Hey all! Just a quickie to explain the importance of md5sum checking.
When using the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator, making bootable USB thumb drives is straight forward. The .iso file which is used to make the thumb-drive however must meet a data integrity test using the md5 algorithm. Essentially, if you decide to download a Linux distro, you should (and up until now, I haven't been) check the md5sum and that it matches the string defined on the Ubuntu Website.
The method is quite simple and will save time in the longrun. A description and method for use of md5 checksum can be read here.
To check the integrity of the data via md5, open terminal, goto the location of the linux-distro.iso, and enter the following:
This may take some time depending on your computer, but I'd say no longer than 2mins. Here is an example showing the output when checking the md5sum for the distro Ubuntu 10.10:
And if you cross reference with the Hash Site, you will see that there is consistency.
This post was made because I have just tried to boot Ubuntu 11.04 Live on my friends laptop and was getting SQUAHFS read errors.
A seemingly n00bish mistake, but we gotta learn somehow.
Until next time. Ciao!
When using the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator, making bootable USB thumb drives is straight forward. The .iso file which is used to make the thumb-drive however must meet a data integrity test using the md5 algorithm. Essentially, if you decide to download a Linux distro, you should (and up until now, I haven't been) check the md5sum and that it matches the string defined on the Ubuntu Website.
The method is quite simple and will save time in the longrun. A description and method for use of md5 checksum can be read here.
To check the integrity of the data via md5, open terminal, goto the location of the linux-distro.iso, and enter the following:
$ md5sum linux-distro.iso
This may take some time depending on your computer, but I'd say no longer than 2mins. Here is an example showing the output when checking the md5sum for the distro Ubuntu 10.10:
$ md5sum ubuntu-10.10-desktop-i386.iso
59d15a16ce90c8ee97fa7c211b7673a8 ubuntu-10.10-desktop-i386.iso
And if you cross reference with the Hash Site, you will see that there is consistency.
This post was made because I have just tried to boot Ubuntu 11.04 Live on my friends laptop and was getting SQUAHFS read errors.
A seemingly n00bish mistake, but we gotta learn somehow.
Until next time. Ciao!
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