Fedora Download Page Useless

[Tony Nelson]

At 7:26 PM +1000 7/3/05, Vytas Valas wrote:

>I went to the trouble of downloading the DVD iso file
>for 32 bit systems. The webpage says to use a program
>called shalsum to check the download. There is NO
>PLACE AT ALL on the download page or anywhere else I
>can see to find the shalsum program to check the
>download prior to trying to burn it to a DVD disk. I
>doubt I am alone in feeling mislead by the RedHat
>people when their webpage says use a program which is
>NOT available.
>
>Well, I was interested in trying Linux but if the very
>download page is this useless then I can only guess
>the rest of the online "support" must be just as bad.
>Why tell downloaders to use a program you don't make
>available for download???????

You couldn't find shalsum because it's a 1 not an L.  Indeed, the release
notes don't list where to get sha1sum, and they should (and use the
"release notes errata" for the up-to-date release notes).  Pleas submit a
bug using the link in section 2 of the Release Notes.

As far as shouting, alternatives for emphasis -- without using HTML, which
many of us won't see anyway -- are *bold* and /italic/.  So, "There is /no
place at all/ on the download page".

In your terms, you are correct about the "support".  My expectations were
much lower, only that the contents of the webpage would be accurate and
commands listed on it would work, and they haven't quite been met either.
:|  So it goes.  If you don't like spending lots of time fiddling around
trying to do something that seems like it should be simple, and doing that
hundreds of times over, then probably Linux and FC are not for you.

Searching the Fedora list archives doesn't work.  Even though that has been
established on this list, people will still say you should have done it --
obviously they don't take their own advice.  Instead, search a mirror, such
as:

<http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fedora-list&r=1&w=2>

or use a Google site search:

sha1sum site:www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list

Google doesn't index every day, wile MARC seems to be always up-to-date.

As far as sha1sum goes, well, if you had Linux already, you'd have it
already.  More usefully, a Google search for "sha1sum windows" turns up the
Gnu version.  (In this case, Copy & Paste are also your friend, what with
the typo.  I admit that a Google search for shalsum isn't helpful, and
Google doesn't suggest any useful alternate spelling.)  You should expect
sha1sum to give errors for the files you don't have.  If the sum for the
file you do have doesn't match, you might look into using rsync to repair
the download rather than starting over; you might have to poke around to
find a download mirror that will let you rsync with it (and I haven't done
it myself; you'll need to search the list mirror).

If you do decide to proceed with FC, note that there is a bug in mediacheck
for FC3 and FC4 that will probably require the nodma option listed in the
FC4 release notes; this doesn't mean that the actual install needs nodma.
Also, for FC4, if the installer crashes early on, try it again entering a
garbage command at first, and then the real command (it's a bug).  Some
video cards don't work; see list mirrors for posts on that and what file to
replace as a workaround.  If you need to compile programs, some won't
compile yet with GCC 4, so you might need GCC 3.2:

yum install compat-gcc-32
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