Ok, I persuaded my college's admins to download me the Mandrake 9.1 isos (they want to test it now too ), but they could not work out how to check the files against md5sums. Instead we resorted to just burning the cd-rs as it was the last (half)day of term.
When attempting to create iso images back from these cds via Nero in windows, it fails at 54%, trying to read some mandrake kernel rpm. Hopefully I can keep reading beyond this error in the disk in linux.

How do I create iso files from my cds in Linux?
How do I check those against checksums?
How can I fix any slight errors in downloads? Via 'rsync'?

Everything you want to know about iso's, downloading, chesksums, burning:
http://www.linuxiso.org/

Cant find any specific help about how to read all but a few knackered bytes of a cd, then make and ISO of that, and fix it with rsync :S

Thanks though.

Edit:
Nero log:

MD5SUM can be run from the command line:
Type: md5sum filename.iso

After a minute or two, it will return a series of hex numbers. Compare the numbers that you get with the numbers of the source. Make sure they match. linuxiso.org has the MD5SUM keys for each disk.

As far as burning an ISO image on Linux:
Type: cdrecord -scanbus
Note the numbers of your cd burner device (for example mine are 0,0,0 ).
Type: cdrecord -v -speed=4 -dev=0,0,0 filename.iso

the md5sums are the underlined parts to the right of the isos to download - they open in a seperate page, compare those numbers to the ones you have.

Ok, but I still need to convert my cd to an iso image file first, and that might require skipping a bit of the disk.

Would it be possible to copy the files off the cd, download the few which cant be read, then rebuild the iso from the files (and checksum it), then burn working cds?

Maybe you could try the Windows MD5 checker called MD5 Summer, a quick trip to Google [google.com] will show a download location

Shak

Yes, I know, we tried that at college. Thanks anyway.
My problem is making an iso of the cd to be able to check it.
Anyone know if reading off all the files I can+downloading others wont work?

On Linux you can use the command mkisofs to make an ISO

Shak

Cool, ok, off to try it now

You should be able to mount the iso like a regular cd or hd.
I think the command is mount -t iso9660 -o ro, loop0 mandrake.iso /cdrom
All the files in the iso should appear exactly like they would on a cd.
When your done just use the umount /cdrom command.

I just knew buying all those books would come in handy

Oh there's no need for that, Mandrake kindly automatically mounts all my drives for me by default
Note: Woohoo I got Opera to work with my paranoid cookie settings
Using X-cd-roast to try and copy the cd, I got:
I think I might need something like dd to specify which sector to jump if I want to directly copy what I can. Far easier to copy the files to a new dir and attempt to make my own iso.

or just download new iso's.

I only have a 56K, hence downloading them at college. I'm not that stupid.
I still have 12 days til I can use their broadband again, I did plan to install Mdk9.1 this hol.

Ok, after using Nero to make iso images of disks 2 and 3, and copying all I could from disk1, I just need to get:

kernel-enterprise-2.4.21.0.13mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm
koffice-1.2.1-8mdk.i586.rpm
xcin-2.5.2.3-18mdk.i586.rpm

My Mdk9.0 disk doesnt have them. Rpmfind.net has naff ftp links.

Hopefully I just have to download those files, make a new cd1, and check all three isos

Edit: rpm.pbone.net resulted in all 3 files, and the ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu mirror seems to work fine.
Recorded size inconsistent compared to that reported by resumer app. The odd size is the same from a few mirrors tested...
Edit2: Nope, that mirror isnt working