need help downloading 4.02 dvd

[turbine]

Howdy:

Tried unsuccessfully to download the dvd using the following rsync command:

rsync -avv --progress rsync://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/knoppix/dvd/KNOPPIX_V4.0.2DVD-2005-09-23-EN.iso .

After running for a couple of days the program terminated with the following error:

rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (3109800730 bytes received so far) [receiver]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(359)
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (82 bytes received so far) [generator]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(359)

Then I tried again with the following rsync command:

rsync -avv --partial --progress rsync://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/knoppix/dvd/KNOPPIX_V4.0.2DVD-2005-09-23-EN.iso .

Once again after a couple of days the job crashed with the following error:

rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (2686452034 bytes received so far) [receiver]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(359)
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (82 bytes received so far) [generator]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(359)

But this time I have a partial file, between 2 and 3 gigabytes. I would like to crank up another rsync command and have it pick up the download where it left off and complete the job. Could someone please tell me how
to do this?

Thanks

[UnderScore]

I can't help you with rsync. I'm sure rsync works & have used it about a year ago, but I choose to not use it to download Knoppix ISO files. I either use a local Knoppix mirror (of which I get 600KB/sec sustained) or I use bittorrent. Like rsync, bittorrent is an intelligent protocol that examines the differences of a file. This means you can use bittorrent and still use the currently downloaded portion instead of downloading the whole thing over again. I would start up a bittorrent client (I use azureus) and enable the download, after it sync up to the bittorrent server & begins downloading at 0.1%, stop the download & then copy your existing partially completed ISO image file and overwrite the one that bitorrent created. Once you start the bittorrent download, it will first check the partially completed ISO and will continue to download from where your rsync failed thus saving you time.

I hope this helps.
James

[turbine]

Thank you James. Did I miss something on the local mirrors? I tried 2 of them, one here at the University of Florida and another at Purdue. Both of them had messages that said that the dvd iso was too large for them and to use the rsync command that I tried.

Don't know beans about bittorrent so I guess I've got a learning curve ahead. You mentioned something called azureus. Can you offer guidance there?

[Harry Kuhman]

Don't know beans about bittorrent so I guess I've got a learning curve ahead. You mentioned something called azureus.
BitTorrent is pretty straight forward, and covered well in the wiki. See both the downloading faq and the article on BitTorrent. The only thing that I want to restate is that once installed it is very important to forward the proper post(s) in your router (I hope that you do use a router for safe high speed operation) and open any software firewall that you use for the BitTorrent ports. BitTorrent may seem to work but will be very slow if you do not do this.

azureus is just another BitTorrent client. James is fond of it. But to get started and for the widest base of support I would suggest that you start with the newest non-beta regular BitTorrent client (http://www.bittorrent.com/).

[turbine]

Thanks Harry.

Don't have a router and don't have a firewall. I've got a hub on which I string my lan with linux and win98 machines. One of the win98's connects to the DSL modem and uses connection sharing to give the others internet access. Guess that leaves me out as far as bittorent is concerned.

I originally purchased the 4.02 dvd from one of the vendors. The disk had one of those paper labels on it and they seem to deteriorate. In a few weeks I couldn't access it in my dvd drive. I've had problems with those paper labels before. Tried to peel it off but couldn't. I really liked the 4.02 dvd so that's what got me into trying to do a download.

Looks like if I can't get rsync working right then I'm stuck.

[Harry Kuhman]

Don't have a router and don't have a firewall.... Guess that leaves me out as far as bittorent is concerned.
It doesn't leave you out at all, as far as BitTorrent is concerned. You just don't have to do the steps to set up the router or firewall. And I expect you have to run BitTorrent on the system connected to the DSL modem, not one of the connection sharing systems.

