almost ready to give up on Linux--need to fix download b4 re-burning; help?
 

Can anyone get me a *simple* solution to decrease my iso size so I can repair it through the torrent program (azureus is what I use).

Now the tears, rant, and background:

Everybody (incl. true techies) tell me I'm advanced in my skills and understanding. I've been working with pc's compulsively for over 10 years, currently do script-level programming for Endnote and APA 5th, DVD authoring original content, and even got Partition Magic dual booting x64 and mce -- despite the fact that PM8/BM should never be used with x64 alone. Yet I am truly humbled here, and am ready to throw linux out the door after 2 weeks of hell.

I can't even seem to pull apart that iso from my burned dvd so that I can delete certain parts of it, and then repair it through azureus download/hash checking (all my attempts result in iso files that are too big). I spent 60 hours downloading the club official version, burned it, and it won't install cause of the infamous checksum being missing. This caused a problem for the free cds, too, but I could get it fixed that time, no probs. That worked -- until the install started collapsing. And I'm tired of downloading new programs to try them, only not having them do what I expect, either.

isobuster - forget it. way too much time to learn to use it
winiso - for cd's not dvd's
nero - got it, but...
winrar, got it, won't let me delete directories

Why does everything have to be so difficult? Everything I try to do gives me more probs. I'm tired of fixing probs - I just wanna get a working install that won't fall apart the next day, or screw up my mbr again.

Sorry if I'm being a pain in the a** here with so many pleas for help, but I've been reading sooooo much, too, and searching, and...

Hi.

What exactly do you mean by 'repair' using Azureus?

If you want to modify an ISO image, you'll have to mount the image, copy the contents somewhere, modify as required, then run mkisofs to create a new ISO image of the edited content.

Dave

um not sure what you mean by "club official version".

if you downloaded and iso of linux you'll need to burn it to disc. why are you trying to delete files from the iso?

since I'm not sure if you're trying to make a dvd iso smaller, or if you're iso is corrupt.

you probably should redownload linux. My reccommendation is to download Ubuntu it fits on one cd iso and should download fairly quickly on a dsl or cable connection

Ok, please don't flame me. I don't understand most of what you said but I have been installing Linux for about 5 years and have not found a system yet that could not run using it.

What distribution are you trying to install?

What is the problem that requires you to edit the iso file? I mean, is it too big for the hard drive, or does it not fit on the DVD?

If you have access to a Linux system you could mount the iso file for editing with this command:

mount -o loop -t iso9660 file.iso /mnt/test

You have to make a directory in /mnt called test (or whatever you want), and the file name is what your ISO is called (do this in the directory where the iso is).

Please come back and tell us if that helped any.

C

Clearer?
 

P.S. I have to lift an iso file from the dvd
 

Remember it was a fresh windows install? The only copy I have at the moment is on the dvd; the original iso file (soft copy in raw format) got lost during my earlier grub-defective-mbr-delete-all-partitions-hell.

I think what you need to do is download the ISO from an official Mandriva site/mirror.

A checksum isn't required for burning. Are you sure you were burning the image as an image and not a normal file?

I did get it from the official mandriva site/mirror. Those sites have restricted access, but it's where I got the torrent starter, from which I had to download thru a filesharing program like bittorrent/azureus. And because it's resetricted acces, there aren't many seeds, so it takes awhile.

As far as being 'sure' I'm so tired and frustrated I'm not sure of anything any more, although I don't think I would have made that mistake - not in windows anyway, where I'm an old hand.

NoMore:

As you have surmized, your iso file is corrupted. A 60 hour download! Downloads that long usually do result in corrupted downloads. It is probably impossible to "repair" the corrupted iso by deleting files from it. You need a new iso, plain and simple.

You don't necessarily need to download the iso again, however. Any copy of a Mandriva boot disk (Obtained from a magazine or downloaded free from one of the Mandriva mirrors) would allow you to install Mandriva. Since you are a club member, you can then use your free installed copy to access the Mandriva club services and upgrade your free copy with the latest drivers and club offerings.

I appreciate that you have need of particular nVidia drivers, and I understand that the free version may not install on your machine, if it lacks those drivers. I wouldn't assume that the free version wouldn't install at all, however. I'd bet that it would install some at least temporarily usable video driver which would allow you at least to upgrade online.

Are you trying to download the iso over a standard telephone modem? It really shouldn't take 60 hours to download the Mandriva iso - not even the DVD version! If you do have a high speed connection, there's something wrong with it. I understand you're using Windows to download the iso? Your Windows may be infected (alas, already!) with malware which is interfering with the download. Try running Spycatcher or Spybot and some antiviral program and then attempting the download.

If you don't have access to a high speed internet connection for the download, I'd definitely recommend getting a disk from someone. If you get desperate, you can order a Mandriva 2006 DVD for $5.95 plus shipping from:

http://www.linuxcd.org/view_distro.p...ef=distrowatch

I feel your pain! How many, many frustrating hours I have spent trying to get very basic things (like playing mp3s) up and running in Linux! I will get flamed for saying this, but Linux is not yet ready for the average Joe Office-worker. It still requires way too much computer savy and knowledge of the command-line syntax to get up and running in any usable way. That is, however, finally (and very slowly) begining to change.

