Ubuntu 8.04 MD5 Checksums
Posted by whyamistilltyping on April 24, 2008
Ubuntu 8.04 has been released! I, like many are now in the process of burning the ISO images to CD ready to install / upgrade, however there is something that should be done before you even burn that iso image. Because of the nature of the Internet, trunctated connections are common place particularly during server stress (e.g. during a distribution release) and as such, you need to check the CD images you have downloaded are in fact 100% complete and accurate - this could save you a massive headache later on.
There are a huge variety of such utilities for Windows, Linux and Mac. Once you have the utility and the CD image, it’s MD5 checksum needs to be calculated. Once this is done, the calculated MD5 hash needs to be compared to the ‘official’ MD5 hash for the specific file you have tried to download. The MD5s are not easy to find as Canonical do not post them with the download links (which is what most people do.) Instead, you will have to goto the ftp mirror directory and find the MD5SUMS files.
To save you looking, here are the MD5 sums of the Hardy Heron Ubuntu images:
For Ubuntu:
7d0ac92c56361949d099dd9337c975e7 *ubuntu-8.04-alternate-amd64.iso
166991d61e7c79a452b604f0d25d07f9 *ubuntu-8.04-alternate-i386.iso
fc43f665ba51c4be0d95c011aefef45d *ubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso
8895167a794c5d8dedcc312fc62f1f1f *ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
8a73cf85b04f37d5d91fb436525ea395 *ubuntu-8.04-server-amd64.iso
c3162b21757746c64a0a22cdd060b164 *ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso
cdd32124f23b455b0aa22cc3ff35ff35 *wubi.exe
a96aa69961f3ed80dd7a88fae1e28196 *wubi.exe
For Kubuntu:
fe122a713c5945dbbff035b16848ae47 *kubuntu-8.04-alternate-amd64.iso 94b892ac78fdb4d1f164e7bd0f7da2ca *kubuntu-8.04-alternate-i386.iso 99da350d4163ee046a00ef1dda81be6a *kubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso 8aebb0dc17588d22dd3bb59d7df71061 *kubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
For Kubuntu with KDE 4.x: (these servers are being particularly hammered at the moment)
8a822b70f1e169f462727cb885e2b565 *kubuntu-kde4-8.04-alternate-amd64.iso b7195c72b564b3676e584cb774e9002c *kubuntu-kde4-8.04-alternate-i386.iso 3028e26593a29b007c8878f0fbbe5639 *kubuntu-kde4-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso 1933f11ccea58de5bc80549774479031 *kubuntu-kde4-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
For Edubuntu:
210822f1d1d618153a4fdf993c5c3fe7 *edubuntu-8.04-addon-amd64.iso 7259d6f34c5f09e26927c39066833d03 *edubuntu-8.04-addon-i386.iso
And Xubuntu:
c83b84dc02b9e5480d64d2accdd9f3bb *xubuntu-8.04-alternate-amd64.iso 4f398cd35eaf297347f18634a5be5d77 *xubuntu-8.04-alternate-i386.iso 0fb2297b036d9d1bf4cc0a13a4d82f76 *xubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso 665bcc283e131be4cb71ecb2bf0e3794 *xubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
These are correct as of 24/04/08 @ 15:51 GMT, Enjoy the new release 
Update, the issue with the MD5 of wubi.exe has been corrected. Hashes are now correct as of 27/04/08 11:23 GMT.
April 24, 2008 at 8:58 pm
thank you, whyamistilltying. been looking for these for an hour and bit.
miles
April 24, 2008 at 9:58 pm
My pleasure
April 24, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Thank you! These open source people are so thoughtful
April 24, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Thanks!
April 25, 2008 at 3:46 am
Normally, canonical publishes the hashes here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes
Unfortunetly, the 8.04 hashes are not there yet.
Veio
April 25, 2008 at 4:08 am
Thanks for that. Just for noobs like me. If you are using Linux to burn your iso downloads, you can use K3B image burn software which had a built in MD5 checksum calculator and comparison tool. Very easy to use instead of comparing the MD5s manually.
April 25, 2008 at 7:42 am
Thanks! There was a link at the downloading page to the Ubuntu wiki, where the checksum is supposed to be, but it didnt list any checksums for the latest release.
April 25, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Cheers for that.
April 25, 2008 at 2:22 pm
If I look at the download page for Xubuntu, then it just lists an MD5SUMS file at the bottom.
April 25, 2008 at 2:59 pm
@Vincent, thats because you are looking at the FTP directory of the CDimage mirror. I did say in my post that the MD5 hash sums were available in the MD5SUMS file on each and every mirror. This file contains the hashes of all files found on that server.
April 25, 2008 at 3:20 pm
My md5sum for wubi.exe did not match.
I went to http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ and grabbed md5sums and wubi.exe
Then I ran md5sum:
$ md5sum -c MD5SUMS
> wubi.exe: FAILED
$ md5sum wubi.exe
a96aa69961f3ed80dd7a88fae1e28196 wubi.exe
Is my md5sum not working, or are others having this issue, and if so, why don’ t the checksums match?
