Mirror sites/archives - "download incomplete" problem

[Mark Sheffield <msheffie_2000 at yahoo dot com>]

Hello - I have been struggling with getting gcc running under cygwin and after struggling for the better part of a week decided that the problem may be in what I downloaded from a mirror site.

I had downloaded my copy originally (a few months ago) from ftp://cygwin.mirrorcatalogs.com and had gotten a "download incomplete" error.  The installation went (mostly) OK, with some reading from null errors, but I thought "Oh, that linux...." and let it go.  The installation mostly worked, completely worked as far as I knew.  I was concerned, though, and tried maybe 5 times in the following several days to get the download to complete OK, but after needing to get gcc running this past week (nothing I was doing made any difference) I started investigating this package download nuance as perhaps the culprit.  

I tried downloading from ftp://ftp.gtlib.gatech.edu and ftp://lug.meu.edu and got the same error and was still thinking that it was some unimportant artifact that hadn't been fixed because it was so very unimportant.  

I then tried ftp://mirror.cs.vt.edu and got NO error messages.  I installed this package and got NO errors.  Since I did this, my gcc linker began working for the first time and I am now compiling the latest version of gcc which is a massive undertaking for the gcc compiler and cygwin.

My series of questions out of all of this:

Is there some likelihood that some of the mirrors have corrupted packages?
Is there a method to determine whether or not any specific download mirror has received the current build correct and intact?

I think that my problem is solved, but there are enough hits on the web to see that other users have the same problem.

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