Fedora 12 installation: a pitfall where more info would help

[harmlessdrudge]

I just had an hour or two wasted, in part, as I didn't see this message

Please note that the Hash: SHA1 line in the CHECKSUM file is part of the PGP signature. It does not specify the type of hash used to verify the .iso files.

here: https://fedoraproject.org/en/verify

because I went straight to the i386 download site where I found, in the checksum file

Hash: SHA1

f0ad929cd259957e160ea442eb80986b5f01daaffdbcc7e5a1840a666c4447c7 *Fedora-12-i386-DVD.iso

Not until after I had a problem did I Google "Fedora 12 wrong sha1" which led me to this:

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermai ... 07486.html

with

Quote

Please note that the Hash: SHA1 line in the CHECKSUM file is part
of the PGP signature. It does not specify the type of hash used to
verify the .iso files.

The checksums themselves use SHA256 as the hash algorithm. We've got
an open bug to improve the instructions for Windows users, as they
still refer to sha1sum, incorrectly¹. I'm not certain what Windows
tools can verify SHA256 checksums. Our hope is to be able to provide
a sha256sum.exe for Windows users, but that process is not complete

Unquote

My intended Amahi server box threw up a media check error when I tried the Fedora 12 install, though two separate downloads from different sites were identical and the media copy verified ok. I don't know yet if I have a faulty DVD unit in my box. I've now verified that the sha256 for the .iso file is correct, so I have a good copy.

The sha1 reference in the Fedora 12 download site is positively misleading. Perhaps it would be good to warn people about it?

Postscript: I found dropping the speed of burning the DVD to 4x solved the media validation problem.