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SUSE Linux 10.2 DVD Differing MD5SUMSSUSE Linux 10.2 DVD Differing MD5SUMS

Posted March 5th, 2008 in Linux/Unix/BSD

A couple of days ago I needed to download the SUSE Linux 10.2 i386 DVD. This is an older release now but one of my customers needed it. I had the md5sum on file and was surprised after downloading it that it didn't checksum. I then used rsync to check the file against what was on two different mirrors and it still didn't checksum correctly. I then download the MD5SUMS file from one of the mirrors and discovered the md5 checksums in the file on the mirror were different from what I had on file.

After some searching on Google I found some other people had discovered the same thing - that there are two different sets of md5 checksums available for the SUSE 10.2 DVD ISO files. I've listed these below, labelling them "original md5s" for that was originally on the mirrors, and "current md5s" for what is there now.

I guess some change must have been done to them and they simply regenerated the ISO files without giving them a new filename. So if you should need to checksum a SUSE 10.2 DVD against a checksum, then it will match either the original ones or current ones listed below. The best bet is of course to download the MD5SUM from the same mirror you download it from.

After burning the image to DVD, I booted from it and ran the on disk checking utility. This confirmed that the DVD was OK.

Original md5s

12b0f2fabb4d41586601f787d33ebc34  openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-i386.iso
1a3e4179ca0edb914763dbff0de15d96  openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-ppc.iso
b4d727d2fb62c701233ea537f220e9ee  openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-x86_64.iso

Current md5s

cee25aee186181d3ac1d0f6b28a19a17  openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-i386.iso
dca95f266fb7f1136de8fbb35d917772  openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-ppc.iso
dfded111c6a79d3efcf04b9c390f59f9  openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-x86_64.iso

A note on rsync

I used rsync to check the ISO file against what was on the mirror because it will only download the changed parts, if there are any, rather than having to download via FTP or HTTP the entire image again from another mirror. If I'd downloaded another full ISO image then I'd have wasted a whole heap of bandwidth.

Example usage of rsync is as follows:

rsync --progress --stats -az rsync://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/Linux/openSUSE/distribution/10.2/iso/dvd/openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-i386.iso .

The --progress flag tells rsync to show what's going on while it's downloading. If you already have an image which it needs to check then it won't show anything for a while because it will start checking the parts of the file against what is on the server. The --stats is useful at the end for telling you how much was actually downloaded.