Hello,

I'm new to Linux, and fumbling around a lot in it lately.

I have been trying to install CentOS on an Adtron 32 GB ssd model # I25FB-32GI20N for a while now. I have tried both CentOS 4.5 and 5.2 with no success. Each time I finish configuring the installer with automatic disk partitioning, it shows the pop-up saying it is formatting for about two minutes with no movement on the progress bar. Then the progress bar moves, but then an error message comes up saying,

If I manually partition the drive, using Disk Druid, with 2048 for a swap partition, 100 MB for a boot and 29949 for the root partition (which I flagged as primary), it gets a little farther, but still stalls saying there was an error probably due to insufficient disk space. I try even doing a minimum install with the same result.

However, in CentOS 3.6, and Windows, it formats fine and after a reboot comes up normally.

I'm running this on an Intel 1.4 GHz Pentium M with 1 GB of RAM.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Any help is appreciated.

partition and format in 3.6 then install 5..2 on those formatted partitions...

Thanks for your help.

So now I'm getting past the formatting stage; however, the installer then says transferring install image to hard drive... but the installer crashes again in CentOS 5.2, giving the error.

My root partition has almost 30 Gigs, so unless it's installing somewhere else, I don't think it is.

that 100 mb boot partition you made...

well don't know why you made a 100 mb partition for booting... just put everything together, maybe the installer starts installation on the boot partition (normally, other installers such as Fedora core install the OS and the boot loader on the same partition and nothing can be done about it), try that, merge the 100 mb boot partition with the root one and do a normal install

hope it helps!

btw, if none works, run a hard disk check with chkdsk or some else, but include a physical check to see if it could be physically damaged, causing the installer and other software to fail when accessing a part of it

I've tried checking the drive with badblocks and e2fsck -c, I might be wrong on the second one... Anyway, the drive checks out good.
I tried merging the two and installing without different results.

On at least one occasion, I have gotten a message saying it could be a bug and to submit a bug report to http://bugs.centos.org, I haven't had any success learning how to extract the dump it gives me and send it there. I may not be capable if someone were to tell me how... then again, who knows, I'm willing to try if more experienced users want to give some pointers, or point me where to find out how.

Thanks again for the replies.

For grins have you tried installing any other Distro on there ?
Give Debian or Suse a shot just to see if it will work or not...
the issue may be isolated to RHEL/CENTOS

at least that's what I would try at this point.

inquisitor might be a good idea too.. it can do some hardware testing for you.

Thanks all for your help! I found the problem, it's related to not disabling the UDMA on the solid state disk drive. Once I disabled the UDMA and enabled multi-word DMA it worked like a charm. I had to fiddle with some of the drives jumper switches to disable the UDMA. Thanks again for all your help!