There was a similar post last week, but it soon spiraled into love vs hate FC I'd like to keep this focused.

I have tried to download FC3 about 18 times unsuccessfully now, using different methods, different computers and from different locations.

The problem I'm having with bittorrent is familiar to anyone who has used it before. It keeps checking, downloading and re-checking, endlessly.

I have downloaded it from different mirrors at home using ftp, http and rsync, but the md5sums never match. I have even downloaded it from the University here where they are mirroring it. It downloads fast at 5Mb/s, but again the MD5SUMs don't match, and the Media tests FAIL.

Obviously, I could purchase a pre-burnt copy for $10, and I appreciate the work those guys do, but thats not the point.

"worked fine for me" is not helpful. If you've encountered this problem and did something to change it please enlighten me. thanks

then use the ftp site. i downloaded the dvd.iso and first time it worked. download ftp and get back to us!

If you can't get it by download, there are plenty of places that will ship you CD's very cheap.

Use the 4mb boot.iso file and then do an install using your network (ftp or http). You just have to point the install to a FC3 mirror during the installation process. Nothing beats burning a 4mb iso and installing everything on the fly

Except that the install will crash if there is a download error of a package, rather than try to redownload the package.

Installing from good cd burns doesn't have that issue.

WEll if he tried 18 times, it's worth a shot. I did it the other day (decided I wanted a fresh install of FC3) and had not a problem.

Im newbie but downloading at 4MB/s seems a bit fast. Like when you burn an iso i do it at 4x instead of any faster to reduce errors. I might be talking rubish

He's talking about a 4MB CD -

Fedora has a 4MB boot.iso

You boot off it and point to a ftp server, then it grabs an 80MB (or so) image, at which point it then starts up the gui installer - and then when you've chosen what you want, it then grabs the packages you selected.

Very effective way to install on a lan (IE you've mirrored it on a local ftp/nfs server), not quite as nice imho to install from a remote site.

I think I'll try the 4Mb boot.iso idea, it sounds gutsy.
I just finished attempts 19 and 20, one using Sun's download manager (more reliable downloads supposedly) and then ftp from the shell. (neither matched)

thanks for the ideas.

For anybody who comes accross this thread trying to figure out why their downloads aren't working, I was having a hard time getting any large files (>500Mb) to download correctly. Smaller files and everything else seemed to be working OK. I finally tried using a different Ethernet card and the problems vanished. Keep that in mind.

This is fedora really needs to use jigdo for ISO distribution.
I don't understand why they don't.

jigdo downloads the individual files that make up an iso, and then assemble them on the user end - thus, no cd or dvd images need to exist on the server - just the packages, the iso doesn't need to be on the mirror - it's really wicked - Fedora should use it. Downloading many small files (rpm's in this case), each of which get md5sum checked and refetched if bad, is just a better way to do it.

Jigdo is one thing Debian definitely does right ...

Have your tried this mirror? ftp://ftp.udl.es/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/iso/

It is the fastest I have found. I can get a download speed of about 300 KB/second. I downloaded the DVD ISO in about 2-1/2 hours and each CD ISO in about 42 minutes.

I gave up on bittorrent. At the speeds I was getting it would have taken weeks to downloads the ISOs.

The best program I have found for checking the MD5 checksum is MD5summer

I have found that I have better luck burning the Linux installation CDs or DVDs at the slowest speeds work better. For instance I burn the CD-R at about 4X or 8X and the DVD+R at 2.4X. Otherwise I have problems during the installation.

actually the mirror that is the fastest for me is fedora.cat.pdx.edu.
between 4and 7 MB/s. less than 4 minutes to download (15 minutes for the DVD). Speed isn't the problem; it's integrity of the image.

I actually found jigdo to work great after reading the past comment, and now have debian installed. I liked yum for its' ease of use and prgram selections, that's why I wanted fedora, but apt isn't too hard to get going. I'll try fedora again, but I'm liking debian for now.