Introduction

distroverify is a utility to verify any linux distro file (*.iso) for its integrity and primarily intended towards distro hoppers and linux newbies. When you download a distro iso file from the internet (such as ubuntu-mate-19.04-desktop-amd64.iso), you may never know if it may have been tampered with en-route or even on the server itself.

To be sure, you have to download a checksum file (usually sha1 or sha256) to ensure that the checksum matches with the distro file’s checksum calculated at your end. This tool does exactly that, it takes care of the hassle for scavenging for the checksum file’s download link and run a checksum utility like sha1sum or sha256sum. It automates this whole process for you in a single program!

Supported Distros

The following distros are supported so far and the list keeps growing. It all depends on whether or not the distros maintain a standard convention in naming their urls for hashes.

  • Supported distros:

    • Ubuntu - All family

    • Debian (Live & DVD)

    • Linux Mint

    • OpenSUSE LEAP

    • Fedora (Live & netinst)

Installation

distroverify can be installed with python’s standard package manager, pip:

pip install distroverify

Usage

Simply run distroverify with path to iso file as argument:

prahlad@ubuntu:~$ distroverify ubuntu-14.04.6-server-i386.iso
distro detected:  ubuntu
version: 14.04.6, type: server, arch: i386
verification url(s): http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/releases/14.04.6/release/SHA256SUMS
calculating hash...

c3b0e016e77e6bcfc608ab3e3d2aa33367fc83e3bf645014ecf36689fe330b80
fetching official hash...
trying releases url http://releases.ubuntu.com/14.04.6/SHA256SUMS...

calculated hash: c3b0e016e77e6bcfc608ab3e3d2aa33367fc83e3bf645014ecf36689fe330b80
official hash: c3b0e016e77e6bcfc608ab3e3d2aa33367fc83e3bf645014ecf36689fe330b80
match:  True
looks like ubuntu-14.04.6-server-i386.iso is genuine

Notes

You shouldn’t change the name of the iso file because this tool uses regular expressions to match them and then look up its hash on the corresponding distro’s URL.

API Documentation

Utility to verify any linux distro file for its integrity

Script to verify integrity of a given .iso file

distroverify.distroverify.fileexists(filepath)

Check for existence of a file

Parameters:

filepath – Full path to a file

Returns:

Full path to the file if it exists, None otherwise

distroverify.distroverify.main(args=[])

Main entry point of script, process given args using argparse module

Parameters:

args – List of arguments to be processed

distroverify.distroverify.verify(match, distro, file_name, full_file_name, get_download_link=False)

Verify the matched distro file for its integrity.

Parameters:

  • match – Matched regex value

  • distro – Matched distro

  • file_name – Distro file basename

  • full_file_name – Full Path to distro file

Returns:

True if verification succeeds, False if it fails, None if distro couldn’t be verified

Indices and tables