Debian why so many cds

Typically, they are more up-to-date, but have received less testing. Some have new features e. You do not need to install anything on the hard drive. All programs run directly from the medium. The Debian Live Project produces live image files for a variety of system types and media. If your Debian disc fails to boot, first ensure that you have correctly written it to the medium - please see the explanation above.

Where are the images for M68K, Hurd or other architectures? Are images for the unstable distribution available? Due to the fact that the packages in unstable change so quickly, it is more appropriate for people to download and install unstable using a normal Debian HTTP mirror. If you are aware of the risks of running unstable , but still want to install it, you have a few choices:.

To find out which image contains a certain file, use the cdimage search tool. Can I have a list of all the packages contained in an image? Look on cdimage. For Debian Live images, you can find in the same directory as the image files some similarly named files suffixed with. Download these and then search them for the desired package name. The software on the official CDs is outdated - why don't you release a new version?

We only make official releases of the stable distribution when we think they truly deserve that name. Unfortunately, this means that stable releases only happen about every 2 years If you require more recent versions of some of the software in Debian, you can install stable and then upgrade via the net those parts you want to the versions from testing - it is possible to mix software from the different releases.

Alternatively, try out the images of testing that are generated automatically every week. More information about testing security support is available from the security FAQ. If you only need newer versions of specific packages, you can also try the backports service, which takes packages from testing and modifies them to work on stable. This option may be safer than installing the same package directly from testing. How do I know if I am downloading the newest images?

The note at the bottom of the Debian on CD page always shows the version number of the latest release. How can I verify the downloaded ISO images and written optical media?

Detailed information on how to authenticate the signed checksum files containing the checksums of the ISO image files is available on the authenticity verification page.

After cryptographically verifying the checksum files, we can check that:. The problem with the verification of written optical media is that some media types will possibly return more bytes than those found in the ISO image. Therefore, we need to read exactly the same number of sectors of data from the media as are found in the ISO image itself; reading any more bytes from the media will alter the checksum result.

Most likely, the tool you use for downloading the image does not have large file support, i. The usual symptom for this problem is that when you download the file, the file size reported by your tool and the amount of data that it downloads is too small by exactly 4 GB. For example, if the DVD image is 4.

Some old versions of wget also suffer from this problem - either upgrade to a version of wget which does not have this restriction or use the curl command line download tool: curl -C - [URL].

Note that they're all frontends to the previously mentioned low-level burning applications. On recent versions of Windows, this can be done natively by right-clicking the ISO and selecting "Burn image to disk or similar ".

This might be a little problem on older versions of Windows, as many Windows image-burning programs use their own formats for CD images. To burn the. Some programs do not offer these choices; use another burning program instead ask a friend or colleague. Here is some information about how to write CD images with specific products:. If you can provide updated information or details for other programs, please let us know.

The Toast program for Mac OS is reported to work fine with. You can be extra-safe by giving it the creator code CDr3 or possibly CDr4 and type code iImg using e.

Double-clicking on the file will then open up Toast directly, without having to drag-and-drop or go via the File-Open menu. Ensure that the settings are correct, then click on Burn. Several of the Debian and Debian Live images, notably all i, amd64 and arm64 images, are created using the isohybrid technology, which means that they may be used in two different ways:.

Additionally to the method above for Linux systems, there is also the win32diskimager program available, which allows writing such bootable USB flash drives under Windows. Please note, that Debian advises not using unetbootin for this task. It can cause difficult-to-diagnose problems with booting and installing, so is not recommended. There is no obligatory way of labeling. However, we suggest you use the following scheme to ensure interchangeability:. Note that you are allowed to use the Official designation only on CDs the image of which has a checksum that matches the one from the jigdo files of official releases.

Any CD that has no matching checksum e. In the case of official weekly snapshots, version numbers like 6. Instead, label the image with a codename like etch or a distribution name like testing. Also add Snapshot and the date of the snapshot to help identify it:. Please see the separate artwork page. Some older images are available from the archive section on cdimage. For example, you might want to try out older images if you need support for a certain sub architecture which has been dropped for a newer release.

