installation stuck on GRUB writing

[2009tester]

i tried to install on VBox.
It took 2.5 hours to reach GRUB installation stage.
(why does it take so long?)

i waited 15 mins to complete GRUB writing.
There was no outcome. Saying only istalling GRUB.
Lost hopes, thinking GRUB is installed.
I quited installation.
Wrong it was not installed.

How can I write GRUB now?
Have I wasted 2.5 hours?

[philm]

Frist of all: Manjaro installation takes only 15 Min tops. On a virtualbox I install it even faster. Either you have a really old machine or something else went wrong. I need more details to help you:

* which install-media have you used
* did you check it with the provided checksums
* we offer two installers, which one have you used
* you can always restore your bootloader

[mips]

If you used the newer 0.8.2 images with the stable installer I can confirm that I experienced the same issue last night. I tried installing again using the newer testing installer and that worked fine.

[2009tester]

i used live cd iso manjaro-xfce-0.8.1-i686.iso
sha256 checksum is correct.
I have celeron. Which works fine with all distro installations.
I did instal many distros on VirtualBox.

Manjaro looked like compiling OS from zero.
Video drivers installation took 30 mins.
Instaler reads a CD iso and writes virtual Hard disk endlessly.
I also suspect, the desktop applet (Conky) which continuously measure CPU and memory.
Which is unnecessary during installation.
That Conky also consumes a lot of cpu power during installation.

I hope we will see a proper desktop based on ArchLinux, whose philosophy really deserves it.
A few months ago I tested Arch Bang. Noticed that live cd fails with 500 mb ram. But OK at 600 mb ram.
I did not understand how Archbangers managed to consume ram with that simple desktop !!!

I will try to revive my Manjaro installation with grub. Wl let u know.
Thanks for the response.

[2009tester]

Good n bad news.
I hv reinstalled grub as philm advised at the link above.

1. try. Ram 500 mb
Virtual disk booted up. Conky appeared. But no task bar.
Right click menu worked.

2. try boot. Ram 700 mb
No task bar at bottom. No Conky. Right click worked.

it is sad !!!

May be installation was bad. May be 700 mb ram is not enough.

Even though first experience was sad with Manjaro.
It is good that Manjaro has very good selection of software.
(but Conky may not be appropiate for weak boxes)

It has built in support for Virtualbox, with mouse integreation and clipboard.

It is perfect that adapts to screen resolution automatically, when Virtualbox window is resized.
Many distros unable to cope with resolution.

Manjaro developers doing good job on right track.
Failed but liked Manjaro.

[Carl]

Good n bad news.
I hv reinstalled grub as philm advised at the link above.

1. try. Ram 500 mb
Virtual disk booted up. Conky appeared. But no task bar.
Right click menu worked.

2. try boot. Ram 700 mb
No task bar at bottom. No Conky. Right click worked.

it is sad !!!

May be installation was bad. May be 700 mb ram is not enough.

Even though first experience was sad with Manjaro.
It is good that Manjaro has very good selection of software.
(but Conky may not be appropiate for weak boxes)

It has built in support for Virtualbox, with mouse integreation and clipboard.

It is perfect that adapts to screen resolution automatically, when Virtualbox window is resized.
Many distros unable to cope with resolution.

Manjaro developers doing good job on right track.
Failed but liked Manjaro.

Well, if you are looking for an install that uses super-low ram, you could always consider installing the NET-Edition. No conky or even desktop environments to worry about! Then you could install a DE such as Openbox and take it from there...

[2009tester]

verityproductions' advise does not help.
it is not a solution.
if u want Manjaro server the needs, then u should consider average computer at initioal installation.

manjaro-xfce-0.8.1-i686.iso  probably has bug with installed,
I wanted to bring it to yr attention.

During installation, unnecessary processess should be stopped (like Conky)
So the installation can go smoothly.

Even after installation, who needs constantly looking at CPU and Ram usage of the pc with conky?

[philm]

You need 1GB of ram to install it. I tested my images all the time on several locations and variations. I need more info about your settings for Virtualbox. I always set my Virtualbox-Machines with 900 MB of ram.

