Replies

what are the best instructions for testing the hash? I’ve used a couple distros and never bothered to check.

12 posted on 02/26/2016 12:35:23 PM PST by killermosquito (Buffalo, Detroit (and eventually France) is what you get when liberalism runs its course.)

To: killermosquito

download the ISO, run a program that calculates the md5sum of that file, and compare the result, with the published result that appears online.

18 posted on 02/26/2016 12:45:46 PM PST by Cboldt

To: killermosquito

easiest way to test the hash for iso is to open K3b, then select "tools" and "burn image". Select the file you want to validate. The first then K3b will do is calculate the hash of the file. Compare that to what is specified on the page.

Even easier, but it requires (shudder) the command line, is to simply enter "md5sum filetocheck.iso", where 'filetocheck.iso' is the name of the file you want to check.

$ md5sum /home/iso/linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso
9fae1a87bebe4b57f6a587272f0cee3d /home/iso/linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso

21 posted on 02/26/2016 1:27:50 PM PST by zeugma (Lon Horiuchi is the true face of the feral government. Remember that. Always.)

To: killermosquito

oh, and you also have to keep in mind that there are several different hashes that might be used. Most folks use md5, but it's really not a good choice any more because it's been shown to be possible to force a hash collision. When they show you the hash, they should also tell you how it was calculated. The following shows the same file being tested using several different hashing techniques. Of these, the most secure hash is sha512, but really, anything over sha224 is good. (sha1 has similar known vulnerabilities to md5)

$ for x in md5sum sha1sum sha224sum sha256sum sha384sum sha512sum; do $x linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso;done 9fae1a87bebe4b57f6a587272f0cee3d linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso d3e8f755df63801678af48bf0c2b716d7a066fdd linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso 672792a81435ef77296fd403771f911df26d359e0020dd1e7fb9d204 linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso aa33bf286e92556163c335b258fe5cbd9f65f4ab8490e277fed94cf20d3920e4 linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso 7ae57b2bfe931c56bb355fc0817717636edcdc08d009cb64497605a645ecc46725ab259928a2d91489278c15e212df3f linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso d3c8499c6d3ab6b852d2592ab13129c5289f812443c848ca3f9221a516778d46e85f8ca9c7ac08e1a08882d94e28e4d9558a255366560f75065247568b3f7977 linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso

22 posted on 02/26/2016 1:35:54 PM PST by zeugma (Lon Horiuchi is the true face of the feral government. Remember that. Always.)

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