But you are extremely likely at this point to have multiple sypware/virus/trojan infestations. And any number of other network issues. I can't emphasise enough how important I believe a router is for high speed access, as it provides a NAT firewall that drops unwelcome and unexpected incoming attacks. Of course you can still infest yourself by downloading and running stuff from Warez sites or usenet, opening e-mail attachments, or even by visiting evil sites with an insecure browser. But a router is a very important piece of security hardware and provides a lot of utility too. And the price has become dirt cheapl I paid over $100 for a wired only one almost 6 years ago, now you can often find wired and wireless ones, even 802.11g wireless, for under $10 U.S. after rebate. I consider it extremely foolish to run without one, even with only one connection, and multiple connections makes it a no brainer.



I originally purchased the 4.02 dvd from one of the vendors. The disk had one of those paper labels on it and they seem to deteriorate. In a few weeks I couldn't access it in my dvd drive. I've had problems with those paper labels before. Tried to peel it off but couldn't. I really liked the 4.02 dvd so that's what got me into trying to do a download.

Looks like if I can't get rsync working right then I'm stuck.
Labels are a known problem. I also don't like buying Knoppix from such vendors because they likely burn at high speed to increase their profit, although this is know to produce unreliable burns. There is no reason why you can't use BitTorrent though. And I recommend it over any of the mirrors because of it's error checking; I've had too many bad downloads from Knoppix mirrors.

[turbine]

Wow! Thanks again, Harry. Now the system that I have connected to
the DSL modem is win98. I would love for that to be a linux system but couldn't get any help from Sprint as to how to configure same. Will bittorrent run on the win98 box?

[Harry Kuhman]

Wow! Thanks again, Harry. Now the system that I have connected to
the DSL modem is win98. I would love for that to be a linux system but couldn't get any help from Sprint as to how to configure same. Will bittorrent run on the win98 box?
BitTorrent will run on win98 just fine (that usually how I do it).

Yup, you'll find that many lame "tech support" groups only support windows and then not very well and often with heavy Indian accents even though thay give their names as "Bob" or "Elvis". Knoppix can be configured to use that DSL connection; but I'm not the one to guide you through the PPPoE setup to do it -I never needed to, that's another reason why I advocate use of an inexpensive router - the router takes care of all of that DSL and PPPoE stuff for you, logging in to the ISP and so on. With a router you literally just boot the Knoppix disc and you are on the Internet as soon as the boot completes (just type a URL into the Knoquror window to see). Without a router and the magic of DHCP you need to do the PPPoE setup, enter your account information and the rest.

[Dave_Bechtel]

--Win98 is incapable for Bittorrent files over 2GB. You need a filesystem that can handle bigger files.

--Recommendations:

o BUY A ROUTER - security, real connection sharing (DHCP), ease of use

o Hire a local computer expert / teenager to set up your networking; have a couple of hankies handy for when he sees your setup. :roll:
;-) Just messing. I tried running Win98SE similarly, but found a better way.
( Router + 8-port switch + Linux + Squid -- http://www.squid-cache.org/
)

o Buy a 2nd HD if you don't have one, solely for Linux install. Much easier than trying to repartition/resize.

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/DSL-HOWTO.html#CONFIGURE

--Once you turn off the Win98 connection, you should be able to run the Knoppix "PPPOE Config":
K menu \ KNOPPIX \ Networking/Internet \ ADSL/PPPOE Configuration



Wow! Thanks again, Harry. Now the system that I have connected to
the DSL modem is win98. I would love for that to be a linux system but couldn't get any help from Sprint as to how to configure same. Will bittorrent run on the win98 box?
BitTorrent will run on win98 just fine (that usually how I do it).

Yup, you'll find that many lame "tech support" groups only support windows and then not very well and often with heavy Indian accents even though thay give their names as "Bob" or "Elvis". Knoppix can be configured to use that DSL connection; but I'm not the one to guide you through the PPPoE setup to do it -I never needed to, that's another reason why I advocate use of an inexpensive router - the router takes care of all of that DSL and PPPoE stuff for you, logging in to the ISP and so on. With a router you literally just boot the Knoppix disc and you are on the Internet as soon as the boot completes (just type a URL into the Knoquror window to see). Without a router and the magic of DHCP you need to do the PPPoE setup, enter your account information and the rest.

