Starting on Hamara Development, ARM or Desktop

How to get feet wet in developing hamara

Things to do in order to get feet wet in Hamara

1. Download the .iso image from http://downloads.hamaralinux.org/final/hamara_1.0.3_amd64.iso

2a. If you are on GNU/Linux then you can use many tools. You can either use command-line tools such as wget, curl and/or aria 2 OR use GUI download managers such as fatrat, uget or the mozilla firefox extension flashgot which lives as xul-ext-flashgot.

With curl it is a bit tricky :-

  $ curl -# -O -L -v http://downloads.hamaralinux.org/final/hamara_1.0.3_amd64.iso

In case you have issues with downloading feel free to use mailing list . You will have to subscribe to the list or IRC, use some nickname and use the channel name #hamara , someone or the other is sure to help you.

2b. If however you are on MS-Windows you could use Free Downloaad Manager or any download manager that you trust. A good list of various download managers can be found in Wikipedia also . Depending on what features you want, install and download one and start downloading.

File Integrity in GNU/Linux

3. Once the .iso image is download/finished check the integrity of the download. This is done by comparing the sha1sum or sha256 sum of the iso image with the sha1sum/sha256 sums provided.

When the iso images are being created, all the images sha1sum or/and sha256sums are put inside a single file and called sha1sum or sha256sums .

Make sure that both the .iso image and the sha1sum or sha256sum are downloaded in the same directory.

Now you can check the sha1sum or sha256sum with a reverse checksum, like this :-

   $ sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS 
     mini.iso: OK

The mini.iso I have taken from the debian-devel-installer (a 30 MB iso image which has only the essentials) to share how it works.

These were the contents of the SHA256sums

   $ cat SHA256SUMS 
    95a508caa9c2c798f9f182931caf04f39266d74724267a9016e295ab6ad55218 mini.iso

So when I asked to check the sha256sum from a file, it went into the file, I had removed all the others for quicker processing and also no errors, as it will try to find each of the files mentioned therein and failing to find them in the directory will report the same. Something like :-

   ./netboot/xen/vmlinuz: FAILED open or read
    sha256sum: ./udeb.list: No such file or directory
   ./udeb.list: FAILED open or read
   sha256sum: WARNING: 569 listed files could not be read

It doesn't find any because it is looking at the directory in a particular way so had to delete all the unnecessary ones and also modify the contents a bit so that the path is good.

It would do to have the sha1sum or sha256sum listed as can be seen on http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/stretch_di_alpha3/amd64/iso-dvd/ . This is the same convention that is followed by debian release iso images as well, so it would be good if we follow the same.

File Integrity in MS-Windows or/and Mac.

There is also an sha1sum and sha256sum that can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/binary/sha1sum.exe . It is a command-line interface tool. Install it on your Microsoft Windows Machine. When Installing either install it in C:\ or D:\ and not in any sub-directory so it's easier for you to do the next steps.

Once that is done go to the Windows Menu and type CMD in the small window provided . This will open up a command-line-environment or CLI.

In the CLI, go to where the .iso image is, and execute the sha1sum.exe on the .iso image. For e.g.

   C:\sha1sum.exe D:/hamara-sugam_1.0_beta_amd64.iso
    8e0369e817cd56466af54ed4635ea56e7ce660fe  

It should output the sha1sum on the line below similar to what has been shown. The above is just an example. The idea is you take a release and take the sum of it and compare it with the sha1sums shared at https://downloads.hamaralinux.org/sha1sums