proxmox-ve_8.1-2.iso Corrupt ISO file from official mirror

[DubsCheckum]

Dear Proxmox staff,

I'm a new user and when trying to install proxmox virtual environment from Ventoy I encountered issues similar to other peoples' experience with installation media not finding the ISO file when launching the installer (disable quite kernel command line parameter in grub). So I thought it's a Ventoy issue and flashed the ISO with dd on another usb flash drive which was not bootable at all. I also couldn't mount the usb on my system so I actually checked the ISO and noticed it has a different sha256 checksum than it should have.

1. Afterwards got it working doing the following:
   Downloaded new ISO Image from same URL https://enterprise.proxmox.com/iso/proxmox-ve_8.1-2.iso
2. verified checksum
3. copied ISO to Ventoy stick
4. easy peasy installation working flawlessly on same machine

My buddy who recommended Proxmox to me, who's a satisfied customer for years, was troubleshooting my issues with me for the last 4 hours and eventually we downloaded the ISO again and then it worked so we wondered why it is happening. We both used the same URL to download multiple ISOs and out of 7 downloads 2 were broken (different checksums). We also checked the mirrors (you seem to have 4 ip addresses for enterprise.proxmox.com) and could verify that we obtained a broken .iso and afterwards a working .iso from the same host/IP

Resolving enterprise.proxmox.com... 2a01:7e0:0:424::249, 212.224.123.70

the correct checksum starts with f3e and ends with 3c0



also dd got stuck after 34 seconds for 4 minutes although it was almost done at the time. Also the resulting usb drive was not bootable at all




so yeah when you google proxmox+ventoy you find people with all kind of crazy unexplainable issues in the last months and I'm positive it's because of broken images. If you use the same ISO for regular boot stick it won't boot at all but you don't notice this immediatly on ventoy which is widely used because you can boot the pve grub but it will fail eventually.

I hope this might help someone

 

[fabian]

invalid checksums can be caused by a lot of things:
- something on the network interfering (e.g., a MITM attack, a proxy box, ..), especially if not using (verified) TLS
- broken memory
- broken disk
- broken CPU

were all the invalid checksums happening on the same machine?

if you can give the exact host you are downloading from, I'm happy to double check there as well - but since our mirror network is frequently re-synced, any corruption there should be quickly handled by the next sync.

 

[HP-Baxter]

I can confirm receiving a corrupted image as well by wget and only one out of two downloads attempts @ mirror 212.224.123.70.

 

[fabian]

the file is okay on the server. if you can reproduce the issue, can you check the file size (e.g., a truncated download will also not match the checksum) and contents?

 

[gfngfn256]

Just to add to fabian's excellent points, I believe once reading a survey that determined that most invalid checksums are caused by a corruption during download. This is very NW/browser/download manager centric.

The OP in his testing, appears to get different checksums each time. Assuming, he is doing one download after the other, it is obviously not the fault of the originating file.

 

[fabian]

also did a couple of test downloads, nothing interesting coming up. so I'd still pin this on either some (German? ) transit provider having issues, or your local machine doing the download. the data I asked for above might still help trouble shoot it though (e.g., a truncated download vs. a bit flip vs. totally different contents)

 

[HP-Baxter]

Just to add to fabian's excellent points, I believe once reading a survey that determined that most invalid checksums are caused by a corruption during download. This is very NW/browser/download manager centric.

The OP in his testing, appears to get different checksums each time. Assuming, he is doing one download after the other, it is obviously not the fault of the originating file.

I did like 10-15 downloads and the mirror mentioned gave me the wrong checksum on second download. I indeed couldn't reproduce the error again, but this seems weird.

 

[gfngfn256]

I did like 10-15 downloads and the mirror mentioned gave me the wrong checksum on second download. I indeed couldn't reproduce the error again, but this seems weird.

Are my correct in understanding that out of approximately 10 downloads; one had an incorrect checksum? This is not weird.

 

[DubsCheckum]

i didn't have a different checksum on every download. As I mentioned before we were 2 people testing independently on different machines and networks entirely. I just happened to have bad luck with my very first download and later received working downloads but my buddy could reproduce it easily as well. We both never had this happen in our lives before and internet is full of similar issues. Just saying I never had this happen before, especially not as easily reproduceable and multiple people on the internet and this forum seem to experience the same. Also my machine is definetely not broken and downloads and anything else work flawlessly from other sources.

