"Unknown error" with attempts to install various Linux distros

Linux Support
1

I’ve got a number of second-hand laptops, each with a different Linux distro installed. Recently I picked up an HP Stream 11 2 GB RAM (I know, they’re rubbish, but I’ve got another and it’s perfectly fine for lightweight duty). Sold as ‘no OS’ so somehow Windows was wiped off. I can use Linux distros as ‘live’ from the USB, but when I try to install I get 'An Unknown error has occurred." Under ‘More details’ the error message starts with ‘anaconda 36.16.5 exception report…’ which strikes me as odd…could a previous owner have tried to install Anaconda? I only know I haven’t, not on this machine.
This happens regardless of the distro–Fedora, Lubuntu, PopOS, etc.

Can any one explain to me what’s going on, and how I can complete installation?

When I put fdisk -l into the terminal, here’s the output:
fdisk: cannot open /dev/mmcblk0: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/sda: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/mmcblk0boot0: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/mmcblk0boot1: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/loop0: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/loop1: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/loop2: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/mapper/live-rw: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/mapper/live-base: Permission denied
fdisk: cannot open /dev/zram0: Permission denied

and lsblk gives this:
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 7:0 0 1.8G 1 loop
loop1 7:1 0 7.6G 1 loop
├─live-rw 253:0 0 7.6G 0 dm /
└─live-base 253:1 0 7.6G 1 dm
loop2 7:2 0 32G 0 loop
└─live-rw 253:0 0 7.6G 0 dm /
sda 8:0 1 28.7G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 1 1.9G 0 part /run/initramfs/live
├─sda2 8:2 1 9.9M 0 part
└─sda3 8:3 1 20.8M 0 part
mmcblk0 179:0 0 29.1G 0 disk
mmcblk0boot0 179:8 0 4M 1 disk
mmcblk0boot1 179:16 0 4M 1 disk
zram0 252:0 0 1.8G 0 disk [SWAP]

Is the hard drive salvageable? Thanks for any advice!

2

Mmm, something isn’t happy. Can you confirm you are doing this as root or via sudo?
Further to that, can you do;

ls -la /dev/sda

So we can see what the permissions on the block device node are?
It sounds like the partition table on the devices is stuffed, maybe a wipe of the partition table would clear the issue?

3

Thanks for your reply. I did not use sudo with the commands I mentioned.
When I try ls -la /dev/sda, I get this–does it tell me anything?

brw-rw----. 1 root disk 8, 0 Mar  3 01:48 /dev/sda