Third attempt to install 11.2 live on my netbook with three different USB sticks.
Every time it fails message reads…
Error occured while installing grub.
Grub > setup -stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 -force-lba (hd0,0)(hd0,0)
Checking if “/boot/grub/stage1” exists …no
Checking if “/grub/stage1” exists …no
Error 15 : File not found
The only exception to a normal install is that sda1 is formatted with ext2 (to avoid journaling). I have had 11.1 running on that drive for several months without problems so there is no reason to believe it’s a hardware problem.
Can I abort at this point and perhaps fix it from a live boot?
To answer my own question, “No”. After MANY attempts via USB stick and USB hard drive trying both the live distribution and the DVD install I finally found what was causing the problem. Perhaps someone else might benefit from my experience. On the recommendation of many Asus eeepc 900 forum posts telling me I shouldn’t assign a swap partition in order to reduce disk writes on the SSHD, that’s what I did. Not provide a swap partition. That is what was causing the error. I am not sure why. But after I assigned the minimum sized partition (one block) for swap the error went away and the installation completed. I then edited my /etc/fstab to not mount the swap partition and everything functions normally.
If someone can explain this I would be pleased to hear the answer.