[Harry Kuhman]

--Win98 is incapable for Bittorrent files over 2GB. You need a filesystem that can handle bigger files.

That's dead wrong. I've downloaded the DVD version with BitTorrent on Win98 just fine.

Versions of BitTorrent before 4.0 did have a size problem, but I used 4.0.2 with no problem. I haven't updated yet to the current release or beta, but it would be pretty strange for the size problem that was in version 3 to have snuck back in.

Win98 does have the size limit of 4gig-1byte files, but the Knoppix DVD is about 3 gigs and much smaller than that. Some people falsely think the file size limit in Win98 is 2 gig, but that is incorrect.

If you download on a Win98 network, it's best to download to the system that your DVD burner is on. Win98 does have a problem transfering files over 2 gig across it's local network with Windows file sharing. But there are ways around this (I used FTP once, have also sliced a large file into multiple parts and reassembled them on the other side (also Win98) with no problems).

[xfiles]

I've also had some trouble downloading the DVD version. I tried a straight ftp d/l because of the speed advantage over torrents, but it cratered out about 87% complete. So I fired up Azureus, clicked on the torrent link and pointed it to where my partial download was. It was slow, about 20K most of the time, but did fill in the rest of the file. The problem started when I checked the MD5, didn't match. So started Azureus again and used 'force recheck' repeatedly to try and get it right. Also turned off the quick recheck option so it would automatically recheck whenever the file was complete. Did this off and on for two weeks and never did get a correct download. Also tried Shadow's BT program. This system is running win98, a p3 500, FAT32, cable internet with a linksys router. I really wanted to use this system because I had just installed a new (and very cheap) dvd burner in it.

Decided there had to be a better way. I installed Azureus on my daughter's computer, a 1.3 ghz AMD with XP home and also a FAT32 filesystem, also hooked up to the above mentioned router. Fired it up and couldn't believe the difference! It downloaded the torrent at an average of around 200k and I noticed it went above 300k a few times. As far as I can tell all of the settings were the same on both units. I think a little extra horsepower and the xp OS makes a big difference running Azureus. Only took about 5 hours to complete the d/l. The MD5 checked out fine.

Next step was to get the ISO on the win 98 machine. Tried a file splitter but the result also would not pass the MD5 check. Thought about file transfer over the network but have never tried that before, and didn't want to take the time to learn to do it at that particular time. So I removed the burner from the win 98 machine and hooked it up to the XP machine. I then booted up Slax to memory on it and used k3b to burn a couple of Knoppix DVD's. Worked great. I also burned a DVD with just the ISO file on it. The md5 checked out on this file also. The knoppix dvd seemed to work fine on the xp machine. Removed the burner and put it back in the p3 win 98 system. Booted up the knoppix dvd, worked fine. Rebooted with both Slax and win 98 and the dvd with ISO file passed the md5 check from those systems both times. Used Slax to copy the ISO to each of my 2 hard drives- MD5 does NOT check out on the hard drive copies? I don't know why this is.

My only theories so far is that maybe the bios (1999) is too old to handle these large files, or maybe there's a limitation in the processor somehow. As far as I can tell, my hard drives are OK. Also when I'm running win 98, I can't copy those ISO files, get an error- something like invalid parameter- it can't handle copying that large a file. Knoppix or Slax don't seem to have a problem, though. Shouldn't be the FAT32 system per se, but I just can't get a correct MD5 from a DVD ISO when it's on my hard drives.
Any ideas why this would be? Sorry for the long post, but this has me puzzled.

BTW, the Knoppix DVD is VERY impressive.

