A couple weeks later I decided to see if the same messages came up, but only got a short list, ending with something about not being able to do something to "root fs on unknown block(8, 18)." One kind soul tried to help me with that, but still no luck.
I had previously been able to mount the partition where I had almost installed 15.10 on a strange place in my sdb1 Ubuntu 12.04, using Disk Utility, and look at the folders and files. But when I took a look at sdb2 a couple of days ago, Disk Utility told me the partition had nothing in it!
So, I reformatted sdb2 and went through the procedure for installing MATE detailed by Christian. Got the old failure to detect disks message after step 20. For some reason, I tried it again, and this time my disks were found, and I was able to set up /dev/sdb2 properly and procede with the installation. After an hour or so of downloading and installing that seemed to be going perfectly, I rebooted and tried launching from CFE, and got a bunch of error messages and a promise to reboot in "180 seconds." (Liar!) When I tried again, maybe with a different kernel, I got a long bunch of messages like I had a month ago, but I got the crazy idea of tryiing to launch a CLI, and it worked!
So I am tantalizingly, frustratingly, close to having a working Ubuntu MATE.AmigaX1000 login: bart
Password:
The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.
ata2.00: exception Emask 0x50 SActd 0x3000 SErr 0x680900 action 0x6 frozen
ata2.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error
ata2: SError: { UnrecoveData HostInt 10B8B BadCRC Handshk }
ata2.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
ata2.00: cmd 60/f8:60:f3:fa:60/00:00:12:00/40 tag 12 ncq 126976 in
res 40/f8:60:f3:fa:60/00:00:12:00/40 Emask 0x50 (ATA bus error)
ata2.00: status: { DRDY }
ata2.00: cmd 60/08:68:eb:fb:60/00:00:12:00/40 tag 13 ncq 4096 in
res 40/f8:60:f3:fa:60/00:00:12:00/40 Emask 0x50 (ATA bus error)
ata2.00: status: { DRDY }
To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.
bart@AmigaOneX1000:~$ _
I am able to use "ls." My Home folder was empty but root ("ls /") seems to be well populated, although there are a few empty folders. I created a Downloads folder in my home directory, just to see if I could. I can create text files with vi. I tried to run Firefox, was told I would have to install it first, so I did (sudo apt-get). And then when I tried to run it the complaint was something like that there was no display assigned to it.
Both times that I have made it all the way through the installation procedure, it ended with the odd suggestion that I boot it with "boot_debian 'ramdisk -max- 20000000 stat0.0:/boot/initrd'; boot sata0.0:/boot/vmlinuz". That certainly doesn't look right, so I booted with the normal "root=/dev/sdb2" and "boot -elf -noints -fatfs <kernel>" commands. But if wonder if that strange suggestion suggests I did something wrong along the way?
In any event, if my install isn't working because it is missing something, I am sure I could akpt-get it if only I knew what is missing.