Ok what am I missing here. I go to Fedora's site, go to a mirror and download the iso for the dvd which says its is like 4 gigs. Its slow as heck but I figure it will be done in a day or so. A few hours later I see the file /root/Desktop/Downloaded/FC-6-i386-DVD.iso but it is only 23megs. Hmm this can't be the image can it? why did it stop downloading at 23 megs and show as "done" in my firefox download manager. I am downloading it on fedora 5 and have no idea how to burn the Image to dvd but I don't think I am even at that point yet. thanks for your help in advance.

I am trying for the dvd iso from the link I see here on this site lets see what happens...

Is it possible you lost your connection to the server in the midst of the download? The DVD image would not be 23 MB. I always like downloading ISOs with wget so I can use the -c option to continue an interrupted download (other download managers support continuing interrupted downloads).

Alternatively, you can use BitTorrent.

There is a link to the torrent file on the fedoraproject.org page. Bittorrent can be more reliable for downloading linux distros, and puts less load on the mirrors - therefore it is faster.

I hope this helps
--Ian

I don't even know what bittorrents is but I downloaded that and clicked it and nothing happened...and unfortunately I am at a real newbie level so I kinda gave up there...in terms of the 23meg file I got I wonder why it showed up as "done" in my download manager, I would think it would show somehow that it was unfinished...anyway I am up to ...lets see 30megs in my current download so the link from this site seems to be working better then the previous link...wish this newbie luck

hmm ok it downloaded 478megs and stopped so does this mean it just failed and I need to start a download again? I mean how many times can this download just fail and if it is should it say "done" in firefox download? argg argg argg.

even more confusing, I click on the image and it opens in something called "file roller" and in the bottom of the screen it says "2315 files 3.3GB. Ok now I am beyond confused. Was the image copied down in some sort of a compressed format or something? err...what the heck...am I done?

ok I started the download again this time from the berlin university and it is moving well so I guess I just had failed downloads...

OK, I realise this is off-topic, but why are you running as root in a graphical environment? This is unsafe!

Bittorrent is a method of downloading large files where the file is split into small pieces. You download chunks from your peers. As soon as you have downloaded a chunk, other people can start downloading that chunk from you. There are a number of good Bittorrent clients for Linux, such as Azereus, KTorrent, etc. You download a small file (*.torrent) from the Fedora Website, and this will allow the BT client to download the ISO for you.

Bittorrent is good to download large files like Linux distros, because the load is not focused on a single server or mirror server. It is more reliable, because each chunk is checked for correctness and re-downloaded if it has errors. When downloading in the traditional way, if there is an error the whole file needs to be re-downloaded.

File-roller is a program similar to Winzip. It can also open ISO images, and allow you to access the contents. I suggest that you check the MD5Sum of the ISO that you downloaded - it may be correct. To do this, open a terminal and change to the directory that contains your ISO. Run the command:
It will take some time, and return a long number. Compare this number with the one in the file MD5SUM wherever you downloaded the original ISO from. If they match, then the downloaded file is correct.

I hope this help
--Ian

something is odd with the root/Desktop. Why are you storing things there and not your home directory. Do what the others mentioned and use wget that way if it fails you pick up again where it left off.

Hmmm I have it downloaded and I downloaded nero on a trial basis. I drag the image into nero and pick burn from the recorder menu. I Put a dvd R disk into the drive which says dvd R/RW and hit burn. I get the following message

could not perform end of disk at once
burn process failed at 4x 5540 kbs

Is my dvd, or dvd drive not correct for what I am trying to do or is something not working (I have not used this computer in some time and don't remember if the dvd worked). Or do I have to do something with the image apart from choosing it under the burn option from the recorder option? thanks...

so anyone think this is user error or my dvd drive just won't burn stuff..it says dvd r/rw on the outside and I am putting in a dvr R which I think means I can burn to it correct?

It could be the blank DVD - try a different brand. It could also be your burner - is there any way that you can try on another machine?

Did the MD5sum turn out correctly?

--Ian

thanks I used the cd with np on another computer so it must be my dvd drive.