By the way, what happened to your attempts at Ubuntu, etc.? Would those distros not install on your PC? Right now I'm running Fedora Core 5, 'cause it's the only distro I could get to dual-boot with Windows. I prefer Ubuntu, but I could never get Ubuntu to cooperate with Windows.

Thx complete, for your support, and everyone else's, too.

Yes, I've given up trying to repair the old dvd iso, and finally sent a message to the mandriva club site to get access to their ftp mirrors for members. I expected them to get back to me in a few days, but I ended up getting the correct passwords in < 30 min. They do explain that the files on these mirror sites aren't usually as reliable, though, and I can see that they're right: the same dvd iso that i downloaded the first time through the azureous downloaded way too fast, resulting in a file that was smaller than the cd iso's I'm 50% finished with. I prefer a dvd 'cause it's one disk - not 7 - lol, and I actually have more dvd's than i do cds. I suppose I could try the loopback method instead of burning, but at this rate I don't feel like trying anything fancy. I'll go out and buy some more cds tomorrow if I have to, but will try to avoid it with a dvd iso. Getting a dvd movie can take a day or so with many more seeds, so I figured 2.5 days wasn't too bad with so few in the swarm.

The club's site is really a pain, tho, as I did successfully implement their urpmi code into my freecd install, and yet I constantly have to enter my email and passwords on their site under that install: it sends me into endless loops in and out of the member section. It's actually better under windows.

As far as my hardware setup and connection is concerned, I have a very fast cable modem, so the slowness of the download was simply due to very few seeds - often 1 or 2, and the same # of peers. Azureus is a very good java filesharing client available for linux, btw, I will certainly want to use it on that platform, 2. The rest of my hardware basically cost me >$3K last March, so it's still very new & powerful. It's a home theatre pc, all 64-bit, PCIE, dual core...hdtv... even the tuner was one of the 1st pcie x1 devices on the market, and it's my biggest worry in terms of my linux install and hope to move away from M$ completely in due course. Codeweavers has even ported ISI Researchsoft's Endnote v. 8 to linux, and I build databases with script-level programming for that as part of my volunteer hobbies for a national charity here in Canada. They're a think tank/research org. V.8 is a piece of sh*t tho, and I'm hoping they'll port v.9 soon. I should probably post that bit about endnote v8 having been ported on the thread of votes...lots of people here want endnote ported; perhaps they don't know that it has - to an extent.

And I've go so many system and anti-spyware tools here it's not even funny. Better security is my #1 reason for trying to make the switch to
Linux. My nic on some other sites is wgaprotest; shows u i'm up in arms about M$'s loading spyware on MY property and causing false positives...Sometimes I call myself safety-queen, and actually grew up with dos's command line, resent windows' hiding the command line from me, so I really didn't anticipate having this much trouble...

Anyway, I guess we can close this thread :-) I feel a bit better.

I think I learned more from this thread than >many others I have read in LQ
 

AGREE! I have been having problems w/ Mdv odin DrakX partitioning wizard, so I gave up & now trying to DL Tyr, but it appears PW reqd!
Hoping to add to an existing Suse 10.1, but not updated yet. IMHO; If O/S is too hard for me to figure out, or crap on load, why Updt? Initial product release should work w/o patch (Or are they trying to imitate the work ethics practiced in Redmond?) + Have similar checksum problems
By then M$ Vista may be released security patched, & working OK! [w/o user headaches!]
Not able to figure out Kubuntu 6.06, has an option but will not install on LT or my DT. Appears to be only Live DVD, booted to Kubuntu Desktop in ~ 2minutes, then froze I thought, so I waited, finally could access K panel, looked around some. COULD NOT 'Run Command", unable to figure out how to be SU to run fdisk. So I rebooted to Suse 10.1 (GAG did not see Kubuntu as O/S on HD), fdisk -l appeared just as if only Suse 10.1 on HD, no record of Kubuntu. Will try FC 5 32 on this LT w/ xp PRO only right now, then may add Suse10, and my DTs this PM, I hope it works better! btw, DL FC5 64 still trying after 3 days (FDM 2.1) BT, uT1.6 would not work. FC5 32 is only DVD that lets me `mediacheck' all my new burns! But FC5 in LDC tests I took, was indicated to be too hard!

I, as many of us are, am a novice at this.

I believe what you are trying to accomplish is EXACTLY what I wish to do myself. Correct me if I am mistaken but I think you want to install your distro from your iso image as comes from the developers (of your distro) make the appropriate changes (updates, desktop configs and such) and replace the corrisponding files in your iso image with the updated stuff.

It looks to me that the best methode of doing this is what ilikejam said; I hope I am understanding this correctly. Could some of you forum elders chime in and let me and NoMoreReinstallMS know if this is a good method or not?

I have more to say but Im at work and have to run. Ill check in on this later.

Thanks,
Jon