Ubuntu installation stuck on Deactivating Swap

Question

This is my first time installing Ubuntu, and it has been stuck on Deactivating Swap for the past 9 hours.

Can anyone help me?

Answer 1

it shouldn't take more than 9 seconds, let alone 9 hours!

I don't recall ever seeing a "deactivating swap" message, but I assume it happens after partition selection and right before repartitioning / reformatting the disk. I also assume this happens while you are trying to install? The only reason I can think of is that there already exists a swap partition on your disk, the system is already using it, and somehow it's failing to deactivate it.

To fix this, boot Ubuntu again, and when you reach the screen where you get a choice between trying and installing, just select "try". When everything is running, start a terminal window (on plain ubuntu, use the search bar to search for "terminal" and click on it; on kubuntu run "konsole" from the start menu; on anything else you're on your own :) ).

Type sudo parted. You'll see somehting like:

GNU Parted 3.2
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) 

then type print. You'll see something like:

Number  Start   End    Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  248GB  248GB   primary   ext4            boot
 2      248GB   256GB  8520MB  extended
 5      248GB   256GB  8520MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)

Note the number of the swap partition. In this case, it's 5, but yours may be different. Type rm 5 (or whatever the swap partition is) and then quit to leave parted. Reboot. With no swap partition on the disk, there will be no reason to try to activate and then deactivate swap.

Let us know if this worked.