Executive summary:
Once an installation (from a thumb drive with persistence) goes bad, it can work the next time if (only if) the thumb drive is reflashed. Errors, inaccurate settings, and incorrectly recorded data seem to be introduced through the persistence implementation. The errors don't show up on the install screen and they don't ever go away. So, reflash and restart the installation.
--- End executive summary
I spent three days hammering away at this one, and now I believe I have data that proves that there are problems that exist in the way the installer's partitioning portion of the installation inaccurately records the partition information which gets maintained from session to session when booting from a live thumb drive.
What am I saying?
Running from a thumb drive, once the install starts going south, stop what you're doing, reflash your thumb drive, and start all over again. The errors that stop the thumb drive install (with persistence) won't go away, nor are they displayed on the screen accurately, so stop, recreate a virgin thumb drive with persistence, and begin again. That's what worked for me, two different times, once I figured out where the problem existed.
Next time, I might even consider creating the thumb drive without any persistence, since it seems to be something in the persistence implementation that's not working right, something elusive which raised its ugly head and kept me from being able to install the LL 5.2 for three days.
From the installation partitioning portion of the software, it'll show an incorrect partition type, and yet it looks like it appears to be reporting it correctly... when it's not. That was really, really frustrating.
Quitting out of the installer and running gparted would show different partition formats--that was the nail in the coffin. I ran gparted and it showed a partition with an ntsf format, but opening the installer it displayed an edi format for the same partition. Weird. At this point, I was getting odd error messages during the attempted installation, saying that some of my partitions weren't able to mount. Frustrating again.
I cannot say it's the installer, or if it's the Rufus 2.8 I used to create the install thumb drive that's introducing the problem or problems.
The MD5 checksums of the DLed .iso file checked out, but when I ran the MD5 checksums from the thumb drive--which is does on every startup--it reported that there was an error in one of the files. I wasn't able to find out which file it was that held the error. The thumb drive had a full compliment of write and read tests done to confirm that it was a viable device.
I'm hoping, of course, that by reporting this that it can help others nail down their installation problems.