@fabian you can see in the OP the ipv4 and ipv6 of the host which gave me both corrupt and intact .iso file. There must be a network/server issue on your end as mentioned above it was totally different location, network, machines as clients and we both managed to reproduce a corrupt iso download after a couple tries which should be a one in a thousand at most not a one in ten.

 

[gfngfn256]

and multiple people on the internet and this forum seem to experience the same

Wrong checksums? Show me the evidence for this.

but my buddy could reproduce it easily as well.

So again, for clarity's sake, you received one bad checksum out of 10 downloads & your buddy received how many bad checksums out of how many downloads?

 

[TeroS]

Out of curiosity just downloaded (twice) from link in the first post, checksum matches, file is OK.

 

[Kingneutron]

Just chiming in here, but Proxmox DOES provide a torrent download right there on the DL page.


https://www.proxmox.com/images/download/pve/iso/proxmox-ve_8.1-2.torrent

If you think you're getting corrupted downloads from a direct mirror, switch to Transmission or the like and download it that way - checksums are automagically taken care of.

 

[Ramalama]

invalid checksums can be caused by a lot of things:
- something on the network interfering (e.g., a MITM attack, a proxy box, ..), especially if not using (verified) TLS
- broken memory
- broken disk
- broken CPU

were all the invalid checksums happening on the same machine?

if you can give the exact host you are downloading from, I'm happy to double check there as well - but since our mirror network is frequently re-synced, any corruption there should be quickly handled by the next sync.

Such sort of issues drives me sometimes crazy from a network perspective.

We all had once downloaded a file corrupted, on the server the file is absolutely fine. On redownload the file is fine either.
But im wondering how that can happen, as we have in the network stack (tcp) error correction and resend tcp packages.
So i would assume that errors lead to increased latency and so on, but never corrupted downloads.

Sorry, thats offtopic, but this sort of Problems shouldnt really exist, and they still do.
No reply needed, just wanted to add my 5 cents xD

Cheers

 

[fabian]

@fabian you can see in the OP the ipv4 and ipv6 of the host which gave me both corrupt and intact .iso file. There must be a network/server issue on your end as mentioned above it was totally different location, network, machines as clients and we both managed to reproduce a corrupt iso download after a couple tries which should be a one in a thousand at most not a one in ten.

or somewhere on the network between our server and your machine(s), for example in a transit provider or your ISP since you are all in the same geographic area, this is entirely possible. which is why I asked for details about the kind of corruption - this would help narrow down what might be going on.

 

[wdcossey]

or somewhere on the network between our server and your machine(s), for example in a transit provider or your ISP since you are all in the same geographic area, this is entirely possible. which is why I asked for details about the kind of corruption - this would help narrow down what might be going on.

I wanted to add my experience here; I was attempting to download the latest ISO image for 8.1-2, but I encountered issues just trying to download the .iso file.

This occurred on Windows 11 with (IDM) and without (Edge, Chrome & Firefox) a download manager.
I haven't tested the download on another operating system (yet). However, I did manage to download the file successfully using a torrent in the end.

Location: London, UK

 

[wdcossey]

I wanted to add my experience here; I was attempting to download the latest ISO image for 8.1-2, but I encountered issues just trying to download the .iso file.

This occurred on Windows 11 with (IDM) and without (Edge, Chrome & Firefox) a download manager.
I haven't tested the download on another operating system (yet). However, I did manage to download the file successfully using a torrent in the end.

Location: London, UK

Update: The same is happening w/ 7.4-1 and 6.4-1 downloads.

Firefox:

The connection has timed out

An error occurred during a connection to enterprise.proxmox.com.

Yeah, I know. This is the generic browser error, I should be working so don't have time to delve deeper.

 

[fabian]

this is something else - if you connection times out, the download will most likely be incomplete... again, this can have plenty of reasons, only a very small amount of them are under our control..

 

[gfngfn256]

This isn't a general ISP / network quality review forum, quit the whining.

 

[wdcossey]

this is something else - if you connection times out, the download will most likely be incomplete... again, this can have plenty of reasons, only a very small amount of them are under our control..

All is well this morning, the links are working as expected.