Thanks

[foamrotreturns]

I could be totally off base here, but is it possible that the real-time md5 hashing was too much for your Pentium III? Bittorrent actually compares every chunk of the file that it gets to a hash that comes with the chunk. That could be a laborious task for your processor, so I'm thinking that may have been the problem. Regardless, glad you got it working on the AMD machine. Welcome to the Knoppix community!

[Harry Kuhman]

I've also had some trouble downloading the DVD version. I tried a straight ftp d/l because of the speed advantage over torrents, but it cratered out about 87% complete. So I fired up Azureus, clicked on the torrent link and pointed it to where my partial download was. It was slow, about 20K most of the time, but did fill in the rest of the file.
In my experience, BitTorrent has been much faster than the mirrors. It's also been much more reliable; many of my FTP downloads of Knoppix before BitTorrent were bad (and only Knoppix downloads have ever had this problem for me, not other downloads). BitTorrent has been 100%. Looking at the current number of seeders and downloaders, the download speed should be very good still. I suspect strongly that your system is not set up properly for BitTorrent. If you have a router you must forward the correct ports, and you must open any software firewall for incoming traffic on those ports too. Unless you do this, BitTorrent will work, but will be slow by design. This has been well documented in many places.


I really wanted to use this system because I had just installed a new (and very cheap) dvd burner in it.

Decided there had to be a better way. I installed Azureus on my daughter's computer, a 1.3 ghz AMD with XP home and also a FAT32 filesystem, also hooked up to the above mentioned router. Fired it up and couldn't believe the difference! It downloaded the torrent at an average of around 200k and I noticed it went above 300k a few times. As far as I can tell all of the settings were the same on both units. I think a little extra horsepower and the xp OS makes a big difference running Azureus. Only took about 5 hours to complete the d/l. ....
While I would have put the new DVD burner in the higher end system, I don't think what you saw was due to the difference in CPU's. I've been using an old AMD P6 as my BitTorrent system simply because I can dedicate it to seeding after a download completes and just let it run. It's about the speed of your first system and downloads quite quickly. Transfering the final ISO to be burned to the system with my DVD burner is a different issue under Win98, but as I posted previously I have resolved this a few ways including local FTP transfers. You may want to go back and revisit the slower system and see if you can't configure things to make it give you acceptable BitTorrent performance.

The above results were with BitTorrent, not Azureus, so if there is a CPU bottleneck it likely was Azureus. If you can't find anything else to fix and you still want to use the slower system with the burner on it, I would suggest trying the real BitTorrent client on it, I see no advantage to Azureus and if it does eat that much CPU then there is a big disadvantage to using it. You might even download faster with the BitTorrent client if Azureus was the bottleneck.

[Harry Kuhman]

Next step was to get the ISO on the win 98 machine. Tried a file splitter but the result also would not pass the MD5 check. Thought about file transfer over the network but have never tried that before, and didn't want to take the time to learn to do it at that particular time. So I removed the burner from the win 98 machine and hooked it up to the XP machine. I then booted up Slax to memory on it and used k3b to burn a couple of Knoppix DVD's. Worked great. I also burned a DVD with just the ISO file on it. The md5 checked out on this file also. The knoppix dvd seemed to work fine on the xp machine. Removed the burner and put it back in the p3 win 98 system. Booted up the knoppix dvd, worked fine. Rebooted with both Slax and win 98 and the dvd with ISO file passed the md5 check from those systems both times. Used Slax to copy the ISO to each of my 2 hard drives- MD5 does NOT check out on the hard drive copies? I don't know why this is.

