Lubuntu 12.10 on AMD Athlon 1800+ XP and 1GB RAM: installation crashes

[Leszek Lesner]

Am Sonntag, 16. Juni 2013, 05:29:43 schrieb Iberê Fernandes:
> 2013/6/16 Nio Wiklund <nio.wiklund at gmail.com>
> 
> > Hi Iberę,
> > 
> > I don't know why this happens for you, but I have a few tips and
> > work-arounds.
> > 
> > 1. Is there a good swap partition on the internal HDD? If not, make one
> > with gparted, when running a live session of for example Ubuntu 10.04 or
> > Lubuntu 12.10. Reboot and check that is used by the live session alias
> > the install CD. Swap should make the installer happier.
> > 
> > 
> > 2. Remove the internal HDD and install any distro or version (10.04 is
> > OK) to get a starting point, when it is connected to another computer,
> > either internally or for example via a USB to IDE and SATA adapter. But
> > you can also install Lubuntu 12.04, 12.10 or 13.04, maybe as multiboot.
> > 
> > As long as you avoid proprietary drivers it should be portable. In other
> > words, it should work, when you move it back to the old computer. You
> > may need some boot option.
> > 
> > 3. I have an old computer with an Asus mobo and a AMD processor (but
> > somewhat newer than yours). It can boot from USB, but does not recognize
> > it as USB, only as one of the HDDs. So when the USB drive is plugged in,
> > I can change the boot order of the HDDs in the BIOS to boot from USB.
> > 
> > But once it boots internally from grub (with a linux distro) it is more
> > convenient to make a custom entry in the grub menu for that purpose: to
> > chainboot any USB drive.
> > 
> > Append this (keeping the first few lines) to /etc/grub.d/40_custom
> > 
> > menuentry "External drive (on /dev/sdb) Check with ls in grub and edit
> > if necessary" {
> > 
> >         insmod part_msdos
> >         insmod fat
> >         set root='(hd1)'
> >         drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
> >         chainloader +1
> > 
> > }
> > 
> > And finally run
> > 
> > sudo update-grub
> > 
> > to make it active.
> > 
> > 4. Lubuntu 12.10 failed to install from CD. I think chances are better
> > with Lubuntu 12.04 or Xubuntu 12.04.1 or 12.04.2
> > 
> > 5. Try with Knoppix, which is very good for old hardware. It is intended
> > to run live with persistence, "poor man's install" in Knoppix terminology.
> > 
> > Good luck :-)
> > Nio
> 
> There's 1GB of installed RAM and 3Gb of Swap was created on Gparted before
> trying to install Lubuntu 12.10 and no success with desktop iso or
> alternate iso.
> 
> Now the most strange: I've just managed to reinstall Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS
> with no problems at all. Again, this desktop is not connected to the
> internet.
> 
> Is there something with Lubuntu 12.10 desktop or Lubuntu 12.10 altenative
> installers and AMD processors?
> 
> Many times the desktop reboots even when playing on Lubuntu 12.10 LiveCD.
> 
> I'll try some of your suggestions above. I need to sleep now once it's
> 5:30am.
> 
> Thank you for your help so far!

There are only a few possible options. 
1. PAE support is falty in your CPU
2. SSE2/3 support is not present and causing issues (this btw. also should 
prevent you from using the newest flash player if you ever wanted that) 

Then of course there is also the slightest chance that either your harddrive 
or cd-rom drive / cd iso image you burned on cd might be broken
And btw. booting from USB should be possible from every computer that has a 
usb connection. You only need to have a boot cd with the ubuntu kernel and 
initrd. So creating a stick with the casper folder in it (fat32 formatted) and 
booting to the live cd (from cd) boot menu and selecting the boot option than 
waiting until kernel and initrd are loaded and forcefully ejecting the cd will 
than continue booting from usb stick if it is inserted. This is a trick that 
works for casper and live-initramfs based live systems (so both debian and 
ubuntu in that case) as they are searching for the casper/filesystem.squashfs 
file on every drive possible (even the harddrive for that matter) 

Try perhaps using the live system for a longer time and try to see if the 
hanging/freezing occurs there too. If it does try playing with the nolapic 
noapic and/or noacpi boot options. 

Hope that helps somehow