I'm away to my bed. I'll give it a good testing tomorrow. Thank you  again for your help.

Glad it worked!

AS