md5sums

[Alma J Wetzker]

Michael Hipp wrote:
> Tom Wilson wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've always been bad and never really checked the md5sums of iso's I
>> download.  Now trying to correct my bad ways, I have been try to
>> download the latest version of Mepis for 3 days now from a couple
>> different places, via ftp from ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu and via rsync
>> from ibiblio.org, I must've download the image 20 times and have yet to
>> get one where the iso md5sum matches the md5sum file I download. 
>> Is it just horrible luck?  Or do I need to break out the chicken feet? 
>> In the grand scheme of things is it that important?
> 
> 
> If the isos don't match, you'd normally assume the download failed somehow.
> 
> But since you said Mepis, I remember a couple of weeks ago when I 
> grabbed their iso, the naming on the download site was somewhat 
> confusing. And what I downloaded didn't match the iso. But it was a file 
> naming problem and not a download problem.
> 
> Are you doing it the "automated" way by doing
> 
> mdtsum -c <md5sum file>
> 
> or manually by
> 
> md5sum whatever.iso
> 
> and hand comparing that to the md5sum file. If you're using the 
> automated way, it may merely be that the file name in the md5sum file 
> doesn't match the iso.
> 
> Otherwise, use 'wget' to get the iso. Wget will never let you down. Wget 
> is your friend. Don't leave home without it. I have some scripts (that I 
> think originally came from David Bandel) if you need them.
> 
> Michael

Would you post, or send, the scripts?  They sound useful in and of themselves, 
but I am working on trying to do something that wget sounds good for and 
sample code is always the best place to start.

     -- Alma