Live boot from USB fails

[openmind]

Trying to install LL3.0-32 on a Dell Dimension 4100 configured with 512M RAM and 20GB HDD.  Machine has only CD ROM Drive so need to boot from USB so created bootable USB thumb drive using multibootusb.  Dimension 4100 BIOS lacks USB boot option so created plpbt.img 5.0.15 on 3.5" diskette.  Machine boots plop from the diskette and boots the USB image.  After selecting Linux Lite 3.0 32bit and then LL safe mode, the loader finds vmlinuz and initrd.gz and shows dots while loading the files.  After initrd.gz finishes loading, the screen fills with dots that are continually scrolling forever; after watching this for 30 minutes, pressing ESC aborts whatever is happening and provides a boot prompt.  Pressing ENTER at the boot prompt returns to the boot menu.  If regular Start LL is selected instead the system simply hangs after accessing the USB thumb drive for a while--no errors are observed.  Would anyone know what might be causing this behavior and whether or not there are any boot options that might allow proceeding with the install?  Selecting the Integrity Check without the "quiet splash --" options produces the same result (screen full of scrolling dots after loading initrd.gz).

[firenice03]

Welcome
As mentioned here: https://www.freecinema2022.gq/forums/relea...-released/
Multiboots have some issues, try with a single usb (4gb should be suffice)

Also may want to check the MD5, if not download again...

If you are writing the ISO to a USB on Windows, please use Win32DiskImager - https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
We do not support: Rufus, Yumi and Multiboot.

If you are writing the ISO to a USB on Linux, please use USB Creator:

Code:

sudo apt-get install usb-creator-gtk

[torreydale]

I think you're limited by the hardware.  Only one person in the current Linux Lite Hardware Database is running a Pentium III, and they're on the Linux Lite 2.x series.  Your computer was introduced in 2000, and it is on the edge of Linux Lite's minimum hardware requirements. 

I think it's great you've gotten this far.  I don't think Linux Lite 3.0 is going to install, though.  I do think you'd be well served by either installing the Linux Lite 2.x series, or by using what you've learned so far to attempt installing a distribution focusing on Old Computers.  Consider this list.

P.S.:  If you choose to go with the Linux Lite 2.x series, I would recommend installing version 2.6, not 2.8.  Version 2.6 comes with a different kernel, which may work better with your hardware.  You can always use Lite Upgrade to get to version 2.8 afterwards, but you'll stay on the same kernel that way.  And my hunch is that will be better for you.

[openmind]

I am very impressed by the responsiveness of this forum as I was impressed with LL3-64 when I ran it off my multiboot usb (on other hardware of course).  Thanks to both of you for responding constructively to the boot failure I'm encountering with these old machines.  I'm not surprised that there may be some problems installing a modern OS on old (ancient?) hardware--just trying to see if I could make these boxes (I have several of them) useful again.  I performed the reconfiguration of the USB thumb drive suggested by firenice03 and now it won't even load the LL3-32 boot menu.  Instead I get "vesamenu.c32: not a COM32R image" repeatedly scrolling every few seconds up my screen interleaved with a 'boot:' prompt.  But it may be that torreydale is correct, I might need to revert to an older LL version or use an OS that specifically targets older hardware.  I will try your suggestions and let you know what happens.  Many thanks again to both of you.

[JmaCWQ]

"vesamenu.c32: not a COM32R image"
When you see that try hitting the Tab key, should bring up some options, try selecting 'Live' & hit enter.

[aus9]

Hi

I assumed you tried safe graphics as one the attempts?

if no joy with LL due to the hardware you could try to resurrect it with a distro designed for 486 and higher?
you may like to look at TinycoreLinux

http://tinycorelinux.net/overview.html

1. Minimum System Requirements

    CPU-i486DX
    RAM-48Mb
    CD Drive
    Wired Internet Connection
    TinyCore CD

    Optional

    USB Port
    USB Memory Stick, also known as a USB Pen Drive with a known filename on it; this will help you to identify your stick.

[vasi]

I'm using this:

64bit:
Terminal Command:

sudo dd if=linux-lite-3.0-64bit.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=4M

Change the x in sdx to match the letter of your USB device.


Always work.

[Richard B]

Good for you, Openmind, for trying to keep old hardware running. I do the same. Sometimes putting the hard drive in another computer to do the install will work. On the other hand, you could get better performance and save power costs by swapping to a Raspberry Pi!

[openmind]

A hearty thanks to everyone who offered assistance on this problem.  At long last, I can report results of a considerable amount of experimentation and troubleshooting that might be useful to the broader Linux Lite community.  I acted on torrydale's suggestion to try installing LL2.6 and then upgrading to LL2.8 and found that both LL2.6 did run the installer from a 2GB USB stick prepared using usb-creator-gtk as recommended by the LL developers on the LL download web page.  It ran, however, with a constant complaint that it could not read HDD sectors 0-7 in cylinder 0.  This led to canceling the install attempt and performing more thorough diagnostics on the HDD (the Dell HD diagnostic diskette ran the seek test for 30 minutes without errors so I aborted it assuming it was fine).  Letting it run to completion and then performing the read and write tests indicated severe HDD failures.  Eventually I ran the Western Digital HDD utility on it and essentially it had to be reinitialized.  After getting the HDD to work, LL2.6 installed successfully but would not complete the update process without failing to update the package index.  Many repeated but failed attempts to get it to succeed led me to download LL2.8 to see if that would install and it did!  However, it would not complete the update procedure either with the same error as the previous release.  Today I rewrote the LL3.0 iso to the 2GB USB stick that would not work before (remember all those dots?) and this time it worked after applying JmaCWQ's suggestion to hit 'tab' and the type "live" at the boot: prompt.  Apparently, the different kernels respond differently when encountering HDD read errors.

A couple of comments about the LL ubiquity installer: The default swap partition with only 512MB RAM is only 512MB in size.  When one has only 512MB RAM (the minimum recommended), the installer should provide at least a GB of swap so the kernel doesn't panic due to memory starvation (the need for swap is not as great if one has a couple of GB of RAM).  Secondly, the partition tool (gparted w/LL2.8) crashed twice trying to shrink a 20GB FAT32 partition to 5 GB (after reducing used  storage to 3 GB and defragging it twice).  It left the FAT32 filesystem in a corrupted state that took a lot of work to recover.  Hope this doesn't happen to anyone else.  I ended up preparing the partitions using PartedMagic running from a CD.

Again, thanks to everyone who contributed.  I have posted my HW configuration in the LiteOS database.  This post was prepared using LL3.0 running on a Dell 4100 having a Pentium III w/512MB RAM and a 12GB ext4 filesystem.  So far it's working fine.

[Le000]

I'm using this:

64bit:
Terminal Command:

sudo dd if=linux-lite-3.0-64bit.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=4M

Change the x in sdx to match the letter of your USB device.


Always work.

This was the only way worked for me...I've tried several ways including Unetbootin and Lili and no luck on LL3.0.....only dd worked.