Hello Devs and Kicksecure Community,
I’m writing this post to bring to the attention that the Kicksecure ISO release 17.3.9.9 download appears to be broken.
This is how I got to this conclusion and the steps I took first.
First I downloaded it on Ubuntu via the Mullvad Browser and it made it to 1.0 GB then failed. So I remembered that Mullvad Browser uses their own DNS regardless if you have the Mullvad VPN or not. So I turned off their DOH settings and again it failed.
Then I freshly installed Firefox and again it fails at about 1.0 GB of the download. That made me think it was a Firefox thing, so next I tried with Brave Browser and same thing failed at the 1.0 GB mark. The ISO appears to slightly bigger then 1.0 GB. Mind you I checked my free space and despite having 173 GB of free space it failed so obliviously more then enough.
Next I tried downloading other Linux distro ISO’s and all of them fully downloaded. To test my next theory I switched/tried multiple DNS servers and again failed to download Kicksecure successfully.
Lastly I wanted to try another system to see if it was something I did so I booted up a Tails usb to download the Kicksecure ISO and again it failed despite me having more then enough RAM available (16GB).
This is really concerning cause in the past I downloaded one of the first Kicksecure ISO’s with no issue. My mind wants to go to the worst possible outcome, which I hope is not the case. Hopefully this is just a configuration issue on the server that hands out the downloads.
This needs to be looked into and investigated to see whats going on.
1 Like
Can confirm that the stable ISO on download page fails to download from a standard connection on Librewolf. Also fails on tb-starter Tor Browser.
Why are the mirrors not listed on the ISO wiki download page?
FWIW, I’ve also had download issues where the server seems to cut off my downloads at about 1 GB. I’ve always downloaded Kicksecure using wget, which automatically retries the download and keeps going when this happens, so I’ve never really thought of it as more than an oddity, but it sounds like for some people it can be a real problem.
Have you tried simply clicking the “Retry” button on the download? Sometimes the browser will be smart enough to pick up where it left off rather than starting from scratch.
3 Likes
Could be a server issue. Will be investigated. Will post an update once available.
Reply for users:
Might be fixed. Please try again.
Technical information for developers:
The www subdomain (homepage; wiki) was cached with nginx proxy_pass at the server level for location /. This also included location /download. Caching huge static files such as downloads is pointless and might cause issues. This has been fixed. /download is no longer cached (and doesn’t need to be either).
Yes, can confirm it seems to be working now 
I tested my methods above when downloading and everything worked no fails at the 1.0 GB mark anymore in all browsers and DNS servers.
Glad to hear that it was a ngix issue. I guess it’s just the “Terry Davis” in me to go to the worst paranoid assumption.
It might be mentioning on the download page a part for “cli download”:
wget -c https://www.kicksecure.com/download/iso/$VERSION_Xfce/
And have the $VERSION_Xfce link to stable or tester Xfce you click on like download link.
Not sure I understand. Is this a feature request for predictable download links?
Reporting in that the download works for me on Librewolf now.
1 Like