I noticed the test failed on the first media I used, which was a fairly old Sandisk Cruzer 4GB. I have never had a problem with it, but I thought I better not continue as it failed and advised not to use this disk (I am about to install rather than just run live OS).
So I grabbed another newer one, Sandisk Extreme 8GB. First time it passed the test but I had to reboot the machine. Second time it fails the media check/test, and third time.
Do I proceed, is this test a bit flakey/sensitive? Or is it a bad idea to go ahead without a good test?
This seems to lead back to the way the usb media was written. If written properly to the usb and the iso image was valid it should not have failed repeatedly.
What exact iso image was used to create the usb device?
Was the iso image verified by checksum before it was written to the usb?
How was that image written to the usb?
I would verify the iso image used then use either mediawriter or dd to write the image to the usb device. Following that then test the device again before the install.
the image is “Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-39-1.5.iso”
It was written using Balena Etcher (which I use often and definitely writes bootable media correctly).
I have now found another spare USB drive, a 64GB Sandisk Extreme. That verified fine the first time, I didn’t have time to go through install yet (was waiting on advice on another thread re partitioning/installing correctly). Hopefully it will verify ok next time probably tomorrow
No I didn’t verify “checksum” - seemed a bit over my pay grade
The link on the download site has 2 icons beside the iso file being downloaded. One is for downloading, the other is for verifying the iso after downloading completes. The check icon is for verification.
Clicking on that icon gives you a page with instructions to verify the iso image, and step 1 has the link for downloading the checksum file. The rest is for verifying both the checksum file and the iso image.
If the iso image fails the checksum verification then you should replace it with a new valid copy.
Thanks, I vaguely understood the purpose of validating files, at least I thought I did: checking it hasn’t been tampered with and is genuine/original as intended by its authors. Is that right? Or are there are reasons/benefits to verifying files like this?
PS I had a go with the instructions but get command not found for most of the commands. Guessing these instructions for for use on linux/Fedora. I am on a Mac. will maybe try it after installing Fedora.
Mac OSX is not linux so you are correct that many of those commands will not work. However almost all (mac included) have similar commands for that purpose.
The commands can also be run when booted to the live media so you actually are already in the linux environment.
I think that’s why folks came up with the “Fedora media writer” that’s listed there. It’s meant to do the whole process on Windows/Mac/Linux without users having to figure out how to install the individual commands etc.
