Magento installation stuck at 60 or 70%

[amulheirn]

I've seen some others with this problem, but tried the suggested solutions and not been able to fix my issue.

Symptoms:

Web-based installer runs through to 60 or 70% complete, then proceeds no further.  Seems to stop at slightly different point each time.

Cancelling the web-based installer after waiting a few hours, I discover that there is a site at http://hostname/magento, but all the CSS is missing.     And when I go to look at the admin console, it gives me a not found error.

CLI-based installation using ./bin/magento goes through to completion.  However the results when I try to look at the shop front end and admin interface are the same as above.

Here is the admin interface error:

Not Found

The requested URL /magento/admin was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

---

Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu) Server at shop.hostname.co.uk Port 80

Environment:

Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS

Apache2   2.4.18

PHP  7.0  with ini file in /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini     (7.0.8-0ubuntu0.16.04.3)

Mysql 5.7.12-0ubuntu1.1

Host is configured with a fully qualified domain name. 
PHP ini file has been set with the following changes:

- max_file_uploads = 200

- max_execution_time = 18000

- memory_limit = 2048M

The server is my own dedicated one.  Apache runs as www-data.   I have a separate user who owns the installation.  This user is also a member of the www-data group.

I have set up the PHPinfo.php file and can supply that if needed.

NTP is configured and working.

PHPMyadmin is installed and working.  I have created a database for the installation too.

I changed the ownership of the files and directories by following the 'two user' section of this page:

http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.1/install-gde/prereq/zip_install.html#perms-over

The last error in /var/logs/apache2/error.log is this:

[Wed Nov 09 11:07:03.917149 2016] [:error] [pid 2006] [client 192.168.22.107:61084] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught PDOException: SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'magento.store_website' doesn't exist in /var/www/html/magento/vendor/magento/zendframework1/library/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php:228\nStack trace:\n#0 /var/www/html/magento/vendor/magento/zendframework1/library/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php(228): PDOStatement->execute(Array)\n#1 /var/www/html/magento/vendor/magento/framework/DB/Statement/Pdo/Mysql.php(95): Zend_Db_Statement_Pdo->_execute(Array)\n#2 /var/www/html/magento/vendor/magento/zendframework1/library/Zend/Db/Statement.php(303): Magento\\Framework\\DB\\Statement\\Pdo\\Mysql->_execute(Array)\n#3 /var/www/html/magento/vendor/magento/zendframework1/library/Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php(480): Zend_Db_Statement->execute(Array)\n#4 /var/www/html/magento/vendor/magento/zendframework1/library/Zend/Db/Adapter/Pdo/Abstract.php(238): Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->query('SELECT `main_ta...', Array)\n#5 /var/www/html/magento/vendor/magento/framework/DB/Adapter/Pdo/Mysql.php(459): Zend_Db_Adapter_Pdo_Abstract- in /var/www/html/magento/vendor/magento/zendframework1/library/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php on line 235

I'm at a bit of a loss now.  Can anyone help me with:

1. Other things I could try?

2. The location of any more useful error logs?

Kind regards

Andrew

[amulheirn]

I just installed a fresh Ubuntu Server on a more powerful machine.  Setup went through all the way to completion this time on the web interface.

However, as before, the Admin URL does not exist, and the front-end URL has content but no CSS.

I can only assume that maybe I am using too new a version of Ubuntu, PHP or something else maybe.   I may try Ubuntu 14 instead.

[amulheirn]

Another update:

I tried the same procedure above on Ubuntu 14 LTS.  Had to upgrade PHP and MySQL a bit to comply with the technology stack requirements.  However the result was the same.

In the end, I fixed it.  I realised that although the user was in the www-data group, the install directory was not writable by the CLI user.   The pre-installation checks on the web intaller seemed to pass OK, but obviously it couldn't write something.

So I did something like 'chmod g+w <installdirectory>' and then I was able to write files in there.  Re-ran the installation, and it worked fine.   

I had been avoiding doing this because I'd read somewhere that writability by the web server user was a security risk

Hope this episode helps someone else.

Andrew