Knoppix v5.3.1 will NOT boot

[klerg]

I burned the .iso with a HP DVD Writer 840 in Nero 6.6.0.13 at 4x (that should be slow, since it took 13 min) on a DVD+R. I tried the disc on two different computers each get stuck after "Read-only DVD system successfully merged with read-write /ramdisk." Here is what is displayed beyond that:

cloop: zlib decompression error -3 uncompressing block 131 131072/0/5284/0 2568872-2574156
end_request: I/O error, dev cloop0, sector 33668
ISOFS: Unable to read i-node block
/init: line 1013 cannot create /var/run/utmp: nonexistent directory
Kernel panic: not syncing: Attempted to kill unit!

Anyone have a clue what that means? If it burned wrong, i'll try MagicISO and see if it makes a difference. Other then that, because it did NOT boot on 2 separate pc's, i could try a cheatcode, but which one?

[Harry Kuhman]

If you got as far as you got you must have made the choice correctly to burn the ISO as an image, so I doubt that magiciso will change anything. I'm not clear on why it's not booting either. Did you check the option for Nero to do a verification pass after the burn? (Hint: the answer I'm looking for is "yes".) And did you verify the md5 checksum of the ISO before burning?

[klerg]

I just checked the md5 with MD5Summer and it found 1 error "Checksum did not match." Does that mean the .iso is corrupt? I downloaded it via BitTorrent because it was faster (over 300 seeders) I live in U.S., and ALL the mirrors there seem to be down (at least , right now ). BTW, what is the md5 file for?

[Harry Kuhman]

I just checked the md5 with MD5Summer and it found 1 error "Checksum did not match." Does that mean the .iso is corrupt? I downloaded it via BitTorrent because it was faster (over 300 seeders) I live in U.S., and ALL the mirrors there seem to be down (at least , right now ). BTW, what is the md5 file for?

The md5 is a checksum of the file. It's an all or nothing thing, there can be a match (no errors) or a failure. What you have is a failure, there is no information there about how bad the file is. The md5 is to check the integrity of the file.

I frequently got bad downloads from the mirrors, but I have never had a bad download from Bittorrent. It should not happen, as Bittorrent includes it's own checks in each block and will redownload the block from elsewhere if it is bad. But I do know of one case where a friend had a corrupt file. It turns out that that was an operator error - he terminated the download as soon as the progress indicator reached 100% rather than letting the process actually run to completion. Whatever happened, the good news is that Bittorrent, on starting up again, should check that file for you and fix it. The fix should be pretty quick, as it likely will only need to download a block or two of the file to get a good file. I suggest restarting Bittorrent, letting it verify and repair the file, and then verifying the result with the md5 test again. It will likely resolve your problem.