On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 17:20, GarUlbricht7@netscape.net wrote:

Alex Khroustalev wrote:

...

In RedHat the installer checks the discs for defects before installing. Is there something similar in SuSE?

Apparently not, or Doug Glenn wouln't have had the experience he did. However, it would be a "good thing" to add.

Red Hat put the verification routine in their installer because the vast majority of people running their software got it from downloading the ISO's, where a validation would be expectedly called for. I seriously doubt that the majority of people running SuSE install it any other way than by boxed set. (I tried that FTP install. Once.) You would expect that needing to verify the checksum of a produced CD in a boxed set would be redundant. It's unfortunate that Mr. Glenn has experienced this problem, but let's face it: how many of us, in all the purchased CD-based software we have, have had a defective disc? Personally, I have a couple hundred such discs, and more I've thrown away or retired to a dust bin. I think I might have gotten one bad disc in all these years, but I can't even recall for sure. My point is this: I don't think it's worthwhile to spend the effort putting a checksum routine in SuSE's installer. On the other hand, the "effort" probably isn't all that great. Shoot, it's free software, right? Just gank Red Hat's code. From that point of view, why not? FWIW, I think the routine in Red Hat's installer is redundant as well, as I always checked the md5sum of the downloaded ISO's before I burned them. Regards, dk