Tried to run cent 7, 6.7, and ubuntu 14 on an amd64 3200+ with somewhere around 512 ram and samsung 64gb ssd.

Cent gets stuck on something like Child_rip. a line of text that looks sort of like going to safe mode in windows. (yep i'm a noobish person)

Ubuntu gets past the keyboard us version info and then starts flashing a screen that would cause people with epilepsy to have a seizures.

I need to install via usb, so recommendations would be great.

Will be trying to do LLMP. Running a Vbulletin site and if enough CPU/Ram is left over, Teamspeak 3.

With only 512 MB of RAM I'd not install anything with GUI, plain Debian with no X would be my choice.

when i try to install centos 6.7 in text mode, i get stuck at [<ffffffff8100c280>] ? child_rip+0x0/0x20 with a blinking line below it.

Not sure how to text install in ubuntu server 14

Hi...

What is the brand and model (and model number) of your server, as well as the BIOS vendor? I found some information here and here, however, the information is a bit dated and only seemed to affect Toshibas with BIOS's from the Insyde Corp. However, I don't know if this is the cause of your issue.

Flashing your BIOS to the latest version, as mentioned in the Ubuntu thread, might be a solution to this problem. If you wish to try this, just be very careful.

Regards...

this is an old emachine.
has a msi ms-7093 motherboard.
Northbridge: RX480
Southbridge: SB400

i think the video onboard is ATI RADEON X300

if it would help i could toss in my 7950 gpu and get things rolling.
as for the bios update, i've downloaded what i need but it simply will not update regardless of what i do. at best it says Problem getting flash information.

Giving up on the bios junk.

the gpu might cause some trouble.
can you just pull it out in favor of onboard grpahics? of course not all mobos have that.

other than that, definitely no gui.

fwiw, i'm running debian stable as a server on a single core laptop with 2gb ram and plenty of overhead.
it's a breeze to do the netinstall and simply check "web server" and UNcheck "graphical desktop" in tasksel.
wiki.debian.org

this motherboard has onboard, i was just saying i could drop in my 7950 and disable the onboard if that would help with the issue.
from a windows background when video gets glitchy like it did with trying to put ubuntu server on, typically you just drop in a gpu that works and presto chango, it works.

I haven't tried debian yet, just centos and ubuntu. i'll give debian stable a shot.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...tion/MinimalCD

A Fluxbox or Icewm Window manager install should be OK on 512MB of ram.

Or go for

http://www.ubuntu-mini-remix.org/

I'd go for the 14 LTS long term support version.

For a Debian Jessie install.

from

http://iso.linuxquestions.org/antix-m11/antix-15/#x86

videos made to help you understand the above

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFW...KlXW5uE9opXukQ

Sorry. I cannot help with CentOS. I am rpm dyslexic/challenged.

But maybe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4XOBlQvtIg

will help or not. Just sub 32 bit for 62 bit and you are fine and dandy.
I'd roll with Fluxbox in a CentOS 7 install also,

not sure what happened but now the computer doesn't want to boot from usb.
i hate old tech -_-

Thanks for all the help, guessing i'm just stuck with paying for hosting for the time being.

1. Find out how much RAM your motherboard can recognize.

2. Install that much RAM

Even going from 512 Meg to 1 Gig of RAM would broaden your choices tremendously.

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/p...in.html#runflp

I know you have a reason for not using cd, but not that reason. So I posted the floppy disc link instead. Not knowing if you have a floppy drive either.
Anyways, I have used plop to boot off usb on my old bios boxes that do not have that function "boot off usb".

Edit: Below is right for the cd version. I am not sure if the Floppy has a install option in the menu. Mine I know does not.

You can install PLOP also to hard drive and use it to boot off usb . I have done that also. Experiment away I guess.

^ rok, i think this (plop) is premature; op said they were able to boot from usb before. let's try'n fix this first.

distorted.clarity:

1. forget the graphical ui. you are saving yourself trouble.
2. pull the amd card; without a gui, you don't need it. what is the inbuilt? it should run better (without epileptic seizures).
3. how are you creating bootable usb sticks? not all distros use the same method. please obtain instructions from the distro in question.
4. without the added ram you still have a light server, if you can bump to 1gb you can do more (in terms of serving, not gui)
5. is that really a 64gb ssd (=solid state drive)?

2. When add-on graphics card is installed it may disable integrated graphics and free up some memory that otherwise would be assigned for graphics.