My only theories so far is that maybe the bios (1999) is too old to handle these large files, or maybe there's a limitation in the processor somehow. As far as I can tell, my hard drives are OK. Also when I'm running win 98, I can't copy those ISO files, get an error- something like invalid parameter- it can't handle copying that large a file. Knoppix or Slax don't seem to have a problem, though. Shouldn't be the FAT32 system per se, but I just can't get a correct MD5 from a DVD ISO when it's on my hard drives.
Any ideas why this would be? Sorry for the long post, but this has me puzzled.
I'm not following what is happening here. It sounds like you are saying that you tried to copy the iso onto a DVD so that you could transfer it to another system where you would then burn the iso as an image. If that's the case it should work, but why not just burn the ISO as an image on the first system? I've certainly had my share of bad DVD media lately, the reason for a bad md5 checksum could well be a bad burn or bad dvd used in the transfer. Congratulations on doing the md5 step for confirmation though, a lot of people here would not have done it and would not know where the problem was.

I doubt very much that what you are writing of is a BIOS issue, the BIOS deals with the hard disk at a lower level and should not be involved in any file size issues (and I've never seen any confirmed file size issues due to a BIOS. Partition and hard disk size issues, yes, file size issues, no.)

I regularly set up an FTP server, so using FTP to transfer the files and get past the Win98 file sharing 2 gig limit wasn't a problem for me. But if you don't want to use an FTP server, then I qould suggest splitting the file with a tool like Winrar. While there are some more simple file splitters out there, Winrar gives the extra comfort level of some file checks in the rejoining process. I can't account for why your splitting and rejoining failed though.

By the way, if you use Winrar and let it try to compress the file it will take quite a long time and since the DVD is mostly already compressed it will gain you nothing. Telling Winrar to just split the file but not to try to compress it is the fastest and best way to go in this case.

[xfiles]

I could be totally off base here, but is it possible that the real-time md5 hashing was too much for your Pentium III? Bittorrent actually compares every chunk of the file that it gets to a hash that comes with the chunk. That could be a laborious task for your processor, so I'm thinking that may have been the problem. Regardless, glad you got it working on the AMD machine. Welcome to the Knoppix community!

Could be, it works the heck out of the system. However I've used it with smaller files and it works fine. I'm wondering if a 3+ GB file is too much for this system or if something else is going wrong somewhere.

[xfiles]

Harry, Thanks for the reply. Sorry if I confused you. I'm confused too. Basically I'm trying to figure out why no matter what I try, I can't get a clean copy of the ISO on my hard drive. One that will pass the md5 check. I know from experience that an ISO that doesn't pass the MD5 will be more trouble than it's worth.

In past times I also have had fast downloads with this system, but doesn't seem to work as good as it used to. All I've tried to d/l for quite a while is Knoppix ISO's however. The ports are forwarded, firewall is opened up. Did this on both systems.

Very well could be Azureus is the bottleneck, but it seems it should still write a correct file. Like I said before, I also tried Shadow's BT. I even tried it with Knoppix running Azureus. Used Klik to put it on the system. They were about the same speed. I think for an experiment I will try the original Bittorrent, just to see if it makes a difference. I used it a few times quite a while ago.

And yes, I did copy the ISO to a DVD. The purpose was to try and transfer the file to the other system. The ISO file on the DVD also passes the md5. When copied to my hard drive, however it would not pass the md5. This is what is confusing me.

And I did burn a couple images so I would be sure to have a working DVD. worked great. I just copied the ISO as a test to see if I could copy it to the other system. But it doesn't work for some reason. Tried a couple times, but can't get a correct md5 from the file once it's on the hard drive.

I plan to figure out the file sharing over the network eventually. I agree just from what I've read about it is a local ftp server would be the way to go. I've never tried winrar. The file splitter I used is from here: http://www.dekabyte.com/filesplitter/ . Works pretty slick, but again the resulting file didn't pass the md5.

Anyway I plan to do some more experimentation. I'll go back and give the original BT a try just for a test. At least I have one system that I know will work.

Thanks for the replies, if you think of anything else please post it.

