When I read that calmares and lvm do not work, I made the assumption that it would not install lvm from scratch. So I set up lvm on an 1.0ghz eeebox ith 4 GB via Debian and the install failed from the beginning. My assumption was that I could install to a set up lvm.
There is also the possibility that it is aging hardware.
I can go back and wipe the ssd clean and try again. It was time to start new, my / was 9gb in 2013.
So does calmares not install lvm, or does not install onto a lvm formated disk or both of these?
EDIT: Lot of long days in residential care. The borkage of going from the initial screen to the install via the usb caused a drop down to a tty with the complaint of squashfs not being accessible from /dev/sdb occured via a lvm set up and also on a standard ext4 set up base.
That was solved via trying cp instead of dd. I changed from apt-get to apt and it appears I will change from dd to cp for formatting isos onto usb sticks. peace out.