trouble with burning/downloading

Hi, i'm new to this whole thing...i've been trying to get the cd to work but it has failed.
i've tried burning the iso as instructed in the documentation atleast 5 times with 5 different copies of the iso. for some reason everytime i download it the md5 displays a different code with each download. i have tried the torrent multiple times as well as using the mirror but for some reason the md5 never matches.

am i doing something wrong?
i'm using nero 8 to do the burn but it ends up with tons of errors each time i try to verify the burn.
any help would be appreciated.

You seem to have multiple problems.

First, if the md5 checksum is bad, then don't do the burn, the ISO file is bad. How you are getting bad and different md5 checksums I don't know, particularly with the torrent. I don't have enough to go on here, but with the very limited information that I have i would guess that you might have a memory problem, but that is only a guess. If you don't yet have an ISO that passes the md5 test I would suggest downloading on a different system. Also, download memtest86 and run it on the system in question.

But you also talk about errors during the burning verification phase. I hope that means that you have an ISO that passes the md5 test, otherwise burning would be complete folly. If you have a good ISO then you can stop trying to download and should focus on getting a good burn. The usual suspects in a bad burn that fails verification are high speed burns, bad media (even name brand media, don't get me started on Sony), and a bad burner. Since you say you have read the documentation, and I hope you mean the downloading faq, I'll guess that you have considered all of these 3 problems already and I'll suggest two more things that could cause problems, using 650 meg media rather than 700 meg media to burn the CD is the first. Don't be offended by this, I doubt that you did this but I really should mention it because it has happened here in the past. The other thing that I can think of that might cause verification errors is a failing system, again memory a likely failure point, although it could also be a power supply issue or even a CPU issue. Without knowing anything about your particular system I would suspect the power supply first, but with the downloading problems my mind comes back to memory. Again a good approach would be to see if you can do a low speed burn on a different computer with better results.

That's about all that I can offer now, but please post back and provide more information.

Alright, i have attempted to download it on a different system, and once again the md5 did not match.
i could see how it might have been my computers memory being a problem...this computer has had a fair amount of viruses and it wouldn't surprise me. but no i tried it on a computer that has gotten limited use and no viruses. its gotten a new cpu, memory, and powersupply fairly recently.

the only thing i can think of is possibly it has something to do with the fact i have to go through my college's network and that might cause a problem?

just to make sure i'm doing the md5 thing right...i downloaded L6Checksum to test it. i dragged the md5 file onto L6checksum and also opened the md5 file in notepad. is this the correct way to check them or am i doing it wrong?

thanks

I've never used the program that you used, so I can't say what the proper way to use it is. I would suggest reading the documentation. The md5 programs that I use allow me to put the md5 file in the same directory as the file or files to be checked and then just clicking on the md5 file opens it and runs the test.

There is no good reason why you would get different and wrong md5 checksums for the same ISO file. There is a good reason why you would get the same wrong md5 checksum if you are downloading the ISO from the mirrors. The mirrors are well known to have a problems with doing a bogus binary to text translation when downloading Knoppix. That is why I strongly advise people to use the faster BitTorrent download. BitTorrent does it's own checksum checking on each block and will re-download any bad block, so it is extremely unlikely to get a bad BitTorrent download unless you have hardware problems or operator errors, even if you have a very bad Internet connection. You can even repair a bad download by letting BitTorrent checksum what you have and only downloading the bad parts.

What you are reporting is quite outside my experience and I have not seen it reported before.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GarrionMarsh

...this computer has had a fair amount of viruses and it wouldn't surprise me. but no i tried it on a computer that has gotten limited use and no viruses. its gotten a new cpu, memory, and powersupply fairly recently.

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That you can use the term "fair amount of viruses" is somewhat of a surprise. If I had even one I would do something about it right away. I certainly wouldn't ever have "a fair number". It does make me wonder about the other computer that you claim to have more faith in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GarrionMarsh

the only thing i can think of is possibly it has something to do with the fact i have to go through my college's network and that might cause a problem?