[Harry Kuhman]

And yes, I did copy the ISO to a DVD. The purpose was to try and transfer the file to the other system. The ISO file on the DVD also passes the md5. When copied to my hard drive, however it would not pass the md5. This is what is confusing me.
That sure doesn't make much sense. When you confirmed the md5 of the file that you wrote to the DVD, did you do it on the system that wrote it or the system that you were moving the file to? If the former, it may be that the second DVD drive is having problems reading the disk that it never resolves (although one would expect an error and not a bad file in that case). I would try copying again and rechecking the md5. When it fails again I would look around for one of the utilities that will do a byte by byte file comparison between two files and turn it loose on the ISO on the DVD and the copy on the hard drive to see what is different and where in the file the difference is.

[xfiles]

Harry,
It doesn't make sense to me either. I confirmed the md5 of the ISO on the dvd on both systems. Used both a windows md5 checker and the one in k3b. The ISO on the dvd passes with flying colors. Also there is only one DVD drive/burner involved here. I temporarily hooked it to the higher end system once I got a good download there, and the md5 checked out. Then put it back in my lower end system to continue my "testing". The drive seems to work OK in the lower end system, I burned my Slax cd with it. I burned a Knoppix DVD on the lower end system right after I got the drive which didn't work-That's when I started checking the md5 sums and realized something wasn't right. Yes, I admit it, I initially burned before checking the md5. Made a coaster. But as far as burning the dvd, the process seemed to work fine, just like on the higher end system.

I just can't figure out why I can't get a clean copy to the hard drive. If the system has run up against it's limitations, I can accept that. But everything I read and the experience of folks like you suggest otherwise. I'll continue "testing".

Thanks

[OErjan]

the problem is the 2Gig sizelimit for one single file of DVD media. it "splits" the *.ISO file when it is copied back...one file again, that is only way i can understand it.

[turbine]

Rsync tended to crash if there was too much other activity on the lan/net.

Contrary to the documentation which says that you can restart rsync and it will resume where it left off, it doesn't. If it restarts at all it clobbers whatever portion of the download that you have.

I was running rsync on my old Debian Sarge system. That's the Sarge from the days when it was still testing rather than stable. So I cranked up my Knoppix 4.02 CD and started the rsync download again. Things went much smoother in that we could do other work on the net without crashing the download. But progress was still painfully slow. After 2 days of downloading I decided to see if restarting would work. So I terminated the job and tried to restart it. Nothing doing. It just kept giving me some meaningless error message and it would stop immediately.

So there I was once again with about 2GB of a 3+GB download. So I found the site ftp.kernel.org which has their own copy of the DVD version, and which is located in California. I cranked up wget -c to continue the download and it worked. It completed the download, appending to what I already had, and in the end the md5 checked out just fine.

Now on to my next problem. I was going to use my wife's new laptop to do the dvd burning. Turns out that it doesn't burn dvd's as I thought but only cd's. So I need to acquire a dvd burner. Any thoughts or suggestions as to which brand/model I should get? I would like to do the burning using k3b under Knoppix 4.02(CD version).

[Harry Kuhman]

the problem is the 2Gig sizelimit for one single file of DVD media. it "splits" the *.ISO file when it is copied back...one file again, that is only way i can understand it.
Yes, that would make sense if the DVD were written in ISO 9660 format. But then the DVD file would not pass the md5 check, which xfiles said it does. So I had assumed that he had written the DVD using a different format, but it would be nice to know just how this DVD was written. Or maybe he used a hybred format to write the DVD that would allow larger files, but since it's hybred Windows is still using the 9660 format to read the data and trunkating the file.

[Dave_Bechtel]

That sounds about right. Try either making a UDF filesystem on the DVD, or splitting the .iso into 2GB chunks. You can reassemble with ' cat file1 file2 >file.iso ' on the other side.


the problem is the 2Gig sizelimit for one single file of DVD media. it "splits" the *.ISO file when it is copied back...one file again, that is only way i can understand it.

