Installation crash

[citrange]

First time user of any Linux. Just for fun, I decided to try Linux Lite to see if it could breathe new life into a very old Windows XP Acer Travelmate laptop, rather than bin it.
Originally a Travelmate 242lc, but slightly upgraded with a Pentium4 2.8; 40GB HDD; 1250MB RAM.
Various attempts to install failed. Tried to run Gparted iso. This failed until I tried an old version which worked fine and I deleted all old partitions.
Linux Lite installer then proceeded - but only if I used the inbuilt partition manager to do 'something else' which was make a single large 39GB root partition, followed by 800MB swap.
So, the process is very slow with this processor and drive. Each attempt takes about 3 hours to reach the crash point.
Copying files completes, Configuring System locales crashes at configuring time zone; no bug report appears when crash window is closed (message says it should!)
Time shown in bios boot screen kept reverting to default, so changed CMOS battery as found to be almost flat, but that made no difference to install crash.
Any suggestions?

[TheDead]

Have you tried installing without changing language or local?
Also try without checking the "updates" or "third party software" on install.

Are you installing from DVD or USB key? If the computer can boot from USB, I found it quite faster most of the time but also bypassed a defective media or DVD drive.

Cheers!

[citrange]

Installing from DVD - no USB boot available.
Language and location seem to come up correctly selected to Uk, London - so just continue.
Yes, - I don't check updates or software.
Tried beta 3.8 and crashes at same place.
I know it said somewhere 15GB is final installed size, but could 40GB drive be too small to work during installation?

[CSNLinux]

Tried LL3.6?
I'm on an old Windows Vista laptop. LL3.6 installed from cd/rom No problems!

[bitsnpcs]

I know it said somewhere 15GB is final installed size, but could 40GB drive be too small to work during installation?

I can confirm that LL 3.2 32Bit installed and worked fine on 40GB hdd, P4 with 1GB Ram.

[TheDead]

Don't use the beta. Use 3.6 for now. Also, use the 32 bits version and CHECK the downloaded ISO, your file could be corrupted / incomplete.

I'm guessing you tried "erase disk completely" during install already?

40GB is fine, (I tested LL3.6 x32 in VM with 8GB HDD )
Main partition should be MBR (MS-DOS) table and primary partition format ext4
Could be unrelated, but, usually swap partition should be at least the size of your RAM. If want to hibernate your PC I think this is 1.5x or 2x RAM amount.
ADD : AH! found it, it depend on RAM amount, see here - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq
For you anything between 2560MB and 3072MB swap will be enough (with hibernation).

As for booting from USB, have your tried it? Some old laptops can and others not. This should show in the BIOS / boot priority.

Good luck!

[citrange]

I have continued to work on this. I have increased HDD size to have 55GB unallocated before start of install, so this is definitely not a problem.
I am installing LL alone. Still crashes at configuring timezone.
After installer crashes, LL is still running in live mode. At this point, tried setting timezone using
sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

This returns current local and universal time correctly, followed by

debconf: Dbdriver "config": could not write /var/cache/debconf/config.dat-new: No space left on device
Warning: unable to close filehandle $fh properly: No space left on device at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/DbDriver.pm line 55.

Does this mean something to anyone? Does this explain the install crash? Can this 'space' be increased before an install? Can the install's TimeZone setting be prevented?

Further info: Using GParted in live mode immediately after crash, shows installation has created partitions as follows:
sda1  ext4 54.66Gb with 50.04Gb unused
sda2  extended 1.23GB
  sda5 linux-swap 1.23GB with 736MB unused

Thanks for any assistance!

[citrange]

Well, I don't really know how, but the problem is solved after very many attempts
Just kept trying anything that seemed relevant.
Eventually, after another bios reset, and slightly different partition arrangement under installers 'something else', it all worked a dream.
It was obvious from start of this install it was all running much faster. The install 'copying files' went from 2hours down to 20 mins, and nothing crashed.
Now updating and waiting to learn about Linux Lite in action.

[TheDead]

Nice!
Maybe the harddrive was in "compatible" mode instead of AHCI or memory remap feature gave trouble... I dunno, but Grats on your install!

One distro to rule them all! Mouahaha!