Is Ubuntu special as far as bum CDs go?

[aysiu]

A lot of times on these forums, newbies complain about the installation process freezing (during installation or packages or reading the partition table or whatever).

I, too, when first trying to install Ubuntu, encountered a bum CD that kept freezing at 79% of the package installation. I didn't know anything about checksums or md5sums or whatever (I still know very little about this, and have no idea what the term hash means).

Is this unique to Ubuntu? I've downloaded scores of other Linux installer and live disks from other distributions and never had to do a checksum and never had a corrupted download (PCLinuxOS, Knoppix, Mepis, Mandriva, Fedora, Blag, etc.).

I love Ubuntu, but I feel there's some weird corruption that Ubuntu has more often than other Linux distros. Where does it come from? I've even read threads where people have gotten a bunch of official Ubuntu CDs that were corrupt.

Any thoughts? Am I alone in my perception/ experience? Is this turning off a lot of potential users? And, if it's a real problem, is there anything that can be done about it?

[mstlyevil]

I have downloaded and installed both Ubuntu and Kubuntu in both breezy and hoary. I have never had a problem with a corrupted disk myself. I have found though if you have a 52x burner you should turn it down for less corruption during burning. I burn my CD's at 24x and since have never had a problem with a corrupted copy.

[aysiu]

I have downloaded and installed both Ubuntu and Kubuntu in both breezy and hoary. I have never had a problem with a corrupted disk myself. I have found though if you have a 52x burner you should turn it down for less corruption during burning. I burn my CD's at 24x and since have never had a problem with a corrupted copy. Maybe I'm cracked in the head then. Well, I'll wait for more folks to weigh in. Thanks for responding.

[briancurtin]

i have burned 2 (maybe 3) of the regular install CDs onto CDs, one liveCD onto a CD, and one liveCD onto a DVD and have had no problems at all with them.

[etc]

One of my Ubuntu CDs I burnt myself would always freeze at installing at 67%, but that was just one CD out of maybe ten. I also had a corrupt Knoppix CD and Feather Linux CD I burnt, so I don't think it's unique to Ubuntu.

Edit: Also, some of my Shipit CDs were scratched, so that messed up the installation, too.

[chimera]

I have downloaded and installed from about 7 Hoary CDs and about 20 Breezy CDs, all worked. Bum CDs might be due to your CD burning equipment and/or the CDs you were burning to.

[eriqk]

None of the .isos I've burned have been problematic. Maybe the FC2 one I got from PlanetCCRMA but that could have been down to my SATA controller.
Never used Shipit CDs.
A friend of mine recently installed Breezy using a Shipit CD and that took him over three hours. Machine seemed to boot OK, though.
//edit
I never burn faster than at 8x. Not sure if that matters.

Groet, Erik

[bored2k]

Ubuntu is not responsible for own burners nor how we download nor burn their image.

[Luffield]

I had less problems with Ubuntu than with other distros. I burned Hoary (live CD), Breezy colony 5 and Breezy release, and all of them worked just fine. Niether Knoppix nor SymphonyOS worked on my PC, but I can't say if it was a faulty CD or something else.

[aysiu]

Ubuntu is not responsible for own burners nor how we download nor burn their image. Thanks. I wasn't about to sue Ubuntu or Canonical. I was just curious as to whether or not Ubuntu's CDs were more prone to being corrupt. I obviously don't have a problem with my burner or my CDs, as I've burnt many other distros.

[23meg]

I've burned all release and RC CDs since Warty, as well as some Colony and Flight ones, and had large quantities of Hoary and Breezy CDs shipped to me, and I have yet to come across a bum.

[awakatanka]

Downloaded ubuntu 5.10 that worked good ,with kubuntu i had a error but that 1 i burned in linux, could be the cause for me because after a windows burn it was good.

The cd i got with mail where good, but my uncle that has order 5 had 3 that where not working good.

btw ever tryed to search failure in google? i agree with them for there top link

[earobinson]

worked for me every time

[poofyhairguy]

Lets see....from the start I have burned maybe 30 Ubuntu CDs and probably 7 or so were duds.

So a high rate for me. But its not a big deal.

One distro I used checked itself upon install to make sure the entire CD was ok...that is the only way around it I know.

[Iandefor]

Every single Ubuntu disc I've used thus far has been a dud. I got one of them to install properly about two times, then it went back to being a dud. Usually, though, I can get it to do a server installation. It's rather weird and pisses me off a lot. But I can install the desktop from the repo's, so it's not too big a deal to get the CD's working properly after the server install.