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No, there should be no issue at all using you school network. A small number of schools are blocking BitTorrent, but if that were the case you would not get a download at all. And you certainly wouldn't get a complete download and have a bad file, BitTorrent checks each block as it comes down. The only case that I know of where someone got a "bad" download with BitTorrent, they stopped the download as soon as the display said 100% rather than letting the download completely finish. And even then they were able to get a good download after they admitted what they did and I had them restart BitTorrent, it took a few minutes to check the files and then downloaded just the needed bloacks and the download was good.

Of coures, if BT is being blocked then you could fall back to the mirrors, but my experience with them is that they give bad files about 50% of the time. But when they do corrupt the file they always corrupt it in the same way, it would be quite unusual to get different md5 checksums for each download. Still, my recommendation is to use BitTorrent, and to let it check and repair what you have already downloaded with BitTorrent if needed, as long as you see BT packet activity.

I did say had viruses. i have removed them all as far as i can tell. the other computer is completely virus free.

i use azureus as my torrent manager. it does all the checks and everything but i haven't found out why the iso keeps messing up. it burns at 4x speeds, 700 MB disk.
i managed to get the disk to start booting once but failed with an I/O error.

i am now attempting to downloading using utorrent, the program the site suggests using.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GarrionMarsh

...i use azureus as my torrent manager. it does all the checks and everything but i haven't found out why the iso keeps messing up. it burns at 4x speeds, 700 MB disk.
i managed to get the disk to start booting once but failed with an I/O error.

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I'm confused by what this means. Have you gotten a download that passed the md5 checksum test? If not then it is pointless to do a burn. If you have passed the md5 checksum test then there is absolutely no reason to download again, the ISO file is good.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GarrionMarsh

i am now attempting to downloading using utorrent, the program the site suggests using.

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I believe at one point that I saw reports of some bogus sites that were downloading a version of azureus complete with malware, but as long as you got it from the official site azureus should be just fine. Also, if you do decide to try an alternate client there is no reason to download everything again, just start the alternate client configured to download to the same place that azureus was, it will check all of the files already there and only download segments that are bad, if any. I tried to make that clear in my previous post.

I've used a few different clients and not had problems with any of them. There were some very old clients that could not download a DVD size image properly, failed as they crossed the 4 gig boundary, but all can download the CD ISO. All current BT clients should be able to deal with files larger than 4 gig as well. All can repair an incomplete download from a different client.

One very easy way to do the repair is start the new client and let it start the download for a minute or two. Then shut it down. Find the directory when it started to download the files to. Delete all of these files, and swap in the "completed" files that you have. Restart the client, it should check the files, and determine if any segments are bad, and repair them if needed.

If you post again about burning please state that you have an ISO file that passed the md5 test.

just to let you know i attempted to use utorrent, as well as md5summer(one of the suggested md5 checkers). md5summer said that it was good, so i tried to burn it and it did not work.
anyway i'm done trying for now

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GarrionMarsh

just to let you know i attempted to use utorrent, as well as md5summer(one of the suggested md5 checkers). md5summer said that it was good, so i tried to burn it and it did not work.
anyway i'm done trying for now

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Well, that is your choice, and I certainly would not encourage anyone to burn Knoppix if they don't want to. Certainly not with the disappointments of 6.x.

It is good to know that you can download and confirm a good checksum with md5summer. What you didn't say and I would be most interested in is if the other md5 test program that you were using also believes the new file matches the expected checksum. If it does not that would indicate a serious bug in that program that users should be warned about. If it also passes the md5 test then the less popular program you found is fine and there was some other problem with your prior downloads. I've never seen a bad md5 test program and don't expect that your first one was bad, but it is very strange that you had so many bad downloads, particularly using the torrent, so it would be nice to know.

Now that you have a known good ISO a good burn should be within reach if you decide to try again. If so, do follow the burning advice in the downloading faq, be sure to burn as an ISO image, don't extract anything and don't just copy the file to the disc. Burn at low speed, this really is very important. Use a 700 meg CD, not a 650 meg CD, and try a CDRW if you are having problems or just to avoid waste while working out your other issues. If using Nero (highly recommended), check that box to do the verification pass. Or you could even boot the ISO directly from a virtual machine such as VMWare player and run Knoppix in a virtual machine under windows (no CD burning needed).