jtd wrote:
On Monday 01 Sep 2008 10:22, Rony wrote:
Hello,
I have downloaded the first 10 Debian Etch CDs and out of 10 ISOs, 2 or 3 had an md5sum problem. While the good md5 returns a proper checksum value, the bad ones return an Input/Output error.
You are checking the iso or a burned cd?.
Downloaded ISO.
The problem is that when this error occurs, the link between the system and HDD is lost and no further commands are accepted as they need to be picked up from the HDD.
Your Hdd IS BAD.
Hmm.
The system blanks out and I have to force shutdown and reboot it. Yesterday I kept the Lenny live CD for download and its md5sum gave the same problem today morning.
I had mentioned this problem earlier too and the HDD was suspected. However for the good ISO checksums there is no problem whatsoever.
Why can't the system decently tell me that the checksum is bad, why does it have to break all connections and crash?
Because the drive is bad. If you tail the logs you will see this error ad-nausem. However the system does recover - after a couple of hours. This is true afaik only if your bad partition is not needed by the OS. Must mail the disk io guys about some sane timeout.
I am getting a clearer picture now. It is not the downloaded ISO that is corrupted, it is the bad surface of the disk in a particular area, that is corrupting the ISO file stored there and md5sum is just a co-incidence that puts a strain on the disk and puts it to test. Since everything else is working fine, I have now added a spare disk to store ISOs.