[Rackerz]

Well every Ubuntu CD I've burnt has been done at full speed and no problems. Is there anything special about Ubuntu from other distro's that could make it possibly become corrupt during burning? Or is it simply that more people are using Ubuntu and thats why we get the occassional bum.

[alinuxfan]

btw ever tryed to search failure in google? i agree with them for there top link

It's called googlebombing (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=googlebombing&btnG=Search)
just so you know. It has nothing to do with the way our U.S. of A. or the way our commander-in-chief is doing his job.

Edit: Not trying to hijack the thread, I just thought that needed to be said, especially since the person whom I quoted didn't give any explation except to make his little prank known.

[aysiu]

Okay. So apparently my perception of this situation is on crack. Thanks for the wake-up.

[jeffreyvergara.NET]

my experience with my burned ubuntu installer was quite annoying... sometimes the installer fails at 5%, 17%, 43% and 78%. I retry installing 3-4 times in a row until I properly install Ubuntu, but sometimes it just install smoothly.
Ship-it CDs was alittle bit the same, at first I installed Ubuntu smoothly, and the next time, sometimes it fails and then retry installation again.
I don't know if the problem are my CD's but I think maybe there's also a problem with my drives...

[poofyhairguy]

my experience with my burned ubuntu installer was quite annoying... sometimes the installer fails at 5%, 17%, 43% and 78%. I retry installing 3-4 times in a row until I properly install Ubuntu, but sometimes it just install smoothly.
Ship-it CDs was alittle bit the same, at first I installed Ubuntu smoothly, and the next time, sometimes it fails and then retry installation again.
I don't know if the problem are my CD's but I think maybe there's also a problem with my drives...

The other day I could not install Ubuntu on my cousin's laptop. I had like three install CDs, but each kept dying before the install was done. I was getting really frustrated.

But after a while I put the laptop on a different table (both seemed sturdy) and it installed like a charm....the difference in the end was that the second table was made of a solid wood (instead of glass which gave in a little).

So basically if you are having that many problems, you CDROM drive is at some angle it should not be.

[confused57]

I'm probably jinxing myself, but I've never had an Ubuntu installation fail. My Breezy 5.10 were received from Ship-it, and the installation CD installed flawlessly on an old computer(500 MHz, 256 ram) and on my main computer(2.93 GHz, 1 Gb ram) dual-booting on a 2nd HD with Windows XP, Ship-it LiveCD ran with no problem. I've downloaded iso images and burned an image of Kubuntu Breezy installation disk, Kubuntu Breezy LiveCD, and Dapper Drake Flight 5. The checksums always matched with no problems, and I successfully installed and ran Kubuntu Breezy, Dapper Drake 5, and had no problems with the Kubuntu LiveCD. Since I've related my experiences, my next iso download and installation will probably fail.

[Christmas]

I always burn my CDs at 8x or a lower speed and I didn't have problems with downloaded Ubuntu images or the ShipIt ones. However I noticed that when I install and configure the network settings from the installer, at some point it stops and freezes. I heard about pressing Ctrl+C to skip that step, but at that time I didn't know that. So when I left the network settings untouched in the installing process, everything ran very well. I think that this kind of problems are due to high speeds when burning the CD.

[bonzodog]

I've burnt god knows how many ISO CD's from ubuntu and other distributions, and only ever had one corrupt download image (md5sum immediately after download - it's a MUST!). All the ISO images I have burnt have been fine, though I limited my burner to 16x to ensure a good solid burn.

[FISHERMAN]

I've never had any problems.
(have a good burner and I always burn at ×4)

[zubrug]

no problems except the classic, not burning as image wasted a couple of cd's a couple of years ago

[ice60]

i've burned afew Ubuntu cds and haven't had any problems, i've used three separate downloads and burned afew from each image.


[i] have no idea what the term hash means
BTW from google
Producing hash values for accessing data or for security. A hash value (or simply hash), also called a message digest, is a number generated from a string of text. The hash is substantially smaller than the text itself, and is generated by a formula in such a way that it is extremely unlikely that some other text will produce the same hash value.
when the iso is ready for download you can use an algorithm - CRC, MD5 etc to check the file. the algorithm's output (the hash) will always be the same as long as the file is unchanged. so if you have a corrupted download your file won't be the same as the original file so the checksum (the hash generated from the original file) will be different.

it's the same way programs like tripwire work for data integrity. BitTorrent uses it too, it checks every bit it downloads.

[drizek]

ive only had problems with scrathed cdrws