Message box with black forbidden icon and ??? ??? appears during Edubuntu installation

Question

I have been getting the following uninformative error message when trying to install Edubuntu 14.04 64-bit:

The situation is as follows:

• Booted to the live CD (the try without installing option since I wanted to check the filesystem first)
• From there selected the install option on the desktop.
• Everything went fine until the "installation type" screen (the one where you select how you want to install Ubuntu). I selected Erase disk and install and clicked Next
• The map showed up (next screen), but before I could click anything, the above error appeared. Clicked OK, and the installer froze, before backing up to the installation type screen.
• Made the same selections, it completed this time, but showed the same error on the language selection screen (after the map) and it wouldn't let me click anything.

I tried restarting and using the real install option, but the same issue occurred. What could be causing this error?

Note: The partitioner does make changes to the partition table. Just non-sensical ones that make the disk full of partitions labeled stuff like "/dev/mapper/isw_bahegcihdc_Volume0"

Edit: It appears to be a RAID configuration in a laptop. I have no experience with RAID whatsoever. I don't care if the configuration is conserved, I just want to install Ubuntu. Here is the disk utility window. How should I proceed?

Answer 1

dmraid was replaced by mdadm for handling fake RAID in Ubuntu 14.04. Fake RAID is software RAID provided by the BIOS on the motherboard. Here are the step-by-step instructions for solving the error of the message box that shows a forbidden icon and a group of question marks.

1. Boot the Ubuntu installation disk and choose Try Ubuntu.
2. Connect to the internet if not already connected to the internet automatically.

3. Open the terminal and type:

   sudo dmraid -a n
   sudo apt install mdadm
   

   This will disable dmraid and install mdadm.

4. You will be prompted with postfix configuration. Choose No Configuration.

5. To automatically recognize your Fake RAID, run:

   sudo mdadm --assemble --scan

6. Click the desktop icon to run the Ubuntu installer.

7. Choose Install Ubuntu.
8. Choose to partition manually and create an ext4 partition mounted as / and a swap partition.
9. When choosing where to write the bootloader, choose the volume mounted as /.
10. Proceed with the installation. Note: The installer will fail to write GRUB.
11. Reboot the Ubuntu installation disk and choose Try Ubuntu again.
12. Connect to the internet.
13. Install Boot Repair and run it. It will guide you on fixing the bootloader and rewriting GRUB.

This answer was originally posted on Ask Ubuntu by Dean.

Answer 2

I'm going to answer the question in the sense of not using raid anymore. If somebody wants to post an answer about how to get it to work using raid, please do.

Essentially, you just have to disable raid from the bios, otherwise ubuntu gets very confused as to what's what. In this perticular bios, you have to make it "show raid options" and then press ctrl+i at boot to get into the raid config. From there you can reset everything to non-raid and you will then be able to select one of 2 disks to install on.