On 10/21/07, Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Sun, October 21, 2007 11:46 am, Phill Coxon wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 2007-10-20 at 19:37 +1300, dave wrote:
> >
> >> I have both Desktop 386 versions, Checked them via MD5Sum from the
> >> console and
> >> then burned them to CD and verified them after burning to ensure a good
> >> burn.
> >> It is these CD's i'll be passing onto St Albans.
> >
> > I've downloaded, checked and burned the 64 bit versions of Ubuntu /
> > Kubuntu.
> >
> > I'll send them off to St Albans on Tuesday.
> >
> > I'm in Opawa if anyone would like to pick up a copy of either. Email me
> > off list.
> >
> > Thanks,
>
> It seems to me that what St Albans needs is the iso files.

True.


> I know you can convert the CD/DVD back to an iso file, but that is fraught 
> with error and
> a bit of a PITA.

The PITA is caused by some CD/DVD writing software adding padding on
to the end of the data recording when it's written to the DVD/CD. This
alters the digest sums while the data itself is correct.

'Conversion' is a really dead simple one liner, essentially just doing:-

cat /dev/hdc | head --bytes=<whatever it's supposed to be> | tee
distro.iso | md5sum

This pipeline hacks off the spurious padding bytes, and you get a md5
digest hash, which you can check, as a side effect. Discovering
<whatever it's supposed to be> can be a bit of a pain, but I have yet
to be defeated. Similarly finding out what the md5 hash is supposed to
be can problematic, but if one puts the hash string into Google and if
it returns a few references to your file that would seem to be a
pretty good confirmation that things are ok.


> Subject to anything Chris has to say on it, can I suggest
> you write the iso file AS DATA to a cd or dvd and give that to Chris, then
> he can just copy the iso to the hard drive.

While Nick's idea conforms to the KISS principle perfectly, it does
have the disadvantage that we cannot then hand discs which are an .iso
file in an iso9660 filesystem CD/DVD on to the punters after the
contents have been copied to the hard drive, becasuse the discs will
no longer boot. So, unless it's a re-writable DC/DVD, it's rubbish
after the file has been copied. A shame imho.

Note that the file-set I am creating has had all the hashes checked.
and the .md5 files are available.

Here is a partial list of Distros I have made available:-

ArchLinux   Gentoo     PCBSD       SystemRescueCD
BG-Rescue   GoboLinux  PCLinuxOS   TuDOS
Books       Gparted    Plan9       Ubuntu
CentOS      HURD       Puppy       Voyage
DSL         IPCop      SMEserver   Zenwalk
Debian      Kernels    Sabayon     openSUSE
DreamLinux  Knoppix    Slackware   pfSense
Fedora      Mandriva   Slax
FreeBSD     OLPC       SourceMage
GeexboX     OpenBSD    Syllable

Notes:

Ophcrack has been removed from the archive by request of the St.
Albans management. However I'm more than happy to supply bona fide
folks with a CD off my machine.

Whilst "Books" may not be a 'distro' in the strict sense of the word,
it contains these files:-
LFS-BOOK-6.3.pdf  abs-guide-5.0.tar.gz  rute.html.tar.bz2  rute.pdf
of which the LFS-BOOK is a distro, given a goodly dose of poetic licence. :-)
Suggestions for more files of up-to-date, well written, and _*free to
copy*_ books would be very welcome. OK the files are not very large,
but I recon that they are so useful that folks would like to be able
to pop them onto memory sticks during meetings.

-- 
Sincerely etc.
Christopher Sawtell

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