[xfiles]

the problem is the 2Gig sizelimit for one single file of DVD media. it "splits" the *.ISO file when it is copied back...one file again, that is only way i can understand it.
Yes, that would make sense if the DVD were written in ISO 9660 format. But then the DVD file would not pass the md5 check, which xfiles said it does. So I had assumed that he had written the DVD using a different format, but it would be nice to know just how this DVD was written. Or maybe he used a hybred format to write the DVD that would allow larger files, but since it's hybred Windows is still using the 9660 format to read the data and trunkating the file.

Hello again,
First of all, I have NO problem writing a 2+GB file or even the 3+ GB ISO. I just can't get a correct md5 after I copy that file to my poor, old, decrepit system. And I don't know why. I copied (burned may be the better term) the ISO to a DVD disk using K3B. Selected 'new data project' , found the ISO file and dragged it into the project box, and then clicked "burn". The resulting ISO file, which is now on a DVD disk, passes every MD5 check I've tried. But when I copy that ISO file to my older system's FAT32 hard drive, the size looks the same, everything seems OK, BUT it won't pass the MD5 check. Can't seem to get a passable downloaded torrent file that large on there either. I would just like to know why. Seems like it should.

BTW, I think K3B is about the best burner software you can get. Does everything I want it to.

Thanks

[Dave_Bechtel]

If you HAVE a good download at this point, it PASSES the md5 check, and you can BURN a good DVD, then WHY are you bothering to copy to the older system at all anymore??? Just use the known-good DVD burn already. It's more trouble than it's worth anymore.

If you have concerns about the Fat32 filesystem on the older machine, throw in another HD and format it with any decent Linux filesystem, I am 99% certain it will be OK then. Reiserfs, Ext3, ext2, your choice.




the problem is the 2Gig sizelimit for one single file of DVD media. it "splits" the *.ISO file when it is copied back...one file again, that is only way i can understand it.
Yes, that would make sense if the DVD were written in ISO 9660 format. But then the DVD file would not pass the md5 check, which xfiles said it does. So I had assumed that he had written the DVD using a different format, but it would be nice to know just how this DVD was written. Or maybe he used a hybred format to write the DVD that would allow larger files, but since it's hybred Windows is still using the 9660 format to read the data and trunkating the file.

Hello again,
First of all, I have NO problem writing a 2+GB file or even the 3+ GB ISO. I just can't get a correct md5 after I copy that file to my poor, old, decrepit system. And I don't know why. I copied (burned may be the better term) the ISO to a DVD disk using K3B. Selected 'new data project' , found the ISO file and dragged it into the project box, and then clicked "burn". The resulting ISO file, which is now on a DVD disk, passes every MD5 check I've tried. But when I copy that ISO file to my older system's FAT32 hard drive, the size looks the same, everything seems OK, BUT it won't pass the MD5 check. Can't seem to get a passable downloaded torrent file that large on there either. I would just like to know why. Seems like it should.

BTW, I think K3B is about the best burner software you can get. Does everything I want it to.

Thanks

[Harry Kuhman]

My understanding is that you can make a working bootable Knoppix DVD, but at this point this is more of an intelictual exercise to try to understand what is going wrong. I certainly can understand your wanting to do that, and it may help you resolve other problems in the future as well as helping others.

My experiences with Win98 are all with Win98se. I imagine that there could be some problem if you are using the first release of Win98 and not Win98se, but I'm still not aware of any limitation of this nature. Of course, without FAT32 you could only create 2 gig partitons, but that clearly isn't the problem. Are you using Win98se?

I still think the idea of a byte by byte file comparison of what is good on the DVD to what is failing the md5 test on the hard disk is called for and will give us a lot of information about this failure. It would be critical to find out things like if the error happens raight at the 2 gig point, if the bad bytes are all zeros, and so on.

