Stuck on installing boot loader

On my oldest systems (10 or 12+ years, only 4 Gigs of RAM, slow processor) upgrades take whole night. If something goes wrong (trouble with mirror sites, ISP, …), the process extends through the morning.

That was my point to @danielsm about the installation taking time. Even if the files have been written to the drive it still takes quite some time for the configuration and the boot loader install as well as other overhead. In my experience that screen he showed hangs at the point shown until the remaining part of the configs are done. the progress bar does not actually follow the installation progress properly.

This is the output. I don’t really understand how to interpret it.

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Phison Driven SSDs
Device Model:     KINGSTON SA400S37240G
Serial Number:    50026B73805B152A
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0026b7 3805b152a
Firmware Version: S1Z40102
User Capacity:    240.057.409.536 bytes [240 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    Solid State Device
TRIM Command:     Available
Device is:        In smartctl database 7.3/5528
ATA Version is:   ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 4
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.2, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 1.5 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Fri Sep  1 22:20:55 2023 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00)	Offline data collection activity
					was never started.
					Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)	The previous self-test routine completed
					without error or no self-test has ever 
					been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection: 		(  120) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x11) SMART execute Offline immediate.
					No Auto Offline data collection support.
					Suspend Offline collection upon new
					command.
					No Offline surface scan supported.
					Self-test supported.
					No Conveyance Self-test supported.
					No Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0002)	Does not save SMART data before
					entering power-saving mode.
					Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
					General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (  10) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       100
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1757
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1275
148 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
149 Unknown_Attribute       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
167 Write_Protect_Mode      0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
168 SATA_Phy_Error_Count    0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       4
169 Bad_Block_Rate          0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
170 Bad_Blk_Ct_Lat/Erl      0x0000   100   100   010    Old_age   Offline      -       0/0
172 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
173 MaxAvgErase_Ct          0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
181 Program_Fail_Count      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
182 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Unsafe_Shutdown_Count   0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       435
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   042   063   000    Old_age   Always       -       42 (Min/Max 26/63)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
199 SATA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
218 CRC_Error_Count         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       4
231 SSD_Life_Left           0x0000   091   091   000    Old_age   Offline      -       91
233 Flash_Writes_GiB        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       7348
241 Lifetime_Writes_GiB     0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       5124
242 Lifetime_Reads_GiB      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       7283
244 Average_Erase_Count     0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       99
245 Max_Erase_Count         0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       140
246 Total_Erase_Count       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       48852

SMART Error Log Version: 1
Warning: ATA error count 0 inconsistent with error log pointer 4

ATA Error Count: 0
	CR = Command Register [HEX]
	FR = Features Register [HEX]
	SC = Sector Count Register [HEX]
	SN = Sector Number Register [HEX]
	CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX]
	CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX]
	DH = Device/Head Register [HEX]
	DC = Device Command Register [HEX]
	ER = Error register [HEX]
	ST = Status register [HEX]
Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as
DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes,
SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.

Error -4 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 0 hours (0 days + 0 hours)
  When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

  After command completion occurred, registers were:
  ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
  -- -- -- -- -- -- --
  04 51 00 00 00 00 a0

  Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
  CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
  -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
  27 00 00 00 00 00 e0 08      00:00:00.000  READ NATIVE MAX ADDRESS EXT [OBS-ACS-3]
  ef 10 02 00 00 00 a0 08      00:00:00.000  SET FEATURES [Enable SATA feature]
  ef 10 03 00 00 00 a0 08      00:00:00.000  SET FEATURES [Enable SATA feature]
  ef 03 42 00 00 00 a0 08      00:00:00.000  SET FEATURES [Set transfer mode]
  b0 d5 01 01 4f c2 00 08      00:00:00.000  SMART READ LOG

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

Then I suppose that the installation process is working fine and that the problem might be the SSD.

Hello @danielsm ,
I had this problem on a Lenovo laptop I was reclaiming from my business activities and decided to install Fedora Silverblue onto it. I found that my EFI partition was of adequate size and had ample available space, as well as the boot partition being large enough. I searched around and found something on stack exchange that clued me in. A user was describing their problem which seemed to be mine too, though it was about Debian. In their solution they found their efivars area was over flowing with files that had the word DUMP in them along with a large uuid number and some other strings. They deleted them and could continue with their install/upgrade. I used the install media to boot into rescue mode, then mounted the root file system of my machine into a temp dir. I found a whole bunch of these files with the word “DUMP” included in their name. I deleted all of those files but NOTHING else since this is an area of firmware that fwupd would write to and if you delete too much a brick could result. After that I was able to complete the install without problem. I’m not sure but I think this is more of a BIOS bug than an OS bug. This is the location on my system of efivars … /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

see above, the wiki link “Self-monitoring, Analysis …”

scroll down, you’ll find the “ID’s” such as e.g. “Raw_Read_Error_Rate” and what they mean.

anyway, your disk looks healthy to me