md5sum problem
 

Downloaded Fedora on my redhat 9 system, Did the md5sum check in terminal like so.
md5sum yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
And i got
4f1ee2438a8bd74ce73700c986c106a1
As an output. The fedora correct output isnt that or even close, so i did the check again and got.
a94079a47fadc9c0bb171ca736335bfa
Still not correct so i did it again and got
b32e69784cdd78ca7e37b1f4e3368e3e
Am i missing something here? This should be the same each time i check it correct??? Please enlighten me on what may be wrong or what i am doing wrong. I just want to know if the file is good.
Thanks
Rick P

Result of md5sum for a file should be the same try after try. Could you please paste the terminal session when you calculate the sums (command+result, command+result)?

here it is
yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
4f1ee2438a8bd74ce73700c986c106a1 yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
a94079a47fadc9c0bb171ca736335bfa yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
b32e69784cdd78ca7e37b1f4e3368e3e yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum yarrow-i386-disc1.iso

rick p

Very strange...are you sure the file is not modified between the calculations?

I dont know what you mean by the file being modified, Im not changing anything if thats what your asking. The output below i just re did. Different outputs all the time and i did all of them one after another not changing anything. Mabe its a bug??

rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
39f0b6b00e7e555074deb0ee1e9155ab yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
0a70b26f1f62a3b302d90874b455b079 yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
533947d87ccec0e9b5a5b471c54e4a7d yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
[rick@localhost rick]$

Rick P

Try to calculate the sum for any other file (may be a small text file). Does it also produce different results?

Actually checking a small file gave me the correct results time and time again. as you can see here.

[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum xlinux_92235.jpg
579a87a13f20fa40bfb1ba59dc81c0a7 xlinux_92235.jpg
[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum xlinux_92235.jpg
579a87a13f20fa40bfb1ba59dc81c0a7 xlinux_92235.jpg
[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum xlinux_92235.jpg
579a87a13f20fa40bfb1ba59dc81c0a7 xlinux_92235.jpg
[rick@localhost rick]$ md5sum xlinux_92235.jpg
579a87a13f20fa40bfb1ba59dc81c0a7 xlinux_92235.jpg
[rick@localhost rick]$

Any ideas on why it would be doing this? And is there another way i can check a file or another version of md5sum i can use? Also i did try another big program approx 500 meg and it kept producing different results also, Just wanted to make sure it wasnt just that particular file. (just wanted to rule out the file being messed up)
???????
I do appreciate your help
Thanks
Rick P

Did you do those checkings after burning the ISOs to CD? If so, there might be a problem with reading from CD rather than with md5sum...

If you're sure that nothing's writing on the file there are two possibilities: something wrong with your disk or the md5sum program. I'd try to reinstall the program first. You have it on your installation cd, so remove the current RPM for md5sum from your system (rpm -e md5sum) and install the new one from the cd.

Was it still in the process of downloading? I was getting the same problem till I realized it had not finished completely. do an ls -l in the directory with the iso in it a couple of times and compare the time stamps and files sizes.

The file is located on my hard drive. And was finished downloading. I tried md5sum with smaller programs and it produced the correct results. Im going to reinstall md5sum program and see what happens.
Thanks for the help so far. Ill see if this works
Rick P

Okay. Did you try a filecheck with fsck or some other tool to verify a whole and sane ;) file structure?