Interesting that a permissions problem could cause this. This seems like something way worse than what is really is. Sort of like life sometimes I guess.

Lion is now installed on my machine. Two previous failed installations. After each failed installation I ran disk verify from the original sl disk in the cd drive. I had to erase and reformat the drive and restore from time machine.

The successful installation: I ran disk verify before the lion install and from the cd. No errors. But then I also ran permissions verify and repaired any issues. Then I re downloaded and installed Lion with success.

There had been no reported permissions issue previously but verify found issues. Don’t know if this is the issue on my machine but fixing it preceded the successful installation of Lion. Perhaps it will help some one else.

via.