[Carl]

verityproductions' advise does not help.
it is not a solution.
if u want Manjaro server the needs, then u should consider average computer at initioal installation.

manjaro-xfce-0.8.1-i686.iso  probably has bug with installed,
I wanted to bring it to yr attention.

During installation, unnecessary processess should be stopped (like Conky)
So the installation can go smoothly.

Even after installation, who needs constantly looking at CPU and Ram usage of the pc with conky?

Conky can be easily switched off using the 'conky control' app in the settings menu, my friend.

However, I do appreciate you bringing this to the board's attention. Hopefully this can be looked at by the devs for the next release. My only possible solution at the moment for such little RAM is the NET installation.

Between you and me, I do suspect however that 500MB is well below the amount of RAM a average user would have, at least in the western world.

[2009tester]

Hi Philm

my pc has 1200 mb ram. So, I can allocate for Virtualbox ram 500-700 mb.
500 mb virtualram is good enough for all XFCE distros live or installed.
I failed only with Manjaro and Archbang.
Both of them Arch based distros.
(Maybe Arch unable to use swap properly)
if XFCE can not run with 500 mb ram, then distro is wrong.

In practice, XFCE works confortablely with 1 gb ram. But 500 mb can be workable if settings made properly.
OS uses swap space and handles the ram overload.
I am waiting yr new release for i686 to try.

[2009tester]

I did it.
I finally managed installing manjaro-xfce-0.8.1-i686.iso on Virtuabox.
On live CD

I hv increased ram to 650mb.
 in order to reclaim more ram:
Stopped Conky
Stopped Screen saver process (what the hell is it for on live CD?)
Stopped networking.
(May have stopped power manager too)

It took 40 mins to reach Grub stage.
Again Manjaro failed to install GRUB.

Before installing it gave an error message as below
=================================================
      - Grub2 will be installed with followed settings:               - 
      -  -> Boot partition: /dev/sda1                                 - 
      -  -> Target partition (MBR): /dev/sda                          - 
      - Is this correct? If not answer with "No" to change your       - 
      - target partition, else continue with "Yes".
=================================================
ls: cannot access /dev/md*: No such file or directory
=================================================
                   - Installing GRUB2...                  -
=================================================
it is stuck there.
I tried to reboot. I could only see word GRUB on screen .

I followed instuctions on page
http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Restore_the_GRUB_Bootloader
it worked and installed GRUB manually.

my free command showed below
$ free
=====================================================
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        641228     339988     301240          0       1024     177180
-/+ buffers/cache:     161784     479444
Swap:       530140          0     530140
=====================================================
XFCE was capaple of running in 512 mb of ram.
I hv stopped unnecessary services for  like
screensaver
Power manager
Conky.
Mixer.

My final memory footprint is
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        511840     265852     245988          0       1024     130724
-/+ buffers/cache:     134104     377736
Swap:       530140          0     530140
=====================================

in the bottom line:
Manjaro is great.
Installer should be improved
1) stop unnecessary services before running
Like Conky, Screensaver, or maybe powermanager, mixer.
2) Find the  bug with bootloader writing.

Manjaro intelligently  adjusts itself to screen resolution. (other distros unable to do that)
But fails to adjust itself to user RAM capacity.

I hope these issues will be considered by developers.

Thanking you for this great work.
Cheers

[philm]

Try the testing installer. I use a different approach there ... Also it supports syslinux as bootloader ...

[2009tester]

Hi Pilm

After trying xfce on virtualbox sometime,
I decided to install Manjaro on my netbook with ram 1gb.
I used the new 0.82 xfce version on desktop. I selected old installer.
It went all fast but failed again ag GRUB writing. stuck there.
I tried to write grub manually as per above link suggested. I failed.
I used existing partitions sda1 for MBR and root partition.
No like default, which sets a seperate partition for mbr.

I tried to install second time.
used txt screen, and testing installer.
It went OK and installed all with MBR.

I hv and issue with pacman-browser.
it gives error while reading database.
I will open a new topic for it, though I did report the error.

Try the testing installer. I use a different approach there ... Also it supports syslinux as bootloader ...

[philm]

So testing-installer solved the issue for you. So you managed to install Manjaro and this thread can be marked as solved?

[2009tester]

Yes, we can say GRUB writing error is solved in( testing installer) of 0.82.
Thanks for the help.