Note that this approach has been replaced with Jigdo, as detailed in Section 3. It is quite straightforward. The first step is to obtain the appropriate Debian tools to build the CD image. We use one of these locations here:. The last operation here changes the location at which the script - , make - pseudo , image expects to find the installed version of the bash shell.

The next step is to obtain a list of files that will make up the contents of the CD. This is obtained from an appropriate CD image archive. For the binary distribution of Debian 2. We download the list of contents for each:. CD-ROM drives are specific enough i. The routines declared above are all implemented in cdrom. These routines simply implement certain capabilities that are common to all CD-ROM and really, all removable-media devices.

The interface implemented in cdrom. The structures are:. When cdrom. It is impossible to know all the capabilities of future CD-ROM drives, so it is expected that this list may need to be expanded from time to time as new technologies are developed. For now, the current struct is:. When a low-level device driver implements one of these capabilities, it should add a function pointer to this struct. When a particular function is not implemented, however, this struct should contain a NULL instead.

This is because very little of the information in the structures inode and file is used. Most low-level CD-ROM drivers don't even look at the major and minor number though, since many of them only support one device.

The drive-specific, minor-like information that is registered with cdrom. Using this struct , a linked list of the registered minor devices is built, using the next field. The device number, the device operations struct and specifications of properties of the drive are stored in this structure. The parameters are declared const because they describe properties of the drive, which don't change after registration. These various flags registers should provide enough flexibility to adapt to the different users' wishes and not the arbitrary wishes of the author of the low-level device driver, as is the case in the old scheme.

Other data that is specific to a minor drive, can be accessed through handle , which can point to a data structure specific to the low-level driver. The intermediate software layer that cdrom. This relieves much of the drivers' memory checking and format checking and translation. Also, the necessary structures will be declared on the program stack. The implementation of the functions should be as defined in the following sections.

Two functions must be implemented, namely open and release. Other functions may be omitted, their corresponding capability flags will be cleared upon registration. Generally, a function returns zero on success and negative on error. A function call should return only after the command has completed, but of course waiting for the device should not use processor time.

Open should try to open the device for a specific purpose , which can be either:. Notice that any strategic code closing tray upon open , etc. Device-specific actions should be taken such as spinning down the device.

This is the only function returning type void. In cdrom. This function, if implemented, should control the tray movement. No other function should control this. The parameter position controls the desired direction of movement:. This function returns 0 upon success, and a non-zero value upon error.

Note that if the tray is already in the desired position, no action need be taken, and the return value should be 0. This function and no other code controls locking of the door, if the drive allows this. The value of lock controls the desired locking state:. Note that if the door is already in the requested state, no action need be taken, and the return value should be 0.

It has been reported that these drives can make reading errors at these high speeds, reducing the speed can prevent data loss in these circumstances. Finally, some of these drives can make an annoyingly loud noise, which a lower speed may reduce. This function specifies the speed at which data is read or audio is played back. The special value 0 means auto-selection , i. If the drive doesn't have this auto-selection capability, the decision should be made on the current disc loaded and the return value should be positive.

A negative return value indicates an error. If the drive can store multiple discs a juke-box this function will perform disc selection. It should return the number of the selected disc on success, a negative value on error. Currently, only the ide-cd driver supports this functionality. This function should implement the old corresponding ioctl. Note that routines in cdrom. The return value is 0 upon success. This number should reflect the number that is generally found in the bar-code on the product.

Unfortunately, the few discs that carry such a number on the disc don't even use the same format. The MCN is expected as a character string, terminated by a null-character. This call should perform a hard-reset on the drive although in circumstances that a hard-reset is necessary, a drive may very well not listen to commands anymore. Preferably, control is returned to the caller only after the drive has finished resetting.

If the drive is no longer listening, it may be wise for the underlying low-level cdrom driver to time out. However, most ioctl 's deal with audio-control. We have decided to leave these to be accessed through a single function, repeating the arguments cmd and arg. Note that the latter is of type void , rather than unsigned long int.