[Bug 1897970] Re: critical failure at end of install

[Steve Langasek]

Notably, you state that there is a 'critical error' at the end of the
install with no further information.  This does not give us any
information that would help us debug this situation.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1897970

Title:
  critical failure at end of install

Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  I am a newb who used "sfill" to wipe (by overwriting) all the unused space on the harddrive...I didn't use the attribute -f (for fast)...so it worked for like 15 hours doing 38 passes.  So I woke up this morning and saw that the hard drive had zero space.  Based on my experience with Windows, that was good.  It fills up the entire drive in Windows and it gives a warning when it's almost full.  So I woke up and a message said that the hard drive was almost full and it gave me the option to abort or ignore and continue.  I ignored and continued, knowing that the "sfill" operation was almost finished.  So the hard drive kept showing "0 bytes / 500 GB" or whatever...always 0 bytes.  I waited for a solid 2 hours.  When it gets to that point with my software in Windows it will be done in about 5 minutes.  So after 2 hours I just rebooted (it still showed 0 bytes available).
  The reboot failed.  I was stuck with a blank black screen with a blinking cursor.
  I tried to find the problem online, the black screen with the cursor at top is very well known, but all the reasons that caused others to get it didn't seem to directly apply...but my gut is that it has to do with partitions and what not.
  I then tried to go into the Ubuntu tools for a "bios" boot (the menu one gets on first booting...Ubuntu has like a "safe" mode...sorry for the wrong terminology...as I've said I'm inexperienced with Ubuntu.
  I performed all the tools.  I forget exactly what's there but you'll know.  There was some kind of disk partition rebuilder...some kind of package verifier...and another one or two tools.  All ran through fine.  upon booting...it goes to the screen where you choose Ubuntu.  All the drivers load (I can tell with the hardware blinking and what not)...my screen changes to the Ubuntu driver (Ubuntu loaded driver which is, in this case, an nVidia driver (it gets extra dark when it changes over to ubuntu's OS)...so the OS basically loads...then goes to the blank screen with the flashing cursor.
  So I then get into Ubuntu with a USB boot and see that the partitions aren't mounted.  So I mount the drives (the partitions).
  AT THIS POINT I CONJECTURE I FUCKED THINGS UP WORSE BY MOUNTING THE DRIVES.  It seemed logical that they should be mounted, to me.  But I probably should have done something else that would have, in turn, mounted them as part of a larger procedure.  Again, all conjecture since I'm not familiar with Linux.
  Now when I try to boot, it goes to a screen that says "ok" to a bunch of OS booting procedures...I didn't look too closely but I think it was basically components to the OS.  It freezes at the end...it never loads the OS.  No cursor...no control.  So I load up Windows (this is a dual boot system, of course)...and I delete all the partitions related to Ubuntu.  I figured the "sfill" operation (by me quitting it before it could finish up its operations...by the way, if that were to happen in Windows, the system doesn't crash like this.  I mean, what if my power went out and it wasn't just me being stupid?  There are lots of reasons the operation could have ended prematurely....shit, the thing was going for 14+ hours.  A lot can happen in 14 hours...so the OS should be designed to protect itself from 3rd party software that does this.  I use "Folder Lock" in Windows and they allow to wipe the blank space, just like "sfill"...I've ended the operation the same way (where it showed 0 bytes available) and Windows didn't fail, I think the "inodes" can be rebuilt if they direct toward blank space in Windows...but Ubuntu relies on the 3rd party software reconstructing basic functionality...that seems to be a design flaw, imho..
  I know you must be rolling your eyes, but if you could email me an explanation of what I should have done (other than "you should have been more patient and let sfill finish"...I mean, after it failed when I rebooted (I closed the terminal and it warned that an operation was still going before I restarted the computer through the OS.)  The moment it went to that blank black screen...what should I have done to fix this?  Now, even after deleted the partitions in Windows, this still fails.  I don't know what I'm going to do.  I really don't want to reformat the entire hard drive and lose all my Windows files.  It's very frustrating.  Admittedly, I shouldn't have prematurely ended sfill...but jesus christ, how does that one thing destroy my ability to reload the OS?  That's crazy.  I like Linux control, but part of being stable is being able to rebound from, say, a power outage (assuming everyone is perfect and does everything exactly the way a Linux power user would like)...I don't know, if it's not for the masses, then I'll quit before I really got started, but philosophically I like the concept of Linux.  
  So then I use a boot USB and get into Ubuntu and look at the disks...I decide to just reinstall Ubuntu....I tried twice (after I deleted the partitions in Windows (so it was unallocated space...like half the hard drive is allocated to Windows (which, of course, I didn't delete those partitions)...and the other half is now "unallocated" or I think Linux calls it "free space".  It still gives a critical error at the very end of the installation process.

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