PS
I even filed a bug report 11 hours ago on launchpad.net Thinking it was a security related post, I labelled it private, so it can only be viewed if you are logged in. If you are logged in at launchpad.net it’s at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/221669
PPS
Man, that website is so confusing for me to navigate.
April 25, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Can’t help with that one I am afraid, try redownloading from a different mirror or are do they all give the same MD5?
EDIT: I just downloaded wubi from the link you provided and my hash is:
a96aa69961f3ed80dd7a88fae1e28196
Which is the same as yours. I tried redownloading it from an official mirror here in the UK (provided by the University of Oxford http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/releases.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/) and that gave the same MD5 again.
Chances are it is a mistake in the propogated MD5SUMS files, although not having tested wubi, it could be a corruption etc. Have to keep an eye on this…
April 25, 2008 at 3:59 pm
RE whyamistilltyping
Do you have any advice as to how I should let the folks at Ubuntu know about this discrepency?
April 25, 2008 at 4:00 pm
PS thank you for taking the time to verify my finding.
April 25, 2008 at 11:02 pm
No problem, sorry I could not add much
With regards to contacting the Ubuntu/Canonical team, apart from submitting a bug which you have already done, you can try catching one of the Devs on IRC (details : http://www.ubuntu.com/community/reportproblem)
April 25, 2008 at 11:17 pm
So polite. Thanks. Actually the issue has been resolved:
See https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/222018
As of *this* moment it looks like
http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/releases.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/MD5SUMS
still hasn’t been updated, but when it does, you may want to update your blog.
Cheers.
April 25, 2008 at 11:21 pm
So polite. Thanks. I actually opened another lauchpad account and issued a duplicate bug report, this time to the wubi list. The maintainer replied and the issue has been resolved:
See https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/222018
As of *this* moment it looks like
http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/releases.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/MD5SUMS
still hasn’t been updated, but when it does, you may want to update your blog.
Cheers.
April 26, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I think it is not possible to have correct md5 result and still get error message. - But then, its happening with me. Downloaded the server image, compared the md5 which was bang on. Installation got stuck, next time around chose ‘Check CD for defects’ and it threw up error ./install/netboot/ubuntu-installer/i386/initrd.gz file failed md5 check verification!!
this was then followed by numerous other errors…
Well I am downloading it again. hoping for best.
Cheers!!
ps - i checked up the cd after all this, the MD5 still matched!!
April 26, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Cool cool, when its made official I will update my post. Thanks for letting me know
April 26, 2008 at 6:08 pm
@Cpyd: We are talking about two different things here, firstly the MD5 of the image file when it is downloaded but as you have discovered, that is not the only way of ending up with a bad CD. When the image is burnt, any flaws in the recording process or media surface can still mean the image downloaded is not perfectly burnt onto the media, hence why the distributions have a ‘check CD’ function.
April 28, 2008 at 9:12 am
@whyamistilltyping,
thanks for your reply. Here is what i am doing -
downloaded the image.
prepare a virtual machine (VMware)-configure it to use the disk image as CD-ROM drive - (learned the trick hard way after trashing my working OS a couple of years ago)
It boots up using that image, and then the errors as I already told above.
I burned a CD, used it to boot up - same result.
Got my hands dirty -
i am greeted with one line - “checksum error. sorry”
extracted individual files from iso image.
found one file named md5sum.txt.. ran an SFV check using this file.
it reported 6 missing files. - i looked around and found those files in other folders. 4 of them were at right places but slightly different names - *corrected* them.
i copied them to the *correct* folders and run the check. - they pass.
Rebuild the iso image.
use this image - voila .. it doesnt boot!!
so you see.. this is what it is with me. always had to struggle to get a working copy of linux.
by now i have downloaded 3 images, from 3 different sources (2 from ubuntu mirrors in france and zimbabwe and one from softpedia) using two different internet connections. and have repeated the exercise with all of them.
so.. what is it that i am not doing right?? coz no one else seems to be stuck in this funny prob.
PS : my hands are still dirty
April 28, 2008 at 4:19 pm
***update***
Just finished with another image.. from US. But at least this time the image failed MD5. LOL on myself. I should breathe now i guess. going to request ShipIt now and wait. Enough of bandwidth wastage!!
Let me know if you have any pointers.
-thanks
chao
May 3, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Many thanks for the md5 check sum values. I forgot to do it when i tried 8.04 alpha 5 then burned a CD only to discover laster that the .iso file had download errors. Live & learn i guess, but won’t make the same mistake again.
May 3, 2008 at 10:45 pm
@Chao - sorry I can’t think of anything else to try apart from using a download manager that supports resuming and parallel downloading.
@Jnorthr - Exactly the same happened to me a few years back.
Thanks for the visit guys
May 13, 2008 at 11:02 pm
I am having the exact same problems with chao. I can burn the server image and the MD5 matches but the CD integrity check fails when I boot to install. Anyone knows a mirror that does not serve corrupted images?