Another thing that you might want to do that could help fix the problem but will give us a bit less information about the actual nature of the problem is make a par2 set on the original system's iso with quickpar. Make the block size something simple and clean to work with, like 1 meg. Then run the resulting par (without any extra recovery blocks) against the bad ISO on hard disk. That will tell you how many blocks are bad. One or two bad blocks are likely indicate a problem reading the file back from the disk. And it could easily be repaired by a few extra par files. Just over a gig's worth of bad blocks would indicate that a problem is likely happening at the 2 gig boundry (and would likely take more par recovery blocks than are worth creating).

[xfiles]

Dave wrote:
If you HAVE a good download at this point, it PASSES the md5 check, and you can BURN a good DVD, then WHY are you bothering to copy to the older system at all anymore??

Simply because I want to know WHY it doesn't work. I wonder if there are other folks out there with a system like mine and just give it up and say Knoppix isn't worth it. I'd hate to see that. Also I'm kind of stubborn and just hate the idea that my old fossil of a computer might be totally out of date.

Dave wrote:
Just use the known-good DVD burn already.

I have been and it works great! Amazing piece of work!

Dave wrote:
If you have concerns about the Fat32 filesystem on the older machine, throw in another HD and format it with any decent Linux filesystem, I am 99% certain it will be OK then. Reiserfs, Ext3, ext2, your choice.

This is something I think I forgot to mention before. Besides trying to copy it to my backup hard drive on a FAT32 partition, I also tried copying it to an ext2 partition on that same drive. I REALLY thought that would work also, but still got a bad md5. That's why I'm wondering if some of these older systems just can't handle that big a file. And you're right, this is probably more trouble than it's worth.

And Harry,
You're right, this probably is more of an academic or intellectual exercise since I can walk across the room and hook up a drive and burn a DVD if I want to. I just wonder about other folks. I would personally reccomend to them that they use a little higher end system than me if they want to download and burn the DVD. Also, this is a 98se system. But don't forget I'm using Slax or Knoppix (Konqueror) to copy stuff back and forth.

As far as the byte by byte comparison and the par tests go, I think I will just concede. I don't want to get that deep into it. I don't know anything about that par stuff (eyes begin to glaze over). But since you mentioned it, I may look it up and try to learn about it. I see what you mean about the file size and hitting bad bytes or pieces, though. Funny thing is, when I was downloading the torrent, upon recheck, I would get bad pieces toward the front of file then the next time it would be OK and then the next time they would be bad. Sometimes they would be scattered all through the download. Crazy...

Anyways, I'm not going to worry about this for the next few days. It is Christmas Eve after all. Time to go to church, be with family, eat like a pig, and drink lots of eggnog. Suggest all of you do the same if possible. Thanks to you folks for the replies, I appreciate it! If I figure this out I will let you know.

Merry Christmas
Happy Hannukah
Happy Holidays

Xfiles

[Dave_Bechtel]

--I used to run a Squid server on a Pentium-1, 233MHz with 200MB of RAM. It never had problems downloading or handling large files (4GB+) on a Linux filesystem. It was a Knoppix HD install and I did use the ncurses BitTorrent client on it.

--I think it might be a hardware problem - bad memory, HD going bad, something like that. If you are copying the .iso from DVD to HD, and the MD5 on the DVD is good, it should *automatically* be good on the HD copy.

Try this:

o Burn the known-good ISO file to a UDF filesystem on DVD. *Not* ISO9660.

o On your questionable system, mount the DVD and:
' cp -apv /mnt/cdrom/isofile.iso /destdir ' -- Substituting where necessary, and /destdir is somewhere on your ext2 partition

' diff -s /mnt/cdrom/isofile.iso /destdir/isofile.iso ' == This does a byte/byte comparison.

--If THAT fails, try the same thing with another HD in your Q computer. (And check your IDE cables to see if they're loose.)


This is something I think I forgot to mention before. Besides trying to copy it to my backup hard drive on a FAT32 partition, I also tried copying it to an ext2 partition on that same drive. I REALLY thought that would work also, but still got a bad md5. That's why I'm wondering if some of these older systems just can't handle that big a file. And you're right, this is probably more trouble than it's worth.