[02:35] <xubuntu81i> I'm installing xubuntu 19.10, and it's been at the step that says "saving installed packages" for about 4 hours now.  Is that normal?
[02:38] <Bashing-om> xubuntu81i: Nope, not the norm - should be but a matter of minutes. Did you verify the .iso and the copy of the .iso to the install medium ?
[02:39] <xubuntu81i> I don't think I did, no... let me see what I can find out...
[02:41] <Bashing-om> xubuntu81i: See: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM ; https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/CDIntegrityCheck .
[02:41] <xubuntu81i> What's the easiest way to do that?  I still have access to the downloaded xubuntu-19.10-desktop-amd64.iso file, along with some other files that I'm pretty sure I downloaded from the same place at the same time: MD5SUMS, SHA1SUMS, SHA256SUMS, MD5SUMS.gpg, SHA1SUMS.gpg, and SHA256SUMS.gpg
[02:41] <xubuntu81i> you replied while I was typing; let me check out what you sent
[02:45] <xubuntu81i> md5sum -c MD5SUMS responds with: xubuntu-19.10-desktop-amd64.iso: OK
[02:54] <xubuntu81i> I wrote the iso image to an SD card, and I'm in the middle of installing from it, but I'm also in the "try xubuntu" part of the boot process, so I can also go to /cdrom and run commands.  "md5sum --quiet -c md5sum.txt" reported no errors.
[02:56] <xubuntu81i> In the install window, the message "Saving installed packages..." has a triange next to it; clicking on the triangle made a little console window visible.  Near the very top is this line:
[02:59] <xubuntu81i> Well, it's not letting me copy text from it very easily, but the first few lines are timestamped "Feb 4 23:21:54", which is probably UTC...
[03:00] <xubuntu81i> ...and the more recent lines near the bottom are timestamped "Feb 5 02:48:55", and they're still coming, although pretty slowly.
[03:00] <xubuntu81i> so, about 3 hours so far
[03:01] <xubuntu81i> the last line is "Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1'
[03:05] <xubuntu81i> The only fancy thing I did during the install process was partition the disk myself, creating one partition each for /, /boot, /tmp, /home, /opt, /srv, /usr, /usr/local, /var, and swap.
[03:07] <xubuntu81i> The only filesystem mounted right now is the one for /, and it's only 1% full.
[03:09] <well_laid_lawn> well /boot /tmp /home /usr will need to accessable for the install to finish
[03:09] <xubuntu81i> Maybe I shouldn't do this during an install, but gparted shows that all the partitions I created still have plenty of free space.
[03:11] <xubuntu81i> What do you mean by "accessible"?  Do they need to be mounted or not mounted?  The installed asked me permission to unmount them all before starting, and that's how they are now.
[03:12] <xubuntu81i> ("the installer asked me permission")
[03:14] <xubuntu81i> This might be related -- when I use gparted to create partitions, it allows me the option to align each partition to Cylinder, MiB, or None.  Does that choice matter?
[03:15] <xubuntu81i> I left them all aligned to MiB.
[03:16] <xubuntu81i> ...and they're all ext4 except for the swap partition.
[03:19] <Bashing-om> xubuntu81i: GPT partitoning ? then a ESP partiton is also required.
[03:20] <xubuntu81i> nope -- old-fashioned partitioning with 3 primaries and an extended with several logicals -- and it is not a solid-state drive.
[03:21] <Bashing-om> xubuntu81i: So much then for that thought :(
[03:21] <xubuntu81i> msdos partition table
[03:26] <xubuntu81i> Is this true, even on a spinning-disk drive?  "The Cylinder/Head/Sector values reported by modern disk devices no longer have a direct physical relationship to the data stored on the disk device. Hence it is no longer valid to use this alignment setting to achieve enhanced performance. "
[03:26] <xubuntu81i> quote from https://gparted.sourceforge.io/display-doc.php?name=help-manual#gparted-specify-partition-alignment
[03:31] <xubuntu81i> Well, if it really "should be but a matter of minutes", then it sounds like it would be a more effective use of my time to abort the installation and try again.  Thanks for responding to my questions.