Long live ftp.nluug.nl

Still those shorted file lengths...

I _could_ send them you, if you mail me a download location and your address...

Shak

It's ok, I've just got to finish this 40min download and I'm ready to build the first iso. Then if they all check out good I'm ready to install (the next challenge, tri booting)
So really it worked out as intended, I abused the college connection to get the bulk of the files.

Might buy 9.2, I forked out for 9.0PowerPack, was worth it for the conexant modem drivers and so many apps like StarOffice, amongst other things

So I just have to make this set of files and directories into an iso for it to be bootable?

Mandrake site:Me:Not one right

I think ISO's contain other information than just the files in them. It could be irrelevant information like timestamps or order to burn the files on the disk that's throwing off your MD5sums. Try burning the ISOs and see if the disk works, if it does you're probably all set. The one thing to be worried about would be if you've built these ISO's from files on a disk (which it sounds like you have) and didn't put in information for a computer to boot off of the CD with (which the originals probably did). I don't know how to put in booting information, but most distros will have images for boot floppies somewhere on the disk that you can write to a those, boot off of those, and then use your non-bootable CD.

The second and third disks are simple iso files downloaded and burned straight off. They dont lock up either so the only reason for the checksums failing could be errors in the download or errors in copying the cd to iso again.
I didnt want to risk using a possibly dodgy disk to install an OS, but as I wont be affecting my Lilo install, I should be able to boot into my current OSs atleast.

I noticed that when copying a file off cd1, it's creation time was 1 second later, consistently.
Could I use touch to alter the timestamps?

The cd1 has boot images in it's /images but the install.txt says these are for making boot floppies. It says the cd should be bootable, so I think I should just be able to burn the iso to boot, and it seemed to work at college

Ah f**k it, my official purchased 9.0cd1 checksummed to give me:
a9a3a89df50bb6dd035122ec61133dce Mandrake90-cd1-inst.i586.iso
An official French ftp mirror quote:
f7a093af34b8cbe1abc165213fea9deb Mandrake90-cd1-inst.i586.iso

So either that cd's dodgy but worked fine, or Nero can't make iso files from cds.
Either way I cant work out what isnt working, and as the 9.1cd1 worked when accidentally booted at college (great default setting no? ) I'll just work out how to repartition my hd to take another OS.

An El Torito bootable disk contains a floppy sized image 1.44 or 2.88 which the BIOS emulates as a floppy disk. If you don't have that exact sized image on the cd the BIOS doesn't even give it a second thought.

Personally, when I have a known good .iso that I think I may want to make copies of I simply copy the file itself to a cd - I don't make a bootable disk out of it. I works very well and there is no fear of corruption.

But are all bootable disks El Torito ones?
It has quite a few exactly 1,440kb floppy images in it's /images directory.

I never started with a known good 9.1 cd, and cant seem to verify these ones as being so

Rather then ramble about a topic that I am not an expert on I will simply point you to where I go when I have bootable cd questions http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Boot...OWTO/pros.html I hope you haven't been directed there 1000 times already.

Unless you REALLY want to buy the 9.1 disks I could dl em and send em to you. Shoot me an email if you want to go that way. I have to admire your tenacity in trying to get those things to work but HAY CARAMBA! what a nuissance!

After I found this page about correctly transfering data between cds and harddrives, I just slapped my dodgy install cd in and avoided the 3 broken packages

Managed to hack my system back to almost fully functioning