ISO checking, md5sum, uh, yeah.
 

Ok, here's my story. I have downloaded copies of the 7 cd set of Debian 3.0. I know, however that the at least the first one was downloaded with errors. I have no idea about the remaining 6. I copied them from a friend's copy, which itself is screwed up as well. I cannot get access to the original ISO files they were made with. I would like to now to download the cds that got screwed up, but I don't want to download all 7 cds. I tried making my own iso out of them and then md5sum'ing that iso, but it didn't even work on my redhat cds which are *not* screwed up. Is there any way I can tell which cds I need to download without the original iso's? The command I used to make my own iso's was: "dd if=/dev/scd0 of=cd.iso".

If I don' misunderstand, the problem is: you want to get the md5sum's from the cds.
I may exist another way, but what I suggest you is to use the 'readcd' program; it has the -clone option. You do the image using this program (I wonder if you have to use the same name of the original iso image, but you can get taht name from the debian page). Then try md5sum, and we will see :confused:
It has worked ok for me, although I didn't do exactly what you have to...
Tell what happens
Regards

Well, I tried it, but it returned errors with the reading of the last couple of sectors. I tried it with many different cds, and they all failed. Oh well, thanks for the suggestion.

Hi!
I tried to do exactly the same. Using 'readcd' I made an iso image of the third disk of slackware (well, not EXACTLY the same, i did it with slack but you with debian; I don't thing this is important ;) )
then I checked the md5sum and it works! It should work for you as well.
I cannot figure out what happens in your case. I used the cd writer to do the images, did you?
Moreover, it is strange that every time you tried you got errors at the end of disks, specially because readcd is more prepared to read cds than the 'dd' tool.
...perhaps your cds are all corrupted :confused:
Why don't you try the same with other cds, which you trust in?
If you get the same error systematically, one thing is clear: something is wrong in what you are doing. :tisk:
I hope it helps
Regards

Dude - tell me if this description is accurate: The Debian distro you want comes on 7 CD's. You know that the first disk has errors. You copied the other 6 from your friend, but as you describe, your friend's copy is "screwed up as well". Therefore, it's reasonably likely that all 6 of those CD's have errors as well.

If this is correct, then it seems pretty clear that most, if not all, of your source disks are corrupt, and you're just wasting time trying to get them to work -- if they were downloaded with errors, they are corrupt, bottom line. I'm not trying to be harsh, but unfortunately it sounds like those ISO's are just unusable. Personally, although it may be a little bit of a hassle, I would recommend getting fresh copies of those ISO's. Additionally, I'd suggest that when you download an ISO, you should run an MD5SUM on it (which verifies that your d/l wasn't corrupted) then after you burn it to CD, run MD5SUM on it again, to verify that the burn wasn't corrupted. (Obviously, there would be no point in burning the image to a CD if it didn't download correctly.)

Anyway, here is a great central site for a lot of the most popular distros, including Debian: http://www.linuxiso.org/ I'll assume that if you have access to the web, you would be able to download these disks. Good luck -- J.W.

For sure, this is what I would have done, and what I might have to do. The problem is that I use dial-up, and it takes ~35 hours per cd, and if I can cut the number of cds I need to download, then I'll do it. But, as I try new things to verify the validity of the other cds, I am currently downloading them all myself. In 7 weeks, I'll have debian (sigh). I'll try 'readcd' with Mandrake 9.1 tonight. I just realized I used only 'dev=0,0' insted of 'dev=0,0,0'. That's my problem, isn't it?

You only need (at most) the first 3 cds. In fact, you could make do with just disk 1 and get the rest via download.

Since you only have dial up (I really feel for you) your best bet is to get online and look for cheap Linux cds. Many places are out there which will supply for the cost of a blank cd and postage. You could even try e-bay.

Alternatively, find a friend or school or even a Linux User Group with a quick connection and see if they would be willing to help out. The Linux User Group option could be a good idea as they will also be able to help and advise with installing.

I don't know. You must use the number you cdwriter has, i.e. try
and look for you cdwriter; you will see something like
then use with readcd the number you got (in my case 0,0,0)